Bailey House, which has served low-income homeless and unstably housed men, women and families living with and affected by HIV/AIDS since 1983 and The Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY (CIDNY), a leading advocate for people with disabilities that has worked for over 30 years to remove physical and social barriers and to ensure that people with disabilities have the tools they need to live independently, provide for financial needs, and enjoy equal opportunities, announce a strategic alliance to improve the health outcomes of low-income men and women living with all types of disabilities – physical, sensory, cognitive, developmental and psychiatric. The two agencies are launching this initiative, Health Matters - which combines their expertise in housing, case management, health coverage navigation, entitlement advocacy and legal advocacy – to end barriers to care for affected New Yorkers with disabilities.

Goals of the alliance include ending barriers to health care for disabled New Yorkers who are often forced to use costly emergency and acute care because they are unable to easily access primary care or mental health services in their communities. Three key factors that increase emergency department care by adults with disabilities include lack of access to care and prescription medications, the complexity of individuals’ health profiles, and disability status itself.

Susan Dooha, Executive Director of CIDNY, describes the alliance: “Our partnership will help break through the barriers that low-income New Yorkers with disabilities face as they try to maintain their health.  Working with our partner Bailey House will ensure that people with the toughest health access challenges get prompt attention and services as a matter of course.”

Regina Quattrochi, Bailey House’s CEO, explains the objective of the collaboration: “We are excited to join forces with CIDNY to tackle health disparities often faced by New Yorkers living with disabilities. We know from the recent experience post Superstorm Sandy that some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers – the unstably housed, people with disabilities and the elderly – faced insurmountable barriers to obtaining critical care and services during a crisis. What’s more disturbing, however, is that many face the same insurmountable barriers even when the City is operating normally. Health Matters will serve as a model of what can be done when two agencies with strong track records join forces.”

Contact:

Bailey House

Lauren Pallies, Assistant Director, Community Health

(212) 633-2500 x332 or lpallies at baileyhouse.org

CIDNY

Margi Trapani, Director of Communications

646-442-4154 or mtrapani at cidny.org

On Friday 12/21/12, some predict the end of the world, citing the end of the Mayan calendar. Others say that the Mayan calendar is infinite and that 12/21 signifies not the end but a new beginning. Perhaps the Mayans were saying change is good and that sometimes we have to let go of the box, not merely step out of it.

On Tuesday we learned of the death of Spencer Cox, one of the founders of Act-Up and TAG.  Spencer and many others in the early days of AIDS kicked the box aside and made the blueprint. They crafted it out of their anger, their desperation and their love.  For them and for Bailey House’s founders, silence and inaction were not choices.

On March 28^th we will be celebrating our 30^th anniversary by giving the “First Decade Award” to 30 individuals, who along with us made defiance and action the mantra. In 1983, when we started, holding someone dying of AIDS was an act of defiance in a room full of doctors dressed in Hazmat suits.  Providing someone dying of AIDS with permanent housing was considered a waste of resources – bureaucrats said they would die anyway. We kicked that box so hard it splintered into a thousand pieces – almost as many as there were Bailey House residents who proved them wrong.

We wish the Mayans were here to give us some insight, but since they are not we will create our own. As we move towards 12/21/12 and 2013, we’d like to quote our favorite seer – His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “It’s not enough to be compassionate. You must act.” We wish you and your loved ones a very happy holiday season and as you ring in the New Year we hope that you will put box kicking and making positive change on your list of 2013 resolutions. With your support they are at the top of ours.

Carrie from Homeland

Bailey House observes the 25^th annual World AIDS Day by opening our first major expansion in over a decade – the new Behavioral Health Clinic in East Harlem, a neighborhood with the City’s highest rate of psychiatric hospitalizations and the second highest rate of HIV incidence. It will be housed at our Rand Harlan Center for Housing, Wellness and Community, and will provide a variety of mental health and other services by licensed therapists sensitive to the challenges of low-income people living with HIV/AIDS traumatized by poverty, violence, incarceration and chronic illnesses. The clinic will be LGBT inclusive, harm-reduction based, trauma-informed and open to all.

Why mental health services now? For 30 years we have watched stable housing transform lives. Whether in 1984 when AIDS was considered terminal and some residents lived only weeks or three weeks ago when some residents marked their 20 anniversary in our supportive housing. The miracle of a permanent home is clear.

Since we opened in 1983, and our clients started to lived longer, we also began to see what gets in the way. Depression, anxiety disorders, untreated bipolar or other chronic mental illness destabilize and are major barriers to accessing and staying in healthcare. Often these treatable illnesses, if left un-managed. are also a major barrier to housing retention, stability and the future.  They ruin lives.

