Motel Is Oasis for Poor AIDS Patients

From behind the front desk of their motel on a notorious stretch of Figueroa Street, owners Kevin Pickett and Cora King could see into the lives of their customers.

The men and women who came looking for cheap rooms in South Los Angeles gave them a close-up view of homelessness, of drug use, of the sickness caused by HIV and AIDS.

One was Dee Dee, an intravenous drug user and grandmother with AIDS. Dee Dee had a bed in a care facility in Montebello but her family lived in South Los Angeles.

“She said, ‘I’m dying. I want to be near my family,’ ” Pickett recalled.

The desperate lives of their customers made the motel owners, both middle class African Americans, take a hard look at the world outside their business. They saw no places for the poor who were infected with HIV.

So Pickett and King closed the Palms Motel in 1996 and, with the help of private and government funding, reopened a year later as a state-licensed residential facility for men who are chronically ill with AIDS or infected with HIV.

Today, the Palms is one small model of a rare kind of AIDS facility, one focused on helping African Americans and Latinos who live far from the centers of gay life, where the largest share of public money for AIDS services has traditionally been spent.

African Americans are dying of AIDS at a rate 10 times that of whites. The disease is the No. 1 killer of black men and women between the ages of 25 and 44, and is mostly contracted from intravenous drug use and unprotected sex.

In Los Angeles County, the AIDS rate among African Americans is nearly twice that of whites.

Yet despite those statistics, there is no AIDS housing in Inglewood, Compton, the Crenshaw district or many other communities with large African American populations.

Forcing people living with HIV in these neighborhoods to travel for help, say health care advocates, limits their chances of getting assistance and increases the risk of spreading the virus. They are a largely voiceless group, without a social or political network like the one created by white homosexuals over the past two decades.

Conventional wisdom among many who provide services to people with HIV and AIDS was that African Americans and Latinos who were infected--particularly gay men--did not want to live among their own ethnic groups.

But the Palms has kept a waiting list since shortly after opening in July 1997--suggesting that more would stay close to home if they could. “People in this community want services just like anybody else,” Pickett said.

The 25-bed, state-licensed facility is evidence of the role such housing can play in keeping people alive in the epidemic’s new context of urban poverty, and why more such facilities are needed.

Residents of the Palms represent the most recent face of the epidemic: marginalized and unlikely to engender public compassion. Many have a history of drug use. Some are ex-cons. Some suffer mental illness. Some are so troubled that other facilities will not accept them.

Experts say to leave men such as these to their fates is to allow the disease a comfortable home--and the solid assurance that it will continue to kill.

Men From the Streets, Prisons

Men arrive at the Palms from the streets and prisons where they were infected, and from families who could not or would not care for them. The goal of the facility is to stabilize their health by getting them off the streets.

Certified nursing assistants, a social worker, substance abuse counselors and a recreation director provide services aimed at getting those who lived as condemned men to believe in life again.

“You can get an apartment,” Pickett tells them. “You can live with respect and dignity. All these things you can attain. We’ll help you and show you how to do it.”

The Palms’ staff helps residents adhere to a medical regimen, taking medicines on schedule and in the right amount, keeping doctors’ appointments.

Most of the residents are African American and Latino, a few are white. Some are heterosexual. Some are gay. The monthly cost of room and board for those who can pay is $350, usually taken from Social Security checks. Others show up with only the clothes on their backs and pay nothing.

This is not the kind of work that Kevin Pickett and Cora King had in mind when they came to Figueroa Street.

Pickett, 41, grew up in South Los Angeles near Florence and Normandie avenues and graduated from Washington High School. Now he owns a bail bond business and real estate. He lives in Manhattan Beach with his wife and two young daughters.

King, who lives in the Baldwin Hills area, also made money in real estate.

Neither really understood what AIDS and drug abuse had done to this community. They bought the motel as an investment in 1992, and then reality imposed itself. “We saw so much need,” King said.

