Town Rejects AIDS Shelter, Calling Occupants ‘Lepers’ : Health: A fear that the homeless will bring drug addiction is cited. A new ordinance bans such boarding homes but a lawsuit is threatened.

Elsewhere, people with AIDS have been given shelter to cover their heads and food to nourish their bodies.

But not in Waterford.

When plans were announced to turn a former home for priests into a boardinghouse for homeless people with AIDS, Waterford just said no. The mayor and the town’s four trustees voted unanimously to ban most boarding homes.

“I think if these were innocent people it would be different,” said Mayor Frank Falcone, who lives four doors from what has been dubbed the AIDS House.

Roland Messier agrees. Prospective residents of the home “have nothing to look forward to, so they have no morals,” said Messier, owner of a pet store and a resident of this working-class town for half a century.

He says he tries to be broad-minded, although this is a narrow-minded world.

“Really,” he said, “people with AIDS are modern-day lepers. You need to keep them contained.”

The story of Waterford’s AIDS House has horrified AIDS activists elsewhere.

“I think this is one of the most glaring examples of bigotry, prejudice and hatred I’ve seen in recent years,” said Eric Sawyer in New York City, a founding member of ACT UP, a militant AIDS advocacy group.

It began last June, when Support Ministries, a nondenominational organization, started investigating the purchase of a two-story building from the Roman Catholic Holy Cross Brothers.

Support Ministries plans to shelter homeless people with AIDS for three to six months. Staff members would help residents get medical and emotional support from outside services while trying to find permanent housing for them.

The 15-bed home would be one of the nation’s first temporary shelters outside of a major city for people infected with the HIV virus. There are 21 transitional beds in the state, and all are in New York City, said Charles King of Housing Works, which provides housing for AIDS victims.

Nancie Northup Williams, executive director of Support Ministries, said that her group picked Waterford--a mostly white community of 2,500 at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, about 15 miles north of Albany--because it is on a direct bus line that offers easy access to hospitals in the area.

There are at least 90 homeless people with AIDS in the Albany area who need this type of service, Williams said. The house is near Albany Medical Center, the only AIDS treatment facility between Rochester and New York City.

Several Waterford residents say that if these people need to be close to Albany, they should live there.

“We don’t know what we’re getting into,” resident Gerald Michon said. “I wouldn’t want to go and get my hair cut if I had to worry that somebody had their neck nicked before me . . . . I don’t want to die of AIDS.”

But others say AIDS does not bother them as much as the fear that the homeless will bring with them “drug addict friends,” endangering children. Support Ministries said its staff would conduct random drug tests to make sure occupants are not using drugs.

“We’re not talking about a chronically homeless population here. We’re talking about a population of people that become homeless as a result of their disease,” Williams said.

The number of homeless people with AIDS in the United States was estimated at about 30,000 in 1990 and is expected to jump to 75,000 in 1993, according to the Partnership for the Homeless.

Williams said that most follow a similar path. They lose their jobs when they are hospitalized. Then, they lose their health insurance and their housing--either as a result of discrimination or an inability to pay.

The AIDS House’s opponents are unmoved.

“Waterford is too small a village, too close-knit to have something like that. This is our back yard. We’re bringing up kids,” said Mark Bouchard, owner of Pollock’s Meat Market.

On Nov. 28, trustees passed legislation that bans all boarding homes with six or more unrelated people.

But Support Ministries pressed on. On Jan. 4, New York state awarded the group $530,000 for the house and its operations--one of only six state grants specifically targeted for New York’s homeless AIDS population.

Then a counteroffer for the house was made by the Waterford Youth Council, which said it wanted to use the building as a youth center. Williams called it just another attempt to block the AIDS project; on Feb. 26, the sale to Support Ministries went through. The price was $165,000.

Not all the residents in Waterford are against the project.

“I’m ashamed of the people in the community, “ said Beth Magin, a member of the town’s school board. “We’re trying to teach kids about it, and then they look at their parents. It’s an embarrassment to see parents against homeless AIDS people. It’s sad.”