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KEITH CYLAR, AIDS ACTIVIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF HOUSING WORKS, DEAD AT 45
Keith Cylar, one of the leaders of the modern AIDS activist movement and a founder and co-president of the nation’s largest community-based AIDS service provider, Housing Works, Inc., died on March 5. He was 45 years old.
Keith had lived with HIV for over 20 years and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1989. In the last year, Mr. Cylar developed cardiomyopathy, a serious enlargement of the heart. He died in his sleep early Monday morning of cardioarrhythmia.
After organizing the Housing Committee of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), the groundbreaking AIDS activist organization, Keith founded Housing Works with his partner Charles King and lawyer Virginia Shubert at a time when the medical and social services system were failing to respond to twin crises of homelessness and HIV/AIDS.
At the time, said Mr. Cylar recalled, “I couldn’t get people out of the hospital because they didn’t have a place to live…New York City literally had hospital gridlock and that was when they were keeping people out on hospital gurneys in the hallways. That was when people were not being fed, bathed, or touched. It was horrendous. You can’t imagine what it was like to be black, gay, a drug user, or transgender and dying from AIDS.”
Keith led his colleagues in vigorous advocacy to demand city, state and federal funding for housing and services, establishing their agency as a leader in both direct service provision and advocacy. And he led dozens of direct action protests, engaging in civil disobedience and getting arrested to dramatize the life-and-death needs of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who were dying from HIV/AIDS.
“There was this incredible sense of anger and fury and determination that we were not going to die,” said Mr. Cylar in a 2003 recollection. “And if we were going to die, then we were going to go down fighting. It's a weird place that gets you to not care whether you had enough sleep or if you were going to pay your taxes. A lot of things just weren't important. What was important was making sure you were at the demo. Making sure that we were going to stop this government, changing the way this epidemic was killing us. Life could not just go on as usual as long as we were suffering, as long as our friends, our lovers, and our sisters, our brothers were dying.”
Mr. Cylar played a leading role in the development of federal legislation to create and fund HIV/AIDS service programs, including the Ryan White CARE Act, Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, and HIV-related substance abuse and mental health services. He and his organization also led groundbreaking advances in state and local HIV/AIDS policies and funding. His work on behalf of his community has been widely acknowledged both by federal officials and colleagues in the field.
Sandra Thurman, who served as ‘AIDS Czar’ and Director of the National Office of AIDS Policy under President Bill Clinton, said Tuesday that “as a social worker, an activist and an advocate, Keith brought a passion and brilliance to his work that is unparalleled in the AIDS community. His willingness to vigorously challenge those with whom he did not agree was matched only by his willingness to stay at the table until the needs of those who had no seat at the table had been heard.”
Dennis DeLeon, founder of the Latino Commission on AIDS, said Tuesday, “He was loud when others remained silent. He could shame any bureaucrat into action, by any means necessary. He put his body in harm’s way on countless occasions, spending innumerable hours behind bars to try to wake people up to injustice. He was a national figure on the AIDS scene, promoting the successful model of client empowerment and entrepreneurship to address social ills. He consoled the families of countless friends who were clients who had lost loved ones.”
Eric Sawyer, a fellow ACT-UP member, said that “Keith was able to kick back with a homeless person on a street corner, dance with a member of the Congress, break bread with a former Mayor, sip wine with a Cabinet Member and debate a member of the First Family with equal ease. He could also hold the hand of the dying and help them make peace with the Universe.”
In addition to heralding the rights of homeless New Yorkers with HIV, Mr. Cylar was a devoted promoter of the harm reduction approach to drug management, which helps users set small achievable goals toward the end of managing their drug use and improving their own quality of life while focusing on decreasing the risk associated with drug use. Mr. Cylar was a board member of the National Harm Reduction Coalition and helped ensure that, from the beginning, Housing Works would not turn away anyone in need of service simply because they were still using drugs (in marked contrast to policies in place at many other AIDS and social service organizations).
Although he was trained as a clinical social worker and oversaw client services at Housing Works, Mr. Cylar also distinguished himself as an entrepreneur. Under the stewardship of Mr. Cylar and his partner Charles King, Housing Works became a model of social entrepreneurship, establishing thrift stores, a used book café, food service and catering operations and other social ventures that provided jobs for clients and generated millions of dollars in unrestricted support for the organization.
Most recently, Mr. Cylar led Housing Works to become more involved in research. Mr. Cylar performed research for the Rand Corporation on its HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), the first major research effort to collect information on a nationally representative sample of people in care for HIV infection, and was Co-Principal Investigator on a joint project with the National Development Research Institute (NDRI) and Beth Israel Medical Center to increase access to AIDS clinical trials for people of color.
A native of Virginia, Mr. Cylar was born on April 14, 1958. He received a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boston University in 1982 and a Masters degree in social work from Columbia University.
He is survived by his long-time partner, Charles King, co-founder and co-president of Housing Works; his parents Anna E. Patton of Cleveland Ohio, and Marva and Harry Langester, of Portsmouth Virginia; his great-aunt Esther Dudley; and the thousands of Housing Works clients to whom he dedicated his life, as well as countless others whose lives he enriched.
Mr. Cylar hoped that he would be remembered through donations to Housing Works, and we have established a Keith Cylar Fund in his memory. Donations may be sent to 320 W. 13th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012. Credit card donations are also accepted at www.housingworks.org.
MEMORIAL SERVICE DETAILS
We thank you all for the overwhelming and heartfelt support and love you have shown to Keith’s memory and to the Housing Works community.
The wake will be held on Monday, April 12th from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM at the Church of the Intercession at 550 West 155th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, including a service from 7 to 8 PM.
The funeral will be held on Tuesday, April 13th at 12 Noon at the Church of the Intercession at 550 West 155th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
Following the funeral service, there will be a motorcade (including buses for those without vehicles) downtown and a procession to the Housing Works residence at 9th Street and Avenue D for internment of Keith’s ashes in the garden and a reception.
From 6:30 PM- 10:00 PM, Housing Works is -- as per Keith's insistence! -- hosting a party for Keith at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues.
For more information concerning these arrangements, please contact terri smith-caronia at 212-966-0466, ext. 1296 or at smith-caronia@housingworksorg
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