In 1995, Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas had begun appealing to motel owners on Figueroa to consider other uses for their property. By then, King and Pickett had seen enough. They invested their own money to renovate the Palms, and assembled a cabinet of supporters that included Ridley-Thomas, attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. and Magic Johnson, whose HIV infection forced his retirement from the Lakers.

The Palms opened with $76,195 in federal AIDS housing funds administered by the city, and $10,000 each from Home Savings and the Magic Johnson Foundation. The motel owners also received a $400,000 grant from the county, which administers federal Ryan White-Care funds. Before reopening, they had to refurbish and equip the motel to meet earthquake and state care licensing standards.

Carl Ragland was the Palms’ first resident. He is a lean, cocoa-colored man, a crooner who can make his voice sound like Bobby Womack’s, a skillful artist whose sketches hang on the wall of his room.

But Ragland, a 45-year-old grandfather, struggles with drugs.

Seeing the World Through Sober Eyes

Pickett persuaded him to enter a detox program. When Ragland finished, Pickett drove out to pick him up.

“I was mad at you at first,” Ragland said on the ride back, marveling at the world from the passenger seat of Pickett’s car with newly sober eyes.

“But I know you did the right thing for me, man,” he continued. “I’m grateful to you, man, I really am. From the bottom of my heart, brother.”

They pull into the Palms and Ragland is welcomed by the other men. Later, in his room, Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” is playing on the radio. Ragland stops his cleaning long enough to dance a few playful steps. He smiles as he moves, an imaginary partner before him, and for a moment it seems as if all is well.

Months later, Ragland moves out of the Palms. Pickett stays in touch, but he says Ragland continues to struggle for sobriety and the encouragement to fight he found at the Palms.

Ramon, a 24-year-old with AIDS, sits outside the laundry room at the Palms, remembering the early days after he was diagnosed.

“I spent nights just thinking how to do it,” he said, “how to kill myself.”

Ramon was still a teenager when he left Jalisco, Mexico, and came to the United States. He worked in hamburger joints, at a produce company and in restaurants. Then he became sick. Holding a regular job became difficult and sending money home to his family became impossible.

After years of being the one his relatives turned to for help, Ramon became dependent on others--on family members who he said understood little about the illness and the side effects of the medicine. Nor did they understand his life as a gay man.

“They want me to stop being that, but that’s impossible,” he said.

If he returned to Jalisco, he would have no access to the medicine he needs. Besides, his elderly mother does not know about his illness. He is afraid to tell her.

“Sometimes, I just ask God to take her first, then me,” he said, “so she don’t have to go with the pain of losing me.”

Each morning Ramon and other residents visit one of the Palms’ nursing assistants. They record each man’s weight, blood pressure and temperature and hand out envelopes with each man’s morning dose of medicine. Some residents take more than 40 medications a day, including self-injections.

The nursing assistants also listen to complaints about roommates, new aches and moodiness brought on by the medications or the illness.

The Palms has yet to have a resident die. The sickest have outlived doctor’s predictions, and none is bedridden. Men who were told they would live only months are around a year later, with a story to tell about making death wait.

Ramon was hospitalized four times before moving to the Palms.

“Each one of the times they told me they don’t count on me no more; this is it,” he said. “But I say, ‘No.’ Doctors don’t have the right to tell you when to die. God does.”

The fact that there are so few places like the Palms is getting attention on Capitol Hill.

“We all are aware that the face of the epidemic is changing,” said Fred Karnas, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which distributes the funding for AIDS housing.

But the service infrastructure that evolved through the epidemic’s early phases may be slow to adapt to this change, he said. HUD does not tell cities where to spend the money.

Ferd Eggan, the city of Los Angeles’ AIDS coordinator, acknowledged that more needs to be done. “We can’t just let people be out there at the whims of the housing market,” he said. “People have to have a place to live if they are going to survive on this medication.”

The focus of facilities such as the Palms is helping those already infected. But health authorities and advocates say prevention methods also must reach into long neglected African American and Latino communities.

The earliest AIDS prevention campaigns were designed when gay white men were the primary victims of the epidemic. But by the early 1990s, the disease had escalated dramatically among African Americans. Health officials acknowledge that most prevention efforts have failed to adjust.

