Hospice-Style Shelter for AIDS Victims to Open This Week

A hospice-style shelter, run by AIDS Project Los Angeles and partially financed by the city of West Hollywood, will open this week to provide nursing and custodial care for AIDS patients in the final stages of the disease.

West Hollywood House, a six-bed shelter, is one of only a few similar hospice-style facilities for AIDS patients in the nation and the first in the Los Angeles area to get significant financial backing from local government.

Although they are not licensed hospices, such shelters can provide crucial custodial and nursing care for AIDS patients who would otherwise be forced to spend their last weeks and months in hospital wards.

Disease Affects Many

“The disease has impacted so many people here,” said Lloyd Long, the director of West Hollywood’s Human Services Department. “The city is lucky to have the commitment and the resources to help.”

West Hollywood City Councilman Stephen Schulte said the shelter will be most beneficial to AIDS patients threatened with homelessness after depleting their financial resources.

“It’s been very well established that there is an increasing number of persons with AIDS who have no place to go,” Schulte said. “The city was interested in making a contribution.”

Patients are expected to arrive by the end of the week, said Frank Paradise, the AIDS Project’s associate director of client services. “We’re putting the finishing touches on the house now and we’ll be open by the weekend,” he said.

City to Pay $60,000

West Hollywood, which has spent nearly $1 million on AIDS programs since its incorporation in November, 1984, has agreed to finance $60,000 of the shelter’s first-year budget of $160,000. The financing must be renewed each year, but city officials expect to continue their backing of the project.

The shelter is housed in a newly renovated single-story dwelling in Hollywood, just east of West Hollywood’s city limits. Originally, West Hollywood officials tried to find a suitable location within the city but were forced to go with the Hollywood site because of a shortage of inexpensive single-family homes in West Hollywood.

Over the last four years, the Hollywood house has been used as a residence by the AIDS Project, first as a temporary dwelling for AIDS patients, then as a permanent shelter. Last year, it began its latest evolution. Before it was closed briefly a month ago, 14 patients had spent their final weeks there.

According to Paradise, the AIDS Project’s recent decision to open Our House, a three-story Victorian house in the Pico-Union area, as a temporary residence for AIDS patients allowed the organization to commit to using the Hollywood home as a hospice-style shelter.

Preferable Setting

Although the patients who will stay in the shelter will come from West Hollywood and from hospitals and homes throughout Los Angeles County, West Hollywood city officials said they expect no difficulty finding AIDS patients in their area who would prefer living in the shelter to staying in a hospital.

“We have more than 150 patients who are receiving some kind of aid from the city already,” said Daphne Dennis, a West Hollywood social service specialist who will work with the house. “I would think that almost all of them would prefer to be in a home setting to a hospital bed.”

Over the last few years, there have been at least half a dozen serious efforts to launch AIDS hospices or similar facilities in the Los Angeles area. More than a year and a half ago, Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony announced plans to build a hospice for AIDS patients. And earlier this year, Christopher Street West, a local homosexual activist group, announced similar plans. Both efforts have been stalled by financial and government licensing considerations.