by Brian Basinger
The Stonewall rebellion taught us to stand up to power, to tell the truth about our lives, and to fight for what is right. In honor of this 40th anniversary of San Francisco's Pride Parade, I am compelled to speak against recent statements by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Department of Public Health Director Dr. Mitch Katz that undermine support for the housing needs of people with HIV/AIDS. Newsom implies that my community has access to housing that is somehow "unequal" and greater than other groups. Katz adds to the echo chamber by falsely implying that people with HIV/AIDS are not paying our fair share of rent compared to other groups. The combination of these statements creates a disturbing narrative of mistruths. We will never know whether these were unfortunate coinciding misstatements or if they were part of a cynical attempt to justify gutting housing for people with HIV/AIDS. It doesn't matter the motivation. The statements were made and we have a duty to counter them with the truth.
We reject this divide and conquer philosophy, pitting low-income people with HIV/AIDS against other poor people in need of their human right to housing.
One only need look at the facts to find that Newsom and Katz's statements are dead wrong. According to HUD, 90.9 percent of people with HIV/AIDS in San Francisco are either homeless or at risk of homelessness due to an extreme rent burden. According to Katz's own Department of Public Health, 10 percent of the overall homeless population has full-blown AIDS. If we include HIV-positive people who don't have AIDS, that figure could be 20 percent to 25 percent. A recent public health report showed 12 percent of people who got an AIDS diagnosis in 2008 were homeless at the time. Imagine what it feels like to have lost your job, lost your home, and then be told you have AIDS.
The implication that people with HIV/AIDS are getting more than our fair share of housing is especially interesting given that we are hardly represented in the much-touted Care Not Cash housing for homeless people. In one of the largest providers, less than 1 percent of tenants are people with HIV. Is this an example of successfully equalizing our access to housing?
AIDS is still the #1 cause of premature death of all men ages 15-54 in San Francisco and homelessness causes us to die five times faster. In what strange world is taking away housing from the group with the greatest housing disparity and the greatest negative impact from homelessness an "equalization?"
To add insult to injury, Katz misstates reality when saying people with HIV/AIDS will simply move from paying 20 percent of income to paying 30 percent of income toward rent. No one on an HIV subsidy has ever paid just 20 percent of income toward rent. In fact, very few of our subsidies are at 30 percent of income. The AIDS Housing Plan determined that up to 13,000 people with HIV/AIDS in need have absolutely zero access to rental assistance and are at risk of homelessness due to an extreme rent burden, on top of the 2,500 already homeless. A few hundred have subsidies at 30 percent of income and a few hundred more have shallow subsidies where they are paying 50 percent to 80 percent of their income to rent.
The funding for these subsidies came about because of a protest at City Hall organized by AIDS Housing Alliance/SF to bring attention to the fact that the HIV community had lost one-third of our housing subsidy slots in just three short years under the Newsom administration. Not only did we lose subsidy slots, we lost housing quality. Many of our subsidies have been shifted from "deep" �" allowing tenants to pay one-third of their income toward rent �" to "shallow" rent subsidies of around $225 per month. This is the difference between living in a studio with one's own bathroom versus living in a bed-bug-, cockroach-, rat-, and drug-infested hotel in the Tenderloin. How's that for equalizing our housing? This is an unacceptable race to the bottom of human dignity.
AHA's success in restoring some of the lost subsidies was followed by the Board of Supervisors Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Housing Plan, instigated for us by then-Supervisor Tom Ammiano and Supervisor Bevan Dufty, which led to funding the housing subsidies being lost under the Ryan White CARE Act. The budget should reflect, respect, and honor legitimate community planning. However, the funding for these subsidies was cut from the mayor's budget last year too.
AHA sacrificed funding for our emergency hotel program in order to focus efforts on preserving the subsidies cut by the Newsom administration last year. Fifty percent of our participants had gone from homelessness to more permanent housing within 28 days because of our intervention. That resource no longer exists. The notion that "No person with AIDS was harmed in the making of this budget" is false.
Katz gives a false impression that this is a small adjustment with very few consequences. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation's attempt to raise rents last year resulted in what staff at that organization characterize as "a disaster." People in government will try to promote the party line that no person with AIDS will lose their housing, because they are taking away subsidies by attrition. The reality is staff will be pressured to reduce the number of people receiving subsidies. They will no longer have the flexibility to work with clients who are having trouble and will begin exiting clients from subsidies due to minor technical violations. Those clients will most likely become homeless. This happened during budget cuts last year. It will happen again this year.
Why is the first answer always to cut the housing of people with HIV/AIDS? I'm calling on the Board of Supervisors to explore legislation formalizing the call to have housing subsidies "held harmless" when budget cuts happen, similar to what people with HIV/AIDS recently achieved in New York. As the only disabled PWA executive director of an AIDS organization in SF �" making $699 per month by the way �" I am more than happy to call for limits on executive compensation. Cut from the top!
This is not to say that there isn't the opportunity for increased efficiency and effectiveness.
AHA has developed a suite of rental assistance programs that cost on average $98 per month of stable housing per client. This compares favorably to other providers that cost $727 per month. AHA could provide 4,896 additional months of stable housing and serve 408 additional households with these funds. As the only housing service provider in San Francisco founded, run, and staffed by people with HIV/AIDS �" most of whom are disabled �" we will also create jobs in the process. Using our HIV/AIDS funding to create jobs for people with HIV/AIDS is also an official city policy. Let's follow it. Otherwise we will continue down this path of HIV apartheid where other people have all the jobs providing services to all of us HIVers, leaving us homeless or stuck in shanty-like hotels in Tenderloin Township.
The most important thing is to remember that HIV is a communicable disease. Knowing your status and having stable housing are the two most effective tools we have in stopping the spread of the virus. We must challenge ill-informed policies, like what Newsom and Katz are pursuing, that undermine legitimate efforts to stop the spread of HIV.
The HIV community needs to understand our power. With proper organization, we have enough votes to determine who becomes our next supervisor in District 6 (Tenderloin), District 8 (Castro), and District 10 (Bayview). Now is the time for our community to act in order to groom our future leaders to make sure they are fully educated on our needs and have the HIV community at the top of their agenda. I invite the mayor and the HIV community to attend our HIV town hall listening session with supervisor candidates on Friday, July 23 from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Milton Marks Auditorium at the State Building, 455 Golden Gate Avenue.
Brian Basinger is the director of the AIDS Housing Alliance/SF.