Pennsylvania: Calcutta House Offers Safe Haven

Founded in 1987 as a place where people with AIDS could spend their last days with dignity, Calcutta House today provides housing and highly supportive medical and psychosocial care for AIDS patients who are homeless or at risk of becoming so.

"We now have the scientific data from a number of research projects that prove the link between homelessness and HIV, homelessness and the further transmission of HIV, and homelessness and the lack of adequate health care that could assist individuals who are HIV-positive," said Matthew Teter, the organization's executive director. "We know now that individuals who are inadequately housed are three to 16 times more likely to infect another person. We also know that people who are inadequately housed are more likely to engage in risky behaviors that would be associated with HIV transmission."

AIDS housing experts estimate that people in 500,000 households affected by HIV/AIDS will need some form of housing assistance over their lifetime. To meet that need, the National Alps Housing Coalition is calling for $140 million in additional funding for the federal Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program. That would help boost assistance from the current 70,000 households to 110,000.

"When you look at what an individual needs to do when they're living in poverty -- the fact that on a daily basis they have to decide where they are going to find shelter, where they are going to eat, how they are going to take care of their children -- those problems are always going to be first priority, so that pushes their health care to the bottom of the list," Teter said.

Over 40 people are on the waiting list for Calcutta House. The problem, said Teter, is that many residents are ready to leave but have no place to go. Calcutta House plans to expand by 2010, with the first phase of an independent housing facility having 20 units.

Back to other news for May 2009