Contact: Jennifer Flynn (917) 517-5202
For Immediate Release: June 26, 2004
CITY COUNCIL FINDS EMERGENCY HOUSING FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE LIVING WITH AIDS INADEQUATE, UNSAFE AND POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL
Speaker Releases Investigative Report on NYC HIV/AIDS Services Administration Emergency Housing System
What: City Council Investigative Report Release on NYC HASA Emergency housing for homeless people living with AIDS
Where: City Hall, Red Room
When: Sunday, June 27, 2004
10:15 a.m.
Who: Speaker Gifford Miller, Oversight & Investigations Chair Eric Gioia, Health Committee Chair Christine Quinn & General Welfare Committee Chair Bill DeBlasio. NYC AIDS Housing Network will have copies of our previous report detailing conditions in the hotels and rooming houses and have current tenants on-hand for interviews.
Background:
New York, NY: New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Oversight & Investigations Chair Eric Gioia, Health Committee Chair, Councilmember Christine Quinn & General Welfare Committee Chair Bill DeBlasio are releasing a report documenting medically inappropriate conditions in rooming houses and commercial single room occupancy hotels that the City uses to provide legally mandated emergency housing to homeless people living with AIDS.
The NYC AIDS Housing Network has been exposing and documenting the City’s use of illegal rooming houses and the City’s waste of tax payer money on costly hotel rooms that provide dangerous and life threatening conditions to the 3,044 homeless people living with AIDS who use the emergency housing system every single night.
“I’ve seen people living with AIDS trying to survive in houses without heat and hot water for over 5 months. Their welfare workers know about the conditions, but they refuse to move them and they refuse to withhold the City’s portion of the rent.”, said Shirlene Cooper, NYCAHN community organizer.
The NYC AIDS Housing Network is a membership organization comprised and led by low-income people living with HIV/AIDS working in a unique coalition with nonprofit housing providers and AIDS service organizations. NYCAHN members living in the hotels and rooming houses will be at the press conference to provide first hand accounts backing up the findings in the City Council report.
NYCAHN’s own report can be found at http://www.nycahn.org/documents/HASAreportpdf.pdf