San Francisco Public Health Director Barbara Garcia said she'll meet with the board of Tenderloin Health today (Thursday, January 5) to discuss the nonprofit's fate.
[Updated: On Thursday, the agency issued a press release stating that it will close.
The agency's statement said that the board voted to shut down "due to continued funding challenges."
Executive Director David Fernandez said that the agency is working with the Department of Public Health to ensure clients' care is not interrupted.
An announcement of new service providers is expected at the end of January.
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The agency, which provides housing, medical, and other services to some of the city's poorest residents, including people with HIV and AIDS, has struggled for years and appears to be near collapse. But officials refuse to say much about what exactly is happening.
In an exchange of text messages with the Bay Area Reporter on Tuesday, January 3, Garcia responded to an interview request by mentioning the meeting and saying, "You will get [the] press release first."
Asked what the statement would say, and whether it would be accurate to report that Tenderloin Health is closing, Garcia responded that she's meeting with the board "to find this out."
In late December, Pamela Fitzgerald, Tenderloin Health's development director, said in a Facebook post that the board voted December 20 to shut down the organization. Fitzgerald has declined to comment, and officials have refused to confirm her statement.
Executive Director David Fernandez said in a recent email to the B.A.R. that the agency experienced "severe funding cuts" this fall and "We have not been doing very well."
Tenderloin Health relies on large chunks of public support, including hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health department, but Fernandez has refused to provide more information on the state of his agency.
It's unclear what would happen to the agency's thousands of clients if it were to close.
Asked about a transition plan during a brief interview Tuesday, Fernandez, said, "We haven't figured all that out yet."
Responding to a question about which contracts have been cut, he said, "I'm not talking to you anymore until I have more concrete information to share with you. Thanks." He then hung up the phone.
In an interview last week, Fernandez said, "There's a lot of options we're considering," but he wouldn't say what the alternatives are.
The agency's budget is about $7.1 million, according to the most recent available data. It was created in 2006 as the result of a merger between the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center and Continuum HIV Day Services.