“In order to stop this disease, we have to do things differently,” said Earl Massey, a recovering cocaine addict who runs a drug recovery program in South Los Angeles. “I’m watching people die and the body count rise and yet no funding is coming.”

Leaders of the Hollywood-based AIDS Project Los Angeles, the city’s largest AIDS organization, are familiar with the criticism.

AIDS Project L.A. official Lee Klosinki said: “The fact is this is a disease of men who have sex with men.” Funds for AIDS are limited, he argued, and realistically must be directed toward this population.

When the epidemic shifted into the African American community, AIDS Project L.A. did begin to change, officials said. “The first thing to note is that a lot of our prevention efforts have worked,” said Executive Director Craig Thompson.

But there is no doubt that prevention programs have worked better among gay white men, said U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

“The gay white community has done so well,” she said. “They have been extraordinary in their prevention and outreach. They are saving people’s lives. They’re moving right along and we can do it too.”

Some efforts have been made.

Money Targeting Blacks and Latinos

At the urging of Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress last year appropriated $156 million for prevention programs in African American and Latino communities--in addition to the $7 billion approved for all AIDS-related programs.

African American ministers in Los Angeles announced a collaborative effort this spring to promote AIDS prevention from the pulpit. A coalition of 60 women’s groups launched a prevention effort earlier this year, marching through shopping malls and distributing HIV information in black and Latino neighborhoods.

“If you create something called a gay center, the only people who are going to come are people who identify as gay,” said Cleo Manago, who heads the AMASSI Center, a cultural agency in Inglewood. “A lot of people in the black community who are bisexual or men who have sex with men don’t identify with the whole gay culture.”

In Los Angeles County, records show that 88% of all people living with AIDS in 1997 were men; 64% contracted the virus through male-to-male sex. But of the African American men diagnosed with AIDS, only about half contracted the virus through homosexual sex, compared to 73% for whites and 60% for Latinos.

In the mornings a big screen TV is usually playing in the dining room of the Palms. A pot of coffee is brewing and the kitchen is filled with the smells of potatoes, toast and chorizo.

Palms Residents Are Not Isolated

On Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day, the cooks prepare feasts--elegant affairs with tablecloth, flowers and the good plates.

The Palms is not an isolated colony. Relatives stop to visit on their way to work. A local Muslim temple drops off copies of its newspapers each week. A church elder comes twice a week to conduct Bible study.

On this morning, the men are seated at tables in the dining room. Drug counselor Ronald Simmons, a former addict with 17 years of sobriety, is addressing the group.

Several of the men admit they have a problem. Some say they do not. Others say they use drugs but have it under control.

“You say you have a small problem and it’s really not that bad,” Simmons says, looking over the faces of the men. “You need to get a grip. It only gets worse and you continue doing things you say you would never do.”

“That’s right,” says one resident.

“I had six dope houses,” he tells them. “I had over 25 employees. I wasn’t no punk. Today . . . my life is helping people.”

After the meeting, he acknowledges the dilemma the men face.

“They still have that mind-set: ‘I’m going to die; why not get high?’ ” said Simmons, executive director of a local drug and alcohol program.

In 1993, Simmons’ brother died of AIDS. He had sickle cell anemia and contracted the virus through tainted blood. “I miss him so much,” Simmons said. “I have to be here.”

On the way to reclaiming their lives, the men at the Palms do not always walk a straight path. Some of the men have gone on to their own apartments, jobs, a new life. A few have ended up behind bars. Some have simply left.

Pickett does not expect magical transformations, but he has hope for the men and for this place.

So he is here almost every day. He plays cards with the guys and matches wits with Luis, the reigning champ of Chinese checkers. He helps shuttle men to appointments. He was with Simon and Larry the night they were saved at a church revival.

“There’s a lot of people out here working to change things,” Pickett said. “It may be a tough battle, but it’s not lost yet. You can’t give up. You can’t walk away.”

Times staff photographer Clarence Williams contributed to this story.