Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

How can the AIDS community mobilize with one voice during Barack Obama’s transition from President-elect to President? This was the overarching question at the Federal AIDS Policy Partnership (FAPP) day-long transition meeting Wednesday.

“This is a happy problem,” said Julie Davids, Senior Policy Consultant for the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project.

More than 70 AIDS advocates from dozens of organizations gathered in Washington, D.C. for the FAPP confab; there optimism about the incoming administration was clear. At one point, participants shouted out names of transition members in an effort to find out who in the room had access to the D.C.‘s new power brokers.

Advocates were also pumped about Tom Daschle’s appointment as HHS Secretary (see Daschle’s AIDS Record), and the potential for Rep. Henry Waxman to take over the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee in House.

“We need to have a sense of urgency and these folks will react the same way,” said Housing Works President and CEO Charles King.

Streamlining the transition

The Update wasn’t allowed to attend the closed-door meeting, but participants said that uniting the often-fractious AIDS community was a chief objective.

Although the AIDS advocates in attendance largely shared the same goals, personalities and strategy debates could have prohibited cohesiveness. This was illustrated by the multiple transition documents presented at the meeting. Although each document puts its own spin on things, the documents overlap with little disagreement. Almost all highlight access to care, treatment and prevention.

“There are a lot of common themes,” said Matt Lesieur, a member of FAPP’s convening body.

Tom Goodwin and Lance Toma, who worked on the Clinton transition, advised the participants to combine their documents into one clear demand, since the Obama team likely has thousands of such transition documents sent to their headquarters.

The FAPP Convening Body is going to attempt to summarize the documents presented this week—the National AIDS Strategy, 100 Days Document-AIDS in America, Fighting HIV/AIDS in Communities of Color, Global AIDS Transition Document, HIV Civil Rights Transition Document, HIV Civil Rights Transition Document, Stand Against AIDS, and National Latin Strategy—into five or 10 main points. It wasn’t decided what those points would be.

“It’s hard because we’ve gotten to the stage in AIDS policy where there’s a million little things we need to do and it’s hard to summarize the five big-ticket issues,” said New York City AIDS Housing Network Co-Executive Director Sean Barry.

A debate flared about whether global AIDS should be included in the plan or if there should be two separate documents. Global advocates stated that the two epidemics are interlinked, while AIDS Action’s Ronald Johnson said that the domestic epidemic has been raging for too long and needs to be emphasized. No decision was made.

Who is at the table?

Another issue presented was who should be creating the FAPP transition document. Black gay men and HIV-positive women expressed concern that their voices wouldn’t be heard. FAPP co-chair Paul Kawata said the FAPP Convening Body will make its best effort to include a diversity voices as they write the FAPP transition document.

“At one point it was going to deteriorate into a ‘My group’s not at the table process,’ “ Lesieur said.

“Clearly not everyone’s represented, but you’re opening up a can of worms,” said Larry Bryant, Housing Works director of national organizing. Johnson made the plea that everyone needs to trust FAPP, but Bryant noted, “No one trusts anyone.”

FAPP, which was formed during the Bush administration as a loose association of groups, is attempting to become more cohesive. “FAPP is more of a gathering place, and it’s time for FAPP to be an effective policy coalition,” said Davids.

As a first step, FAPP is making a webpage www.fappaids.org (not yet up and running), transition documents, sign-on letters, convening group members, a meeting schedule and convening groups.