March 14, 2008
HOUSING HUDDLE
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AIDS housing providers put their heads together this week. |
On Tuesday, for the first time since the dissolution of the New York City Planning Council housing work group, AIDS housing organizations came together for an AIDS Housing Advocacy Summit to compare notes on a host of issues preventing poor people living with HIV/AIDS from getting adequate housing.
Statewide, about 10,000 low-income people with HIV/AIDS are forced to live on an unlivable budget of $330 a month because all of their other income, such as SSI benefits, must go towards their rent. That leaves almost nothing—$11 a day to be precise—for nutrition, transportation and everything else. "A client told me, 'I'll budget my money when I have money to budget,'" Bailey House Executive Director Gina Quattrochi said, a story familiar to other housing providers in attendance.
The summit, which was organized by the New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), attracted more than 40 representatives from 24 groups, including Harlem United, Services for the Underserved, West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing(WSFSSH), Gay Men's Health Crisis, and the Hudson Planning Group.Quattrochi and others say the egregiously low living allowances for poor folks with HIV/AIDS in state-subsidized housing can be solved if state legislators will pass legislation capping their rents at 30 percent. New York's HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA), which provides housing assistance to low-income people with AIDS, is the only rental program in the state that doesn't implement such a cap in accordance with Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Another way to ease the burden on people with HIV/AIDS would be to increase the public assistance base grant levels, which haven't seen an increase in 17 years.
Two other major housing obstacles were on the summit agenda. One was HASA's outdated rental allowance reimbursement, which still follows 2002 Section 8 fair market guidelines and doesn't keep pace with apartment prices, even as other Section 8 programs have been adjusted to keep up with housing prices. People with AIDS are competing for rental units with people who have hundreds more dollars to spend each month—forcing them to move far away from health care providers and support. "It's a ripple effect," said NYCAHN co-director Sean Barry. "We're not just talking about 10 minutes more on the subway." Barry and other attendees want HASA to peg their rental increases to 110 percent of the Housing and Urban Development fair market rents.
Numerous roadblocks
The other daunting challenge was the longstanding state law that says when a non-profit organization leases a rent-controlled apartment, once the first contract of the lease is completed, the unit is immediately deregulated. This affects scattersite housing as the market increases, and agencies must move clients because they can no longer afford the rents.
Despite the numerous roadbloacks to sane housing policies for low-income and homeless people with HIV/AIDS, the organizations at the summit were relieved to have reconvened. "It has been a while since the providers have been able to get together and share concerns raising different issues," said Barbara Van Buren, AIDS coordinator and director of development for West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing. Her group has 18 units of AIDS housing out of its 1,500 residences. "Usually everyone has their individual problems with HASA, but it's hard to assess which things we should be working on.".
"People were unified in supporting each other," said Barry, who is already planning the next summit, focused on the HASA for All campaign that would extend rental assistance and other important benefits to asymptomatic people with HIV before they get seriously ill, not after. "Even if an issue didn't directly effect an organization, everyone was concerned about how to solve it."