AIDS Group Plans Move Into Smaller Headquarters

Five years after moving into a multimillion-dollar Hollywood building that signaled its arrival as a major charitable institution, AIDS Project Los Angeles plans to sell its headquarters and spread out its operations.

In part an acknowledgment that the former television studio is simply too large and expensive for the organization’s current tastes and needs, the plan to sell is also an indication of the shifting terrain in the AIDS community.

The disease has spread beyond the gay white males who built the agency. Private donations, which make up the bulk of APLA’s budget, have declined somewhat. And the success of new AIDS drugs has altered the focus of AIDS services.

“You can’t run an AIDS organization the way you did in the early part of the decade,” said APLA board member Howard Bragman.

By moving into smaller headquarters and setting up satellite offices, APLA officials say they hope to save $500,000 annually and become more accessible to clients who live outside the Hollywood area.

They also hope to capitalize on the budding revival of the Hollywood real estate market by asking $14 million for a building they bought and renovated for $10 million.

These are uncertain times for APLA and other AIDS agencies striving to adjust to the changing nature of AIDS in America.

For much of their existence, they helped clients through their final years, trying to make death as comfortable as possible. Now, with new AIDS drugs returning many to health, organizations have the much different task of helping people live.

“We’ve seen a tremendous drop in the death rate in Southern California,” said APLA executive director Craig E. Thompson. “What that means is people need different services than when we were in a death and dying model for folks.”

Diminished Visibility

At the same time, agencies say it is harder to raise money. The emergence of life-prolonging drugs in the past couple of years has somewhat diminished the sense of urgency associated with AIDS. There is more fund-raising competition from other causes, such as breast cancer, and longtime benefactors are growing tired of writing checks.

“AIDS is no longer in people’s faces” the way it once was, said Greg Lugliana, communications director of New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the nation’s largest AIDS service organization.

A decline in private donations, which make up 80% of his agency’s budget, has forced it to cut annual spending by $6 million, to $22 million.

At APLA, the nation’s second-largest AIDS agency, the budget is down to $15.8 million from a high of $20.5 million in 1996.

It is still bigger than when APLA moved into the building in 1993. The staff of 185 and core client base of 5,200 are also larger.

APLA officials nonetheless say the 127,000-square-foot building has considerably more space than the agency needs. Originally, APLA intended to rent offices to other AIDS groups. But the smaller organizations, many of which have historically been wary of APLA, never moved in.

Moreover, Thompson said, clients no longer visit the building as regularly. Much of the counseling is done over the phone, and staff members offer seminars at other locations.

The central district of Hollywood and environs continue to report more new AIDS cases than other parts of Los Angeles County. But more than half of APLA’s clients now live outside the area, sparking plans to open a network of sites.

The disease is “sort of filling in the spaces between local epicenters of the epidemic,” said Peter Kerndt, director of the HIV epidemiology program for the county Department of Health Services. “You just see it spread farther and farther into these different geographic areas.”

AIDS in Los Angeles County remains predominantly a disease of gay men, but it has for years been moving into minority communities. African Americans accounted for a quarter of new AIDS cases in the county last year, and Latinos accounted for 38%.

That has affected the donor base of agencies like APLA. The middle-class and upper-middle-class white gay men who have been a mainstay of these organizations are no longer as deeply impacted by the disease as they were in the early years of the epidemic.

Traditional supporters “don’t have the same personal involvement and hence commitment on a sustained, ongoing basis,” Kerndt said. “There’s donor fatigue everywhere.”

Sue Scott, executive director at AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, noted that AIDS walks nationwide are bringing in less money.

“You look at the experience of all of us at our special events and we’re all challenged. . . . Your traditional [fund-raisers] are either flat or declining.”

Not that funds are drying up. APLA’s AIDS walk, one of its biggest money-makers, made less this year than at its peak, but it still raised $2.6 million. The California AIDS Ride, a major fund-raiser for HIV medical services at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, continues to be successful.

Living With AIDS

The fund-raising squeeze comes at a time when client loads are growing because people are living longer with HIV. “Our client base is larger and larger and we’re glad for that,” Scott said. “But it also stretches our resources to the limit.”

APLA’s move into the old ABC studio building on Vine Street was heavy with symbolism both welcome and unwelcome in the AIDS community.

On one hand, it represented the tremendous growth and success of an organization that had started as a volunteer hotline.

Ostracized and devastated by AIDS in the early 1980s, gay men had rallied and taken care of their own. The studio building, funded with tax-free government bonds and a $1-million gift from entertainment mogul David Geffen, offered a spacious refuge where people with AIDS could get help with everything from groceries to estate planning.

But to some, the mammoth headquarters conveyed a negative message. In their view, APLA had become a big, corporate spendthrift, foolishly pouring money into a huge building that wasn’t really needed.

For that camp, the sight of a “For Sale” sign will undoubtedly be welcome.