As a fans of Carrie, the bipolar CIA agent on TV’s Homeland, know, treatment makes a powerful difference. Our Homeland heroine, when she’s stable, saves the country from clandestine terrorists. When she goes off medication, she’s her own worst enemy.  The good news is that like the fictional Carrie, millions of people live functional, successful lives with the help of good mental health care. Our current and future clients deserve no less.

We dedicate this opening to Rodger McFarlane, a legendary HIV/AIDS activist and one of the first board members of Bailey House. Four years ago, Rodger, after a brilliant career including positions in Navy Special Ops, GMHC, Broadway Cares and the Gill Foundation, took his own life.  The once brilliant man who we loved so much couldn’t see a future beyond his depression, physical or psychic pain. By opening this clinic today, we hope we can help others move past similar challenges to the point where life, stable housing, wellness and community are their future.

The 44 men and women living with AIDS who call Bailey-Holt House their home are distraught. It’s 10 days since their home was struck by Sandy. It’s 7 days that they have been separated from each other.

The Bailey-Holt House community is a microcosm of NYC … black, white, Latino, Asian, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, young and old. Many lived on the street before, surviving a life of violence, despair, drug use and mental illness.  The glue that holds them together is community.

Scattered through NYC in evacuation shelters, temporary housing and long term care, residents are reliving the trauma of the past. Every day I get calls from them pleading to go back … at least to retrieve an item that will give some comfort. I have to say, “No”.

Patricia longs for the computer she abandoned that holds her photos; Peter needs his music to get through this time; Leon misses his favorite hoodie. It’s heartbreaking. I am stunned how each phone call tears me apart.

Bailey-Holt House is uninhabitable right now. We need to get it back.  I want good news for our folks. They deserve nothing less. “The future starts with a place to live” was never truer.

I would like to extend a special thank-you to Speaker Christine Quinn, whose attention has been instrumental in getting a quick early assessment of the damage to the building.  She and her staff have had our backs since the day before the storm.

Today, we still need your help to bring our friends back home.  The response so far has been remarkable, but we have much further to go.

Please make a donation today to the Bailey-Holt House Emergency Fund (BHEF): your pledge will go directly to finance extensive repairs to the building in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Thank you, as always, for your overwhelming support and friendship when we need you most.

We Need a Little Help From Our Friends…

It’s Day #6 post Hurricane Sandy and the outlook for Bailey-Holt House is grim. Although power was restored to most of the City, we’re learning that in a building like ours, it’s not as simple as turning on the lights.

The steps to recovery for Bailey-Holt House are excruciatingly complex and time-consuming. First we must obtain a 75,000 watt generator, which I’ve learned arrives on a flat bed truck because of its size. Then electricians have to hook up temporary lighting so a licensed debris removal company can clear damp, salt-water soaked debris from the basement and ground floor offices.

Next comes the hard part. Once debris is cleared, electricians and plumbers have to assess damages to major building systems from basement to roof and see if the elevator can be repaired. We have already been told to replace the two boilers in the basement. They, along with washers and dryers, sat in tidal basin water for 48 hours.

This process could take weeks or months. We have to order new equipment, which may be scarce, have it installed and possibly replace the electrical system and elevator. Residents cannot return until all of this is done.

We found temporary housing for all 44 of the men and women who reside at Bailey-Holt House but many of these accommodations are unsuitable long-term. Many of our folks not only have AIDS but also kidney, liver, pulmonary, cardiac diseases and cancer. Some have two or three. Several rely on life-prolonging dialysis, methadone, mental health services and drug treatment. Without full subway service and staff nearby, these services can be difficult to access.

Friends and family who offered a night or two of respite are tired. Some are asking our folks to leave. Many hosts too are poor and cannot afford to feed another mouth. One client reported that her ex-husband took her in only to demand she pay him. Our female and transgender clients are particularly vulnerable given the violence many have suffered in their past. For some, the only place to go is back to former friends or partners in situations where they may be exposed to domestic violence or drug use. The trauma of losing the one place they felt safe will take its toll.

Bailey House staff are working double-time to try to rehouse folks and find them the second and perhaps third placement in only six days. We have been hampered, like everyone else, with the loss of subway service and internet access. Cell phones are dead. Some City agency programs are also down or closed.

Everyone misses home, Bailey-Holt House that majestic mothership of AIDS housing that sits at the bottom of Christopher Street. Ironically its location across from the river that makes it magical was its Achilles heel. We will reopen, hopefully soon. We are survivors.

We are incredibly grateful to Speaker Christine Quinn and her amazing staff. They have been with us every step of the way. We also extend our thanks to Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose staff will help us start the hard work of filing for relief. More thanks goes out to the Imperial Court of NY, the first organization to donate funds, and to the M*A*C* AIDS Fund, which followed with a $25,000 grant pledge. You are our angels in the storm!

