AIDS Hospice Fights ‘Misinformation,’ Ruling on Zoning

Hughes House, the Hollywood AIDS hospice that is fighting a recent city zoning decision, is waging another battle--this one, hospice officials say, against neighbors who have distributed “misinformation,” including literature that claims that AIDS can be contracted through mosquito bites and sneezes and that homosexual men are distorting the truth about the disease.

“Frankly, we didn’t expect people to place much credibility in those kinds of statements, but it is clear that they are having an impact somewhere,” said Ron Wolff, executive director of Hospice Los Angeles/Long Beach, the agency that runs Hughes House. “Some neighbors are relying on this misinformation in supporting the effort to close down Hughes House.”

Several neighbors said they are not attempting to spread fear of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and their complaints are confined to the zoning issue. Segments of the controversial literature have been blown out of proportion, said the neighborhood leader who circulated it.

A city zoning administrator, deciding in favor of the neighbors, last month ruled that Hughes House--Los Angeles’ only AIDS hospice--violates the city zoning code. If the decision is upheld on appeal, Hughes House could be forced to shut down.

Changing Tactics

So hospice supporters, who say they wanted to lead a “low-profile life,” are changing their tactics and going public.

Wednesday, several dozen members of a group called Friends of Hughes House demonstrated on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to protest the zoning decision and deliver a sheaf of about 30 letters to Mayor Tom Bradley in support of the hospice.

With about 15 reporters and cameramen in tow, the group’s leader, Marc Berman, marched into the mayor’s office and asked to see Bradley, who was not in. Berman did get to see Deputy Mayor Grace Davis, who accepted the letters. Berman asked that the mayor “take a leadership position,” and Davis replied that Bradley--who has not publicly stated his position on the issue--”has been on top of this from the very beginning.”

In addition to staging the protest, Friends of Hughes House has distributed a press packet charging a local neighborhood group with distributing “inaccurate and misleading information” about Hughes House and the spread of AIDS. In conjunction with Hospice Los Angeles/Long Beach, the group has also distributed a rebuttal of the zoning decision.

Hospice officials say neighbors provided the city with “false information” about the type of care administered at Hughes House, and that influenced the zoning administrator. Chief Zoning Administrator Franklin P. Eberhard likened the facility to a hospital, and therefore ruled it illegal in the single-family neighborhood.

Claims Harassment

In response, Erika Scarano, president of the Neighborhood Action Group (NAG), said she and her organization have been misquoted, slandered and verbally harassed by Hughes House supporters.

Scarano said she has been made a target because she brought the literature containing the controversial statements about the spread of AIDS to one of her group’s meetings. But she said she has never espoused such views and simply made “educational and informational” pamphlets available to whoever wanted to pick one up.

“They call NAG ‘Nazi Aryan Group’ and ‘Neighbors Against Gays,’ ” Scarano said. “We’ve worked with the gay organizations for seven years, and we have never tolerated any kind of prejudice. This is the first time I have encountered a group that is bent on destroying my reputation.”

The charges on both sides mark an escalation of a battle that has divided the Hollywood neighborhood called Spaulding Square, an eight-block section of single-family houses between Orange Grove and Spaulding avenues, bounded on the north by Sunset Boulevard and on the south by Fountain Avenue.

In the middle lies Hughes House, which has operated out of a rented home at 1308 N. Ogden Ave. for the past five months. The hospice accommodates up to five residents, providing housing for AIDS victims in their dying days.

Neighborhood groups, including NAG and the Spaulding Square Coalition--which was founded to fight the hospice--say Hughes House conforms neither to the city zoning code nor to the single-family residential character of their community. They have been diligent in their opposition; to record activity outside the hospice, coalition members have kept written logs and taken photographs that were submitted to the zoning administrator.

Lillian Roberts, who filed the initial zoning appeal with her husband, Ralph, said the neighbors are trying to stick to the zoning issue. “We are all very caring and sorry about all of this, but R-1 (the neighborhood’s single-family zoning designation) is the thing that prevents them from being there.”

But Hughes House and its supporters say the dispute runs deeper than zoning.

“I think the zoning issue is a smoke screen for a lot of prejudice,” said Berman, president of Friends of Hughes House. He said he was particularly disturbed by one photograph taken by neighbors, showing a man carrying a hospice resident between the house and a car. That resident has since died.

“I knew him,” Berman said. “He was a 26-year-old kid named Brian, and he was going home to his friend’s house for the weekend. The fact that somebody across the street could see that and their first impulse is to grab a camera really made me sick.”

Equipment Delivery

Other photographs showed medical supply trucks in the Hughes House driveway. Hospice officials say the zoning administrator may have relied on those photographs, along with statements by neighbors that oxygen tanks and intravenous equipment are used at Hughes House, to rule the hospice illegal. A lawyer for the hospice said such equipment has never been used there, and that hospital beds are the only equipment that has been delivered.

The hard feelings have been intensified by the document entitled “Problems Associated With AIDS” that Scarano brought to the April 12 NAG meeting, which was attended by about 200. Scarano said the meeting’s agenda included, but was not limited to, discussion of the hospice, and said the document was not publicly discussed. She said she left copies in a stack for guests to pick up and mailed some to people she knows.

The document, a seven-page report that was delivered by a British scientist to England’s House of Commons last spring, said, among other things, that “coughing and sneezing in public, and being bitten by insects, will infect many people as millions of persons interact with the non-infected, and saturation of the entire British population becomes unstoppable.”

Such information has been widely discredited by doctors and scientists. A recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General’s office said AIDS cannot be contracted through casual contact or insect bites but is generally transmitted through sexual activity or the sharing of contaminated needles by drug users.

The British scientist also charged that homosexual men have “been the most determined and effective in distorting the truth about AIDS” through positions they hold in key professions, such as science, medicine and journalism.

“Many do not wish to face reality because of guilt, most do not wish to change their ways, and a few, seeing death and destruction facing themselves and their friends, are dedicated to destroying the rest of society with them,” the report said.

Scarano said she brought the report, along with another pamphlet about condoms and AIDS that she obtained from an anti-abortion group based in Washington, D.C., to the meeting because it contained “useful information.” She said Hughes House officials have blown small segments of the documents out of proportion, and said she has stated publicly that she has compassion for the hospice residents.

“Our only concern, and I have to keep underlining this, is that this was a violation of residential zoning laws,” Scarano said. “All of the other accusations (of spreading misinformation) are totally false. They are meant to cloud the issue, to distract the community from the real issue, which is that Hughes House is illegal.”

Not Afraid

Another resident, who asked to remain unnamed, said she read the report Scarano brought to the NAG meeting and does not think neighbors are especially afraid of contracting AIDS.

Rather, she said, people just don’t want to be frequently confronted by death.

“We all feel so sad about the whole thing and so sorry for these fellows, but it’s very difficult,” the woman said. “There have been over 17 to die there (since) the first of the year, and four over Easter weekend alone. People wake up hoping to have a happy Easter, and there’s this sadness in our neighborhood. . . . It’s like living in the shadow of death, always.”

Actually, said Wolff, the hospice executive director, there have been 17 residents in the house, 11 or 12 of whom have died. He said two died over a five-day period that included Easter.