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Will ACT UP and Mayor Nutter come to terms?
On World AIDS Day, ACT UP says that Mayor Nutter must deal with the housing crisis for people with AIDS. Will he?
Will ACT UP and Mayor Nutter come to terms?
It's World AIDS Day today. And ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), the legendary activist organization that in most city's is a historical item but here in Philly is very much alive and kicking, has been loudly demanding that Mayor Michael Nutter increase housing for people with AIDS.
ACT UP says that the city has committed to announcing a plan on Dec. 14.
"We will consider the plan acceptable if it ends the AIDS housing wait list," says ACT UP member Max Ray, adding that it must target "those most in need who aren't currently eligible for the housing wait list," people like drug and alcohol users and undocumented immigrants.
Homeless people with AIDS now languish on a wait list for federally-funded housing administered by the city's AIDS Activities Coordinating Office. ACT UP says that 229 people with AIDS are currently waiting 29 months for housing--or 1-3 months if they make it onto a special priority list--and are asking the city to kick in an additional $2 million to $4 million in annual funding.
David Fair, former head of the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office (AACO), says that Philadelphia's AIDS crisis is getting worse after years of progress.
"Because of Philadelphia’s inadequate response to the epidemic, people are once again being diagnosed on their deathbeds in the hospital."
Homelessness can be a difficult ordeal under any circumstance. If you have AIDS, it can be a nightmare: packed into rooms with sick people who can make you sicker, having trouble keeping up with medications. According to ACT UP, at least 6 HIV positive homeless men and women have died on city streets since 2009.
This could be another victory for an ACT UP chapter that has adapted to mobilize the victims of a changing AIDS crisis—people who are increasingly black and poor. As Holly Otterbein wrote in February for CP, they recruit "new members in unexpected places, like halfway houses, shelters and jails."
By the mid-'90s, ACT UP chapters began folding across the country. What had happened?
Ironically, it was their very success that began to eat away at their membership: As gay men got better access to medicine — especially white and middle-class men who could afford it — they drifted away from activism.
Those remaining AIDS activists began to shift their focus to policy on the global AIDS epidemic, or began working for the government, trying to change the system from within. ACT UP Philly, though, plotted a different course.
"Other chapters were dwindling or dying because white men were leaving," says longtime member Paul Davis. "But we decided to be aggressive about putting race and poverty at the core of every campaign, to be really up-front about who AIDS was now affecting."
Though the face of AIDS had changed, he says, one truth remained: "Nothing has ever been given to people with AIDS. All we've ever gotten, we've fought for."
In 2006, ACT UP convinced the city's prisons commissioner to provide condoms to inmates. According to Otterbein, they even helped persuade George W. Bush to commit $48 billion to global AIDS treatment and prevention—one of the only decent things he ever did. This time, they have Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) on board, who championed Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS, the federal program that funds housing for people with AIDS.
"The City of Philadelphia ought to join the federal government and devote more of its own resources to this crisis," says McDermott. "It can’t be a coincidence that Philadelphia has such an acute crisis in HIV and homelessness, yet devotes little to no resources to it."
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