Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

Restoring city budget cuts

Housing Works is working with other advocates to restore a $6 million slash to AIDS prevention, education, outreach and housing

Despite a budget surplus, in June 2008 Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council slashed $6 million from the city’s AIDS services. Funding for syringe exchange was slashed, money for HIV/AIDS counseling programs and a pilot program set up last year to get HIV-positive people out of shelters and into stable housing was completely eliminated.

Housing Works is working with a wide coalition to demand our elected officials restore these cuts. Housing Works’ clients have joined the newly formed AIDS Budget Action Coalition (ABAC), a group of people with AIDS demanding accountability from elected officials. The group has mobilized again against potential city and state budget cuts.

To call attention to the devastating toll the budget cuts have had on people living with HIV and AIDS, Housing Works disinvited the Mayor, his staff and all members of City Council who endorsed the budget cuts to Housing Works World AIDS Day 2008 ceremony at City Hall Park. As Housing Works President and CEO Charles King wrote in a letter to the Gay City News and El Diario that asked, “How can City Council members read names on World AIDS Day when the names of those who won’t have clean syringes in the city will now grow? How can the Mayor provide a bagel breakfast on World AIDS Day to the leaders of AIDS service organizations, when more than $2 million dollars in HIV outreach to get people into services has been eliminated?”