Please donate to help us bring our folks back home. $5, $10, $100 or $500 will help with the recovery efforts. Estimates run as high as $500,000 for repairs and that could grow. We need a little help from our friends.

We are really excited to be opening a new behavioral health clinic in East Harlem in the Fall of 2012, at our headquarters on Park Avenue and E. 122nd Street.  If  you want to stay healthy, you have to first manage your emotional life.  Unmanaged depression, anxiety, etc. is a major barrier to engaging in HIV or Hepatitis C treatment, getting and keeping housing, engaging in a community and feeling good about one’s self.

We think it’s very cool that we will be the first clinic in the community to offer comprehensive behavioral health services targeted to everyone in the community, including people living with HIV/AIDS with histories of drug use, incarceration, or viral hepatitis; LGBTQ youth; families; and those who are unstably housed.  The clinic will be integrated into our Rand Harlan Center for Housing, Wellness and Community so anyone who comes in to see a therapist will have access to our food pantry, health and wellness program, computer lab and housing placement assistance.   Get involved now by making a donation.  There are lots of great naming opportunities, so don’t wait!  Please contact Cathy Krugman, Chief Development Officer, directly at (212) 633-2500 x455 if you are interested in getting involved.  Click here to donate.

Last Friday morning at 4 AM, when most of New Orleans was sleeping, one or more arsonists torched the offices of Women With A Vision (WWAV), a group run by activist women of color. Deon Haywood, the Executive Director, and the other women of WWAV and their legal team recently won a major victory against Louisiana’s “Crimes Against Nature” law. This law, which was resurrected by the New Orleans police post-Katrina, targets female sex workers and requires those convicted to register as sex offenders (“johns” do not have to register). These women must then pay hundreds of dollars annually to maintain the registration or be jailed. Once registered, women face losing their children, being denied employment, police harassment – the list tragically goes on.

The arsonist(s) knew what he was doing. He targeted rooms where WWAV holds women’s health and HIV education groups. He stacked up plastic replicas of breasts and vaginas used to teach women how to do self-exams, and ignited them. Silencing women is an age-old art. Often it is done with slurs, fists, rape and other violence. He just now added fire to the list. With bombings of abortion clinics in the South rising, it is of little surprise that someone or some group felt at liberty to teach WWAV a lesson by burning down their offices. Did he just mean to ignite fear in a community already struggling for healing? Was it punishment for the legal victory in March? Was it because WWAV dares to work with women , including transgender women, to help them obtain what they need to survive – housing, healthcare, support?  We may never know exactly, but the overall message is clear.

In the HIV/AIDS community we all know how to turn a message on its head and make it our own. HIV+ women and women at risk have been doing that for almost 30 years as the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfolded around them and then left them behind.  Clinical trials have excluded them, new breakthroughs have often eluded them and neither federal policy nor funding has reflected their needs. Organizations like WWAV, often female-led, have struggled to serve women marginalized by poverty, homelessness, HIV and gender-based health disparities – but they have been marginalized too.  They have operated on a shoestring. They have always been vulnerable. Fire isn’t the only way used to silence them. Funding cuts or no funding at all silences them too.

We join the women of WWAV in fighting for the lives of marginalized women. We support their rebirth. We want them to expand. We ask funders both public and private to make funding for women’s services a priority.  By doing this, we send a message loud and clear that that we won’t allow women struggling for their lives to be left behind again.

In the next few weeks, we will be posting updates on our site. To date, neither the New Orleans police nor the fire department has followed-up with an investigation. WWAV is now seeking help from the US Department of Justice to investigate this as a potential “hate crime”.  When an arsonist breaks into the offices of fierce women of color, sets fire to HIV education materials and torches plastic replicas of vaginas and breasts, we’d say the evidence is clear. Stay tuned.

Last week, amid much fanfare, an FDA Advisory Committee unanimously recommended that Gilead Sciences, the maker of Truvada, a drug previously used to treat AIDS, be permitted to market it to prevent HIV infection. Findings from a handful of clinical trials, including one involving discordant couples where one person is negative and the other positive, showed promising results. The outcomes were best when used properly (HIV negative partner adhered to a drug regime and the couple used condoms). The results of the clinical trial involving women was not so promising.

While the advent of medical-based prevention is a reason for great hope in reducing the number of new infections each year, medicine alone has never been a panacea in the HIV pandemic. What we’ve learned in 30 years of the epidemic is that while actual HIV transmission may be pretty straightforward, the social and psychosocial “back story” is not.

