South Bay Hotels Helping Families of AIDS Patients : Philanthropy: An offer of discount rates signals a new willingness by corporations to get involved.
When Lori Angeleri asked South Bay hotels to accommodate families of AIDS patients at discounted rates, her intentions were simple: to unite AIDS families with their ailing children.
But when four of 22 hotels she asked agreed to make extra rooms available at a cut rate to families of AIDS patients, the Hermosa Beach entrepreneur, working on behalf of a small Redondo Beach church, scored a victory for AIDS fund-raisers trying to enlist corporate support.
“Corporations are a little more conservative in their giving and don’t like to give to controversial causes,” said William Jones, who oversees fund raising for AIDS Project Los Angeles. “I would have been surprised that any of them would have responded affirmatively.”
The new program illustrates what may be a thawing reluctance among corporations to contribute to local AIDS groups and be identified with the issue. Chevron Corp. donated $750 to the church’s program. Hughes Aircraft Co. has offered the use of video equipment to produce a documentary about the church’s AIDS efforts, and Sears, Roebuck & Co. donated a bed. The hotels are offering a range of discounts; one has cut a daily room rate to $35 from $110.
“Three or four years ago it was very difficult to find national corporations willing to support local AIDS service needs,” said B. J. Stiles, president of the National Leadership Coalition on AIDS, a Washington-based national business and labor organization. “They weren’t clear that AIDS was really a pressing or relevant issue in the communities in which they did business.”
Angeleri, a mother of two who operates a desktop publishing business from home, wrote the hotels after watching an Indiana family spend thousands of dollars visiting a son in Redondo Beach who was dying from the incurable disease. Two members of her church, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, also are infected with the virus.
While other programs commonly steer those such as cancer patients and battered women to temporary hotel housing, the Redondo Beach referral program is thought to be the first to serve exclusively the families of AIDS patients.
Winning the hotels’ support marks what Angeleri hopes is a shift toward greater corporate contributions to the church, she said.
“Our emphasis has always been working through private donations. But we’ve outgrown that,” Angeleri said. “I’m sure we will try to ask big companies for more.”
Some critics think that big business isn’t doing enough.
“I don’t see the business community taking a lead in financial support,” said Rand Schrader, chairman of the Los Angles County Commission on AIDS and of a United Way task force on the disease. Several AIDS activists echoed his remarks.
But others saw more reason for optimism. Although total corporate contributions to AIDS groups is an elusive number, some said companies seem to have grown more compassionate about the affliction--with in-house education, employee support and philanthropic activities--as they find more of their employees infected with the virus.
“Direct personal experience has the most profound impact in terms of AIDS-related activities,” said Pat Franks, coordinator of the AIDS Resource Program at the University of California San Francisco. “In high-impact areas, there has been more corporate involvement because they are feeling the attack on the work force. Corporate support follows the virus.”
In the San Francisco area, which ranks third to New York and Los Angeles in number of reported AIDS cases, companies including Pacific Telesis and Levi Strauss & Co. are active AIDS philanthropists, Franks said.
Since 1981, Levi Strauss has donated more than $1.3 million to groups including the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The company has funded AIDS educational films and helped launch partnerships between public and private groups.
Pacific Telesis has targeted recent efforts at AIDS education. This year the company gave $20,000 to the San Francisco AIDS foundation. It also earmarked $50,000 for a videotape and teachers guide for California schoolchildren.
“What we’re seeing in big-impact areas . . . has been a softening of public attitude,” Franks said. “Familiarity hasn’t bred contempt. It has bred compassion.”
Despite greater cooperation from businesses, AIDS still carries a stigma discouraging corporate involvement.
AIDS-group leaders said the lingering anxiety among businesses is a carry-over from the early days of the disease, when ignorance fueled misconceptions. Angeleri fears publishing the names of cooperating hotels would prompt them to withdraw support.
“Not everybody is comfortable with the four little letters that comprise AIDS,” Angeleri said.
But one of the participating hotels, the Redondo Beach Sheraton, apparently hopes the program will generate good will. The company issued a press release announcing its participation. And Allyson Lawler, a Sheraton spokeswoman, said the company might consider expanding the program.
“We’re going to see how successful the program is. If there seems like there’s demand for it, we would like to offer it in our other hotels in L.A.,” she said.
Redondo Beach Sheraton manager Creston Woods said he expects no negative effect on business, although he stressed that the program is for families of AIDS patients, not for patients themselves. His hotel will offer those referred by the church a nightly rate of $35, compared to regular rates starting at $110.
Families have yet to use the fledgling service. And the availability of extra rooms, especially on weekdays, could pose an obstacle.
“Many of the families who visit patients with AIDS think they’re coming for a short time,” said Ruth Hall, resident manager of a San Francisco organization that provides apartments for families of people with AIDS. “But the family often ends up staying considerably longer. At that point, the hotel’s generosity has run short.”
No matter the program’s success, South Bay businesses likely will keep hearing from Angeleri.
“I’m an optimist,” she said. “I’m thrilled with the least hint that the hotels are giving me any kind of hope.”
