AIDS Issues Update: Features:
Oppose Bloomberg’s Draconian Cuts to HIV/AIDS Housing and Services!
Join Palma on the steps of City Hall
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed detrimental and illegal cuts to the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) and other harmful cuts to people living with HIV/AIDS. Join Council member Annabel Palma, Housing Works and New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN) at a press conference 9:30am Monday opposing these cuts! Then speak up at the General Welfare Budget committee hearing in the afternoon.
Mayor Bloomberg has proposed four HASA budget cuts that would be disastrous for people with HIV/AIDS in our city:
- HASA Case Workers: Permanently eliminating 248 case worker positions (a 35 percent reduction), which would make an imperfect system worse, adding to longer delays with housing, food stamps, health insurance, and other government benefits that HASA case workers provide access for. By increasing HASA case ratios, this proposal would also violate local law 49, a federal court order and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which maintains poor people with AIDS need assistance in accessing and maintaining their subsistence benefits, essentially a “ramp” to their benefits. Chief among these accommodations was the concept of “intensive case management,” with initial ratios of approximately 30 clients to one HASA case manager.
- Supportive Housing Case Management: Cutting $1.9 million in city funding (for a total of nearly $3.8 million including the state match) for HASA-contracted supportive housing case management. Although this proposal was defeated last year, it will go into effect in the upcoming budget unless the mayor or City Council restore funding. NYCAHN estimates this would increase the case ratio in supportive housing programs from 1-20 to 1-35.
- Supportive Housing Contracts: Cutting funding by an additional 11 percent for all HIV/AIDS supportive housing contracts. This proposed cut is included in the mayor’s “contingency” budget as a possible consequence of any major reductions in state assistance to the city.
- Food and Nutrition: Cutting funding by 50 percent for the Momentum Project’s nine service sites around the city that serve hot meals to over 1,000 people with HIV/AIDS each year.
Press conference details:
Monday, March 8 from 9:30am – 10:30am
City Hall steps
Take the 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, R, W to City Hall
Afterwards, Monday’s budget hearing will be the first opportunity for the City Council General Welfare Committee to review Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed HASA cuts. At noon, HRA Commissioner Robert Doar will testify and respond to questions about the mayor’s proposed cuts to HASA. Housing Works will be giving testimony at the public comment period of the hearing, beginning at 3:30 pm.
Please join us to send a strong message that our community is determined to save HIV/AIDS supportive housing and HASA services!
Contact Kristin Goodwin at k.goodwin@housingworks.org if you would like more information about the press conference or budget hearings.
Your inside source for in-depth activism news is updated daily by Staff Writer, Julie Turkewitz
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