A significant body of evidence now shows that the “structural drivers” of the epidemic – things that cause people to engage in high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex or syringe sharing – are as deep and complex as it gets.  Poverty, homelessness, trauma, lack of access to healthcare, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, gender disparities, criminalization of HIV transmission and drug use are just a few.  Many of these also prevent individuals from adhering to medication whether it’s antibiotics or insulin.  HIV prevention is as complex as the things that make it necessary. Can we really just throw a pill at it?

While hopefully Truvada will be useful in the toolbox of HIV prevention, we cannot make the mistake that Magic Johnson did a decade ago when he announced he was cured. We cannot afford for young people to again hear that a drug will cure AIDS or prevent it. We cannot dumb down HIV prevention when so much is still at stake.

Refocusing the National Discussion on HIV/AIDS

Written By Gina Quattrochi
CEO, Bailey House
Member of Steering Committee, “30 for 30″
Board Member, NAHC

Two weeks ago President Obama issued a resolution establishing the first federal agency “Working Group on the Intersection of HIV/AIDS, Violence Against Women and Girls, and Gender and Health Disparities”. The Administration’s action comes at the time when research shows increasing evidence that HIV incidence among women, which is growing in many parts of the nation, particularly the South, at alarming rates, often results from factors, which until recently were not addressed in traditional HIV prevention programs. Clearly we need to do better to stop the epidemic from affecting yet another generation of women.

Let’s look at HIV prevention up to now – one of the most common strategies is to encourage the use of condoms and other types of safer sex. The reality is that women and girls who are victims of intimate partner violence have little or no ability to protect themselves in any way. Even worse is that sex is often the way they are humiliated and injured. Why then have we been arming them with information about safer sex and coaching them to insist that male partners use a condom? The most obvious answer is that violence of any kind was not in the past associated with HIV incidence. Neither was homelessness, poverty, healthcare disparities and other things that we now know are the key drivers. So how does HIV prevention have to change to address these realities? What are your thoughts?

An aging Scrooge is a bitter man.  He received his diagnosis of HIV many years ago, but because of his wealth, he has been stably housed and taking HHART.  His vast resources and social status have helped him maintain his health.

The fate of Bob Crachit and his family is much different.  Bob, his wife, and his youngest son Tiny Tim, also have an HIV diagnosis, but with no stable housing and healthcare, the Cratchit family’s future is uncertain.  Now facing eviction, doctors fear that the stress from one more trauma will kill Tiny Tim.  Stable housing is healthcare and without it, Tiny Tim will not take his meds or show up for his doctor’s appointments. Scrooge doesn’t care and neither do many others.

The Ghost of Holiday Past paid Scrooge a visit to remind him of how he felt when he was first diagnosed. Fear. Stigma. Despair.  Tears ran down his face as he remembered all of the funerals he attended.  He could hardly call out their names as their spirits appeared alongside the Ghost of Holiday Past.  “If you had helped them when they were sick they might have been here to spend the holidays with your sorry self.”

Suddenly Scrooge found himself looking at 1000’s of women and men, looking sick and haggard, waiting in line at a NYC government office. “That’s the office where poor, homeless people with AIDS go for housing.” said the Ghost of Holiday Present. “But how can there be so many?!” screamed Scrooge.  “36,537 as of November 2009 and that does not include the HIV infected homeless. New York City only allows emergency housing to those with an AIDS diagnosis.   “What do you want me to do?” pleads Scrooge wearily.

In front of Reddens Funeral home on 14 ^th Street, where countless HIV/AIDS funerals have taken place since the beginning of the epidemic, Scrooge sees a casket in an empty room. “Whose funeral is that?” asks Scrooge. The Ghost of Holiday Yet to Be responds glumly, “Yours. You died 10 years after Bob, his wife and Tiny Tim.”  “But how did they die before me? Tiny Tim was just a kid.” “They lost their housing right after the holiday of 2009. They asked you for help but you refused. You said you were playing it safe to see how the market did in 2010.”

Scrooge howled in horror.

“I can’t believe I let Tiny Tim die.

What can I do?!”

Maybe Scrooge isn’t the only person asking that question this holiday season.  Come over to 180 Christopher Street or 1751 Park Ave and our countless apartment houses throughout NYC and see HIV/AIDS infected single people, couples and families living in places that look nice …. peaceful.  We might not be able to bring back Tiny Tim, but we can make sure the next young man living with HIV/AIDS gets off the street and into the Bailey House STARZ Program.  We can make sure Bailey House’s Street Pantry brings food to where homeless HIV infected people need it most. You can help underwrite a Bailey House family for a day, week, month or a year so that what happened to Bob Crattchit and his family never happens to another family living with HIV/AIDS in our City again.

Make a Donation. Make a Difference.

