LA AIDS victims homeless, yet $5+ million for HOPWA housing
Tom Boland (wgcp@earthlink.net)
Thu, 22 Oct 1998 07:07:40 -0400
http://www.laweekly.com:80/ink/archives/98/48news6-sadowick.shtml
FWD Los Angeles Weekly October 23-29, 1998
GIMME SHELTER/BY DOUGLAS SADOWNICK
There are hundreds of homeless people with AIDS living on the streets of
Los Angeles, and millions of dollars in federal AIDS housing money sitting
in city accounts. What happened to all that cash?
AIDS HOUSING AGENCY CAN'T SPEND FAST ENOUGH
Afflicted with a chronic rash that kept him from walking, the last thing
67-year-old AIDS patient Don Hammerich needed was to be homeless last
spring and summer. Like many people with AIDS, however, he had a poor job
record, and eventually lost his Hollywood apartment. He had moved in with a
lover, then got ripped off by him.
Worried that sleeping on the street one more time would kill him off,
Hammerich asked for help last spring from Housing Opportunities for People
With AIDS (HOPWA), a city agency that dispenses $10 million in federal
funds annually for AIDS housing. He was literally told to take a lottery
number.
Hammerich found help dealing with his personal catastrophe when he obtained
provided a temporary voucher from a local AIDS social-services agency, and
he moved into the Russ Hotel on Skid Row. "Not a great place for a dying
man," he said, but better than nothing. The voucher was good for only 30
days, however, and by spring Hammerich was back on the street. For the time
being, friends and AIDS activists are putting him up in a Hollywood motel.
Hammerich is one among hundreds of homeless men with AIDS in Los Angeles
who need help holding onto a place to live. But despite the infusions of
federal money, the city's HOPWA program seems slow to respond. Program
administrators were sitting on $12.9 million at the time of Hammerich's
troubles, according to an April 1998 city-controller report, and continues
to maintain as much as $7 million in unspent funds.
Housing Department officials recognized the problem last year and
commissioned a report by Shelter Partnership, Inc., to assess the scope of
L.A.'s AIDS-housing shortfall. The survey, the first comprehensive study of
its kind, consisted of 785 interviews with clients of area AIDS service
organizations. Two-thirds of those contacted said that, on average, they
had been homeless twice in the previous three years. Forty-five percent
said that they were currently homeless, and 64 percent had lived in their
current homes for less than one year. Since those interviewed are already
clients of some form of service agency and are already receiving help, the
figures suggest that other poor people with AIDS and HIV face an even
tougher housing problem.
So far, the city has mounted only a limited response, with only 114 beds
available at a variety of residential units and AIDS-dedicated buildings.
HOPWA augments that number by contracting with 23 local AIDS agencies,
which then offer short-term, "shallow" assistance ($300 every 90 days),
emergency vouchers (providing a 30-day residence at single-room-occupancy
hotels) or longer-term and much-coveted "Section 8-like" certificates.
(Such assistance gives AIDS patients a roof over their heads by making
payments directly to the landlord.) Because there is such a large demand
for these awards, some agencies enter client names in a lottery. When HOPWA
money becomes available, several hundred names are picked from among
thousands.
It's a cumbersome procedure that has left millions in unspent funds sitting
with city officials. And for months now, activists have been demanding a
change.
HOPWA's most vocal critic is the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the nation's
largest AIDS medical provider. The City Council, in July, requested a full
report from HOPWA to explain what was being done with the $13 million, but
none was produced. Throughout October, the foundation pressed its case with
full-page ads in the L.A. Weekly accusing Mayor Richard Riordan of creating
a private and public health emergency through gross mismanagement. The
effort culminated in an October 10 overnight vigil in front of the Getty
House, the official-but-uninhabited mayoral mansion, with the AHF calling
for a federal audit of the program.
For some, the HOPWA dispute simply reflects a number of longstanding feuds
and rivalries within the AIDS community itself. In particular, AIDS
Healthcare Foundation head Michael Weinstein has become a target. "If
Michael is so concerned about homeless people with AIDS," argues Mary
Lucey, an AIDS activist who runs the office of the L.A. City AIDS
Coordinator, "why doesn't he sit on the HOPWA advisory committee?" AIDS
Project Los Angeles executive director Craig Thompson is more reserved.
"There may be the money is going toward projects," Thompson says.
Almost everyone chalks up the recent battle to age-old animosities between
Weinstein and L.A. City AIDS Coordinator Ferd Eggan, arguing that Weinstein
wants HOPWA's money. Indeed, a memo Eggan helped draft last month denounced
criticism of the program as "distorted and potentially dangerous
misinformation promulgated by a disgruntled agency."
For his part, Weinstein says he has no interest in distributing housing
funds, and puts the onus back on the city. "It's an outrage for anyone with
AIDS in Los Angeles to go homeless when millions of federal dollars in
AIDS-housing money is sitting untapped in city coffers," Weinstein says.
Whatever the interests of the foundation, there remain millions in federal
dollars to answer for. Romerol Malveaux, an official at the L.A. City
Housing Department, met with the Weekly recently in an effort to explain
the controversial HOPWA budget. It's a complex system influenced by several
variables: The city is on a different fiscal year than the federal
government, HUD is going through a consolidation program and the HOPWA
advisory committee (comprised of AIDS-community members) is reassessing how
it allocates money.
Malveaux says that, last year, the HOPWA committee allocated almost $5
million for "shallow subsidies," but then discovered that nearly $3 million
of that had gone unspent - clients were either too poor or too rich to
qualify for the $100-per-month stipend. That's when she commissioned the
Housing Survey to find out what had gone wrong. "We didn't want to put our
money prematurely into programs until we had assessed how people's needs
were changing."
Malveaux broke down the March 1998 budget (which shows $12.5 in
"unencumbered funds") to demonstrate that, at the time of the controller's
report the following month, $3.6 million was in the process of being
approved for support services. That wasn't accounted for in the
controller's report because, until the City Council approves allocations,
the federal government "doesn't draw down the money." In addition, $950,000
had been allocated for the development of San Pedro House, an
AIDS-dedicated home, and an additional $220,000 was allocated to a study to
measure the impact of the HOPWA program. A total of $647,000 went into
administering HOPWA (the city got $272,000, and participating agencies
received $347,000).
That leaves $7.1 currently as "unencumbered funds," $2 million of which has
since gone into the "shallow subsidy," with an additional $1.3 million put
into developing AIDS-dedicated units, Malveaux says. But that means that
almost $5 million is still sitting around at the moment, unused, although
it is earmarked for long-term assistance.
"There is no question that some of the money was not put into operation
fast enough," Malveaux concedes. "I am not saying we always run perfectly.
But we try to be diligent." That's not enough for HOPWA's critics at the
AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "They are playing with millions," says Miki
Jackson, a consultant with the foundation. "Can you imagine that in the
midst of all this scandal, they have no spreadsheet?"
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