City Must Pay AIDS Patients for Nights Without Shelter

A state judge has found New York City in contempt of a court order to immediately house homeless people with AIDS. Justice Emily Jane Goodman of State Supreme Court ordered the city to pay 17 sick people $250 for each night spent without immediate and medically appropriate shelter.

The 1999 court order required that the Division of AIDS Services and Income Support secure room with refrigerators by midnight on the day a homeless person with AIDS or HIV seeks it. Goodman's ruling this week, her second on the case, comes after a federal judge in Brooklyn last fall ordered the city division placed under federal oversight for depriving thousands of its clients adequate food, shelter, and medical care.

In Tuesday's ruling, Goodman said 17 plaintiffs were "left on the streets, in the rain, or in freezing cold." She said they were turned away by hotels while others were given wrong addresses for rooms or sent to homeless shelters medically unprepared to care for them.

New York City Corporate Counsel Michael D. Hess described Goodman as "philosophically biased against the city." "A lot of these problems are isolated cases," he said. "The city did everything it could," he added. The city denied violating the rights of 12 of the plaintiffs and said it planned to appeal the decision.

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