Bailey House, which has served low-income homeless and unstably housed men, women and families living with and affected by HIV/AIDS since 1983 and The Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY (CIDNY), a leading advocate for people with disabilities that has worked for over 30 years to remove physical and social barriers and to ensure that people with disabilities have the tools they need to live independently, provide for financial needs, and enjoy equal opportunities, announce a strategic alliance to improve the health outcomes of low-income men and women living with all types of disabilities – physical, sensory, cognitive, developmental and psychiatric. The two agencies are launching this initiative, Health Matters - which combines their expertise in housing, case management, health coverage navigation, entitlement advocacy and legal advocacy – to end barriers to care for affected New Yorkers with disabilities.

Goals of the alliance include ending barriers to health care for disabled New Yorkers who are often forced to use costly emergency and acute care because they are unable to easily access primary care or mental health services in their communities. Three key factors that increase emergency department care by adults with disabilities include lack of access to care and prescription medications, the complexity of individuals’ health profiles, and disability status itself.

Susan Dooha, Executive Director of CIDNY, describes the alliance: “Our partnership will help break through the barriers that low-income New Yorkers with disabilities face as they try to maintain their health.  Working with our partner Bailey House will ensure that people with the toughest health access challenges get prompt attention and services as a matter of course.”

Regina Quattrochi, Bailey House’s CEO, explains the objective of the collaboration: “We are excited to join forces with CIDNY to tackle health disparities often faced by New Yorkers living with disabilities. We know from the recent experience post Superstorm Sandy that some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers – the unstably housed, people with disabilities and the elderly – faced insurmountable barriers to obtaining critical care and services during a crisis. What’s more disturbing, however, is that many face the same insurmountable barriers even when the City is operating normally. Health Matters will serve as a model of what can be done when two agencies with strong track records join forces.”

Contact:

Bailey House

Lauren Pallies, Assistant Director, Community Health

(212) 633-2500 x332 or lpallies at baileyhouse.org

CIDNY

Margi Trapani, Director of Communications

646-442-4154 or mtrapani at cidny.org

On Friday 12/21/12, some predict the end of the world, citing the end of the Mayan calendar. Others say that the Mayan calendar is infinite and that 12/21 signifies not the end but a new beginning. Perhaps the Mayans were saying change is good and that sometimes we have to let go of the box, not merely step out of it.

On Tuesday we learned of the death of Spencer Cox, one of the founders of Act-Up and TAG.  Spencer and many others in the early days of AIDS kicked the box aside and made the blueprint. They crafted it out of their anger, their desperation and their love.  For them and for Bailey House’s founders, silence and inaction were not choices.

On March 28^th we will be celebrating our 30^th anniversary by giving the “First Decade Award” to 30 individuals, who along with us made defiance and action the mantra. In 1983, when we started, holding someone dying of AIDS was an act of defiance in a room full of doctors dressed in Hazmat suits.  Providing someone dying of AIDS with permanent housing was considered a waste of resources – bureaucrats said they would die anyway. We kicked that box so hard it splintered into a thousand pieces – almost as many as there were Bailey House residents who proved them wrong.

We wish the Mayans were here to give us some insight, but since they are not we will create our own. As we move towards 12/21/12 and 2013, we’d like to quote our favorite seer – His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “It’s not enough to be compassionate. You must act.” We wish you and your loved ones a very happy holiday season and as you ring in the New Year we hope that you will put box kicking and making positive change on your list of 2013 resolutions. With your support they are at the top of ours.

Carrie from Homeland

Bailey House observes the 25^th annual World AIDS Day by opening our first major expansion in over a decade – the new Behavioral Health Clinic in East Harlem, a neighborhood with the City’s highest rate of psychiatric hospitalizations and the second highest rate of HIV incidence. It will be housed at our Rand Harlan Center for Housing, Wellness and Community, and will provide a variety of mental health and other services by licensed therapists sensitive to the challenges of low-income people living with HIV/AIDS traumatized by poverty, violence, incarceration and chronic illnesses. The clinic will be LGBT inclusive, harm-reduction based, trauma-informed and open to all.

Why mental health services now? For 30 years we have watched stable housing transform lives. Whether in 1984 when AIDS was considered terminal and some residents lived only weeks or three weeks ago when some residents marked their 20 anniversary in our supportive housing. The miracle of a permanent home is clear.

Since we opened in 1983, and our clients started to lived longer, we also began to see what gets in the way. Depression, anxiety disorders, untreated bipolar or other chronic mental illness destabilize and are major barriers to accessing and staying in healthcare. Often these treatable illnesses, if left un-managed. are also a major barrier to housing retention, stability and the future.  They ruin lives.

