There has been an intense vacuum of leadership on AIDS housing issues at the local level. This lack of leadership is not unexpected. This is what happens when advocacy organizations become service providers. Over time, their advocacy work drifts to become more and more narrowly focused on simply advocating for more money to sustain their programs. This is a well documented phenomenon in the academic literature.  As frustrated as it makes me, I don't blame them. They have huge payrolls to make. That's a big burden so of course they're going to prioritize making payroll. Our model is to hire disabled people with AIDS so we can keep our payrolls small and avoid all of that nonsense.

Added to this an interesting conundrum. Our local Ryan White CARE Council is involved in AIDS housing work, so many housing decisions have rightfully been left up to this body. However, this has given us a false sense of security that contributed to the vacuum of leadership. The CARE Council is mandated to focus on how to spend CARE money, with some input on how HOPWA money is spent. They do not and cannot get involved in larger housing issues like eviction / homelessness prevention, land use, etc. Since many of the members of that body are public or nonprofit employees, there is a natural and justifiable tendency to steer clear of controversial issues.

But being the silver-lining type, my position is that the system was just waiting for AIDS Housing Alliance/SF to come along and fulfill our niche.

In 2006, AIDS Housing Alliance/SF was able to advocate for $1M in new HIV/AIDS housing money through the leadership of Supervisor Chris Daly. This reversed a trend under the old AIDS housing regime that saw a loss of up to one-third of our AIDS housing in just 3 years. For 2007, we are convening an HIV/AIDS committee of the People's Budget being coordinated by Supervisor Daly's office that is advocating for picking up $3.8 million in housing subsidies for 491 households that are no longer available with CARE money, as well as an expansion of housing assistance to help meet the needs of the 2,500 homeless people with HIV/AIDS in San Francisco and the estimated 13,000 households at risk.

We are also advocating for creating the funding for the first-even supportive employment job subsidy program for people with HIV/AIDS.