UPDATE: This piece was authored prior to the passage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, on March 30th, 2020. This Act included $65 million in additional funding for the HOPWA program. As a result of these additional funds, the “$80 million” cut to the HOPWA program proposed by the Trump Administration will be temporarily abated (assuming that the proposed cut makes it into the annual budget bill).
It should be noted that this $65m is a one-time infusion of funds included only in the CARES Act, and is unlikely to be a permanent fixture in future budgets. The Trump Administration is still proposing the $85m cut to the overall budget.
There are currently efforts underway by HIV advocates and activists to include an additional $65 million in funds in the forthcoming fourth stimulus bill related to COVID-19.
The Trump Administration is, once again, demonstrating its attempt to end social safety nets via deaths by 1,000 cuts. In its latest budget proposal, the Trump Administration is proposing $8.6 billion in funding cuts for the HUD (Housing and Urban Development) program, including $80 million cut from the Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS (HOPWA).
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| Photo Source: New York Magazine |
HOPWA was created in the AIDS Housing Opportunities Act, as part of the Cranston-Gonzales National Affordable Housing Act of 1990, and has consistently been one of the best-intentioned, but worst funded, managed, and disbursed elements of the various HIV-specific social safety net programs. Plagued by mismanagement at both the federal and state levels, in no small part because of the way the program is administered.
Unlike the overall Ryan White Program, which applies to virtually anyone in a state living with HIV, so long as they meet income verification and upper limit requirements, the HOPWA program operates through the HUD program via a series of grants and relies upon the availability of Section 8 low-income housing.
For example, when I lived in Los Angeles and was in need of a new housing situation when I was separating from my partner, I attempted to sign up for HOPWA via my Ryan White caseworker, only to find that there was, at the time, a waiting list of several years in order to qualify for a Section 8 voucher. What this meant was that, in effect, there were no available Section 8-eligible units available, and I would have to enter my name on a wait list. Should a unit become available, a call would go out, and whomever got there first and qualified was the lucky recipient of a place to live.
This is just on the front-end of HOPWA, however; on the back-end, where the program is administered by state and local governments, inefficiencies, personal and local politics, and failures to may payments to programs on time have created huge issues for people whose housing depends upon the program. There are few places where this is truer than Atlanta, GA:
The City of Atlanta failed to spend $41 million since 2014 meant for the HOPWA program in a dispute involving unpaid contractors, unspent development funds, and a multi-year failure to properly allocate and disburse funds. As a result, in the summer of 2019, hundreds of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) were facing eviction as Living Room, the non-profit contractor with whom the City of Atlanta had contracted with to connect PLWHA with low incomes to safe, affordable housing, declared bankruptcy and closed.
Living Room announced in June 2019 that it was unable to pay the rents for roughly 250 clients because the City of Atlanta was several months late in disbursing $500,000 in reimbursement funds for expenses. As a result, those clients’ landlords filed for eviction, resulting in the Atlanta Legal Aid Society being swamped with requests for assistance to the point where they set up a special team just to address the issue. The city responded by paying $371,600 (Mariano, 2019), but those funds arrived too late for Living Room to continue operating.
The problems did not, however, originate with the current administration (Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms); even when she stood for election in 2017, payments from the City of Atlanta to nonprofit contractors ran so late that many had to borrow against lines of credit and stop taking on new clients (Mariano). Bottoms, who vowed to get to the bottom (as it were) of why these programs were shutting down due to unpaid reimbursement requests has largely failed to live up to the promises she’s made over the past three years, in no small part because her administration has fundamentally failed to properly propose, explain, and implement changes in a timely manner, or to satisfaction of HUD, which has repeatedly expressed public concerns about the administration of Atlanta’s HUD grant.
The problems also do not stop in Atlanta. The HOPWA program has consistently been underfunded and unable to address the needs of PLWHA. The original language in the program focused primarily on people living in urban areas, but changes began, in 2015, to address the needs of PLWHA living in suburban and rural areas. Unfortunately, none of those changes have effectively increased the amount of funding needed, nor increased the availability of housing units.
Where other countries address low-income housing by building government-owned/operated council flats or apartment buildings, the U.S. has stubbornly (and stupidly, in my opinion) insisted upon “public/private partnerships” to address Section 8 housing, relying upon individual property companies and landlords to supply housing and qualify for/accept Section 8 vouchers. This is, no doubt, an artifact of the “Socialism Scare” of the 1950s and beyond, where any sort of social safety net or housing program was deemed “Creeping Socialism” that would doom the U.S. to become a Communist hellhole with never ending breadlines and (shudder) paying to support the Poors.
This decades-long failure on the part of federal and state governments to purchase land and build public housing sufficient to meet the needs of lower-income individuals and families (because, why that just wouldn’t generate a profit, you Pinko Commie bastard!) has resulted in an affordable housing crunch exacerbated by municipalities’ [stupid] desire to approve and build only “luxury” housing units that are, in actuality, little different from the medium-range housing units that were built in the late-90s and early-00s, but have the word “luxury” slapped on the development so that they can increase property values and rents.
In rural states, HOPWA funds are largely allocated in the more densely populated regions, where housing is already overpriced and affordable housing is unavailable. This means that people who could find housing outside of these areas are unable to do so, because the HUD grant for HOPWA only covers people if they live inside of those areas…where housing is over-priced and unavailable, creating waiting lists, backlogs, and people struggling to figure where to live and work, all while attempting to manage their HIV and achieve and maintain viral suppression.
In short, even before the proposed budget cuts for HOPWA (for the second consecutive year), HOPWA is a mess of an operation that is in desperate need of nationalization, centralization, and a massive increase in funds to continue to exist.
Disclaimer: Guest blogs do not necessarily reflect the views of the ADAP Advocacy Association, but rather they provide a neutral platform whereby the author serves to promote open, honest discussion about public health-related issues and updates.
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