As a fans of Carrie, the bipolar CIA agent on TV’s Homeland, know, treatment makes a powerful difference. Our Homeland heroine, when she’s stable, saves the country from clandestine terrorists. When she goes off medication, she’s her own worst enemy.  The good news is that like the fictional Carrie, millions of people live functional, successful lives with the help of good mental health care. Our current and future clients deserve no less.

We dedicate this opening to Rodger McFarlane, a legendary HIV/AIDS activist and one of the first board members of Bailey House. Four years ago, Rodger, after a brilliant career including positions in Navy Special Ops, GMHC, Broadway Cares and the Gill Foundation, took his own life.  The once brilliant man who we loved so much couldn’t see a future beyond his depression, physical or psychic pain. By opening this clinic today, we hope we can help others move past similar challenges to the point where life, stable housing, wellness and community are their future.

The 44 men and women living with AIDS who call Bailey-Holt House their home are distraught. It’s 10 days since their home was struck by Sandy. It’s 7 days that they have been separated from each other.

The Bailey-Holt House community is a microcosm of NYC … black, white, Latino, Asian, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, young and old. Many lived on the street before, surviving a life of violence, despair, drug use and mental illness.  The glue that holds them together is community.

Scattered through NYC in evacuation shelters, temporary housing and long term care, residents are reliving the trauma of the past. Every day I get calls from them pleading to go back … at least to retrieve an item that will give some comfort. I have to say, “No”.

Patricia longs for the computer she abandoned that holds her photos; Peter needs his music to get through this time; Leon misses his favorite hoodie. It’s heartbreaking. I am stunned how each phone call tears me apart.

Bailey-Holt House is uninhabitable right now. We need to get it back.  I want good news for our folks. They deserve nothing less. “The future starts with a place to live” was never truer.

I would like to extend a special thank-you to Speaker Christine Quinn, whose attention has been instrumental in getting a quick early assessment of the damage to the building.  She and her staff have had our backs since the day before the storm.

Today, we still need your help to bring our friends back home.  The response so far has been remarkable, but we have much further to go.

Please make a donation today to the Bailey-Holt House Emergency Fund (BHEF): your pledge will go directly to finance extensive repairs to the building in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Thank you, as always, for your overwhelming support and friendship when we need you most.

We Need a Little Help From Our Friends…

It’s Day #6 post Hurricane Sandy and the outlook for Bailey-Holt House is grim. Although power was restored to most of the City, we’re learning that in a building like ours, it’s not as simple as turning on the lights.

The steps to recovery for Bailey-Holt House are excruciatingly complex and time-consuming. First we must obtain a 75,000 watt generator, which I’ve learned arrives on a flat bed truck because of its size. Then electricians have to hook up temporary lighting so a licensed debris removal company can clear damp, salt-water soaked debris from the basement and ground floor offices.

Next comes the hard part. Once debris is cleared, electricians and plumbers have to assess damages to major building systems from basement to roof and see if the elevator can be repaired. We have already been told to replace the two boilers in the basement. They, along with washers and dryers, sat in tidal basin water for 48 hours.

This process could take weeks or months. We have to order new equipment, which may be scarce, have it installed and possibly replace the electrical system and elevator. Residents cannot return until all of this is done.

We found temporary housing for all 44 of the men and women who reside at Bailey-Holt House but many of these accommodations are unsuitable long-term. Many of our folks not only have AIDS but also kidney, liver, pulmonary, cardiac diseases and cancer. Some have two or three. Several rely on life-prolonging dialysis, methadone, mental health services and drug treatment. Without full subway service and staff nearby, these services can be difficult to access.

Friends and family who offered a night or two of respite are tired. Some are asking our folks to leave. Many hosts too are poor and cannot afford to feed another mouth. One client reported that her ex-husband took her in only to demand she pay him. Our female and transgender clients are particularly vulnerable given the violence many have suffered in their past. For some, the only place to go is back to former friends or partners in situations where they may be exposed to domestic violence or drug use. The trauma of losing the one place they felt safe will take its toll.

Bailey House staff are working double-time to try to rehouse folks and find them the second and perhaps third placement in only six days. We have been hampered, like everyone else, with the loss of subway service and internet access. Cell phones are dead. Some City agency programs are also down or closed.

Everyone misses home, Bailey-Holt House that majestic mothership of AIDS housing that sits at the bottom of Christopher Street. Ironically its location across from the river that makes it magical was its Achilles heel. We will reopen, hopefully soon. We are survivors.

We are incredibly grateful to Speaker Christine Quinn and her amazing staff. They have been with us every step of the way. We also extend our thanks to Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose staff will help us start the hard work of filing for relief. More thanks goes out to the Imperial Court of NY, the first organization to donate funds, and to the M*A*C* AIDS Fund, which followed with a $25,000 grant pledge. You are our angels in the storm!

