AIDS Program Gets $1-Million Grant

A West Hollywood housing organization that manages low-income housing for people living with AIDS will be able to quadruple its social services liaison program because of a grant of more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, directors said.

The grant, awarded to a consortium of three nonprofit Los Angeles housing corporations, will allow the group to expand a program that provides a trained staff person to advocate for HIV-positive residents and links them to social service agencies. Two new staff members will be hired when the grant funds become available next week.

“It’s typical for a low-income person with HIV to be relatively healthy, then go through a period of economic, medical or psychological crisis as they get ill or their ability to live on $600 a month lessens,” said Paul Zimmerman, executive director of the West Hollywood Community Housing Corp., the lead agency in the consortium. “Very often, low-income people need the support of various social services that can provide them with hot meals, housekeeping or home nursing.”

Currently, a resident services coordinator regularly visits tenants in 45 households to help them find appropriate social services and plan for the future. The HUD grant will expand the service to 230 households and five new buildings around Los Angeles by 1998, and provide funds to assess the program for possible replication nationwide.

Developing this model of AIDS housing services was a natural step to take after observing the needs of the low-income residents, Zimmerman said.

“We said to ourselves that if we can bring the support we know is out there already and link the social services to the tenants who are struggling, in very simple ways we can save their housing,” he said.

Michael Dwiggins, who has lived for four years in a complex managed by the West Hollywood housing corporation, said getting his apartment was a godsend.

“The reality is that I could be one paycheck away from homelessness,” said Dwiggins, 47, who has been on disability since he lost his job in 1990 after finding out he had HIV. “The only real advantage I have is that I live in a building specifically for people like me.”