Please donate to help us bring our folks back home. $5, $10, $100 or $500 will help with the recovery efforts. Estimates run as high as $500,000 for repairs and that could grow. We need a little help from our friends.

Last Friday morning at 4 AM, when most of New Orleans was sleeping, one or more arsonists torched the offices of Women With A Vision (WWAV), a group run by activist women of color. Deon Haywood, the Executive Director, and the other women of WWAV and their legal team recently won a major victory against Louisiana’s “Crimes Against Nature” law. This law, which was resurrected by the New Orleans police post-Katrina, targets female sex workers and requires those convicted to register as sex offenders (“johns” do not have to register). These women must then pay hundreds of dollars annually to maintain the registration or be jailed. Once registered, women face losing their children, being denied employment, police harassment – the list tragically goes on.

The arsonist(s) knew what he was doing. He targeted rooms where WWAV holds women’s health and HIV education groups. He stacked up plastic replicas of breasts and vaginas used to teach women how to do self-exams, and ignited them. Silencing women is an age-old art. Often it is done with slurs, fists, rape and other violence. He just now added fire to the list. With bombings of abortion clinics in the South rising, it is of little surprise that someone or some group felt at liberty to teach WWAV a lesson by burning down their offices. Did he just mean to ignite fear in a community already struggling for healing? Was it punishment for the legal victory in March? Was it because WWAV dares to work with women , including transgender women, to help them obtain what they need to survive – housing, healthcare, support?  We may never know exactly, but the overall message is clear.

In the HIV/AIDS community we all know how to turn a message on its head and make it our own. HIV+ women and women at risk have been doing that for almost 30 years as the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfolded around them and then left them behind.  Clinical trials have excluded them, new breakthroughs have often eluded them and neither federal policy nor funding has reflected their needs. Organizations like WWAV, often female-led, have struggled to serve women marginalized by poverty, homelessness, HIV and gender-based health disparities – but they have been marginalized too.  They have operated on a shoestring. They have always been vulnerable. Fire isn’t the only way used to silence them. Funding cuts or no funding at all silences them too.

We join the women of WWAV in fighting for the lives of marginalized women. We support their rebirth. We want them to expand. We ask funders both public and private to make funding for women’s services a priority.  By doing this, we send a message loud and clear that that we won’t allow women struggling for their lives to be left behind again.

In the next few weeks, we will be posting updates on our site. To date, neither the New Orleans police nor the fire department has followed-up with an investigation. WWAV is now seeking help from the US Department of Justice to investigate this as a potential “hate crime”.  When an arsonist breaks into the offices of fierce women of color, sets fire to HIV education materials and torches plastic replicas of vaginas and breasts, we’d say the evidence is clear. Stay tuned.

Last week, amid much fanfare, an FDA Advisory Committee unanimously recommended that Gilead Sciences, the maker of Truvada, a drug previously used to treat AIDS, be permitted to market it to prevent HIV infection. Findings from a handful of clinical trials, including one involving discordant couples where one person is negative and the other positive, showed promising results. The outcomes were best when used properly (HIV negative partner adhered to a drug regime and the couple used condoms). The results of the clinical trial involving women was not so promising.

While the advent of medical-based prevention is a reason for great hope in reducing the number of new infections each year, medicine alone has never been a panacea in the HIV pandemic. What we’ve learned in 30 years of the epidemic is that while actual HIV transmission may be pretty straightforward, the social and psychosocial “back story” is not.

A significant body of evidence now shows that the “structural drivers” of the epidemic – things that cause people to engage in high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex or syringe sharing – are as deep and complex as it gets.  Poverty, homelessness, trauma, lack of access to healthcare, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, gender disparities, criminalization of HIV transmission and drug use are just a few.  Many of these also prevent individuals from adhering to medication whether it’s antibiotics or insulin.  HIV prevention is as complex as the things that make it necessary. Can we really just throw a pill at it?

While hopefully Truvada will be useful in the toolbox of HIV prevention, we cannot make the mistake that Magic Johnson did a decade ago when he announced he was cured. We cannot afford for young people to again hear that a drug will cure AIDS or prevent it. We cannot dumb down HIV prevention when so much is still at stake.

In the 1980s and even into the 1990s, it was hard to imagine that women living with HIV/AIDS would live long enough to see their children grow up. Dreams of getting pregnant and raising a family were dashed. Then scientists started looking into mother-to-child HIV transmission. The news was good – an HIV+ woman could have a healthy pregnancy and deliver a healthy, HIV-negative baby as long as she took certain meds and was carefully monitored during prenatal care. While she couldn’t breastfeed because the virus could be transmitted via breast milk, she could finally envision her kids becoming young adults. Years later, it even got better. Given increased life expectancy after many new therapies emerged, an HIV+ mother could look forward to seeing several generations of her family – children, grandchildren and maybe even great-grandchildren.

Sounds amazing, right? Not so for all HIV+ women. Homeless HIV+ women have nothing to cheer about. Homelessness is one of the major barriers to all those things one needs to have a healthy baby – a place to nest and eat well, access to prenatal care, and peace of mind. A stable home is crucial – imagine being pregnant without it. That’s why this Mother’s Day we ask you to donate to Bailey House in honor of your mother.  Your support could be just the thing that an HIV+ mom-to-be needs to celebrate this special day.

Refocusing the National Discussion on HIV/AIDS

Written By Gina Quattrochi
CEO, Bailey House
Member of Steering Committee, “30 for 30″
Board Member, NAHC

Two weeks ago President Obama issued a resolution establishing the first federal agency “Working Group on the Intersection of HIV/AIDS, Violence Against Women and Girls, and Gender and Health Disparities”. The Administration’s action comes at the time when research shows increasing evidence that HIV incidence among women, which is growing in many parts of the nation, particularly the South, at alarming rates, often results from factors, which until recently were not addressed in traditional HIV prevention programs. Clearly we need to do better to stop the epidemic from affecting yet another generation of women.

Let’s look at HIV prevention up to now – one of the most common strategies is to encourage the use of condoms and other types of safer sex. The reality is that women and girls who are victims of intimate partner violence have little or no ability to protect themselves in any way. Even worse is that sex is often the way they are humiliated and injured. Why then have we been arming them with information about safer sex and coaching them to insist that male partners use a condom? The most obvious answer is that violence of any kind was not in the past associated with HIV incidence. Neither was homelessness, poverty, healthcare disparities and other things that we now know are the key drivers. So how does HIV prevention have to change to address these realities? What are your thoughts?

An aging Scrooge is a bitter man.  He received his diagnosis of HIV many years ago, but because of his wealth, he has been stably housed and taking HHART.  His vast resources and social status have helped him maintain his health.

The fate of Bob Crachit and his family is much different.  Bob, his wife, and his youngest son Tiny Tim, also have an HIV diagnosis, but with no stable housing and healthcare, the Cratchit family’s future is uncertain.  Now facing eviction, doctors fear that the stress from one more trauma will kill Tiny Tim.  Stable housing is healthcare and without it, Tiny Tim will not take his meds or show up for his doctor’s appointments. Scrooge doesn’t care and neither do many others.

The Ghost of Holiday Past paid Scrooge a visit to remind him of how he felt when he was first diagnosed. Fear. Stigma. Despair.  Tears ran down his face as he remembered all of the funerals he attended.  He could hardly call out their names as their spirits appeared alongside the Ghost of Holiday Past.  “If you had helped them when they were sick they might have been here to spend the holidays with your sorry self.”

Suddenly Scrooge found himself looking at 1000’s of women and men, looking sick and haggard, waiting in line at a NYC government office. “That’s the office where poor, homeless people with AIDS go for housing.” said the Ghost of Holiday Present. “But how can there be so many?!” screamed Scrooge.  “36,537 as of November 2009 and that does not include the HIV infected homeless. New York City only allows emergency housing to those with an AIDS diagnosis.   “What do you want me to do?” pleads Scrooge wearily.

In front of Reddens Funeral home on 14 ^th Street, where countless HIV/AIDS funerals have taken place since the beginning of the epidemic, Scrooge sees a casket in an empty room. “Whose funeral is that?” asks Scrooge. The Ghost of Holiday Yet to Be responds glumly, “Yours. You died 10 years after Bob, his wife and Tiny Tim.”  “But how did they die before me? Tiny Tim was just a kid.” “They lost their housing right after the holiday of 2009. They asked you for help but you refused. You said you were playing it safe to see how the market did in 2010.”

Scrooge howled in horror.

“I can’t believe I let Tiny Tim die.

What can I do?!”

Maybe Scrooge isn’t the only person asking that question this holiday season.  Come over to 180 Christopher Street or 1751 Park Ave and our countless apartment houses throughout NYC and see HIV/AIDS infected single people, couples and families living in places that look nice …. peaceful.  We might not be able to bring back Tiny Tim, but we can make sure the next young man living with HIV/AIDS gets off the street and into the Bailey House STARZ Program.  We can make sure Bailey House’s Street Pantry brings food to where homeless HIV infected people need it most. You can help underwrite a Bailey House family for a day, week, month or a year so that what happened to Bob Crattchit and his family never happens to another family living with HIV/AIDS in our City again.

Make a Donation. Make a Difference.