Duncan Osborne, October 16, 2008
A leading provider of services for New York City's homeless queer youth may have to close its Chelsea drop-in location. The city health department told the agency that the $600,000 contract that funds the location will be ended in June of 2009.
"For the homeless LGBT youth of our city, the Ali Forney Center has been the difference between acceptance and rejection, frankly, between life and death," said Carl Siciliano, executive director of the Ali Forney Center (AFC), at an October 14 press conference. "I do not believe that the city would consciously disrespect the LGBT community by turning its back on our most vulnerable kids."
The drop-in location, which opened in 2005, is funded under the federal Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program (HOPWA). The funds are administered by the health department and, after increasing the dollars from $300,000 to $600,000 in 2007, that agency told AFC six weeks ago that the dollars would be eliminated entirely. The $600,00 is the entire budget for the drop-in center.
In 2007, the drop-in location had more than 500 clients, placed 200 in emergency housing, served 10,000 meals, performed 250 HIV tests, and placed 50 HIV-positive clients into care and housing, Siciliano said.
AFC has 12 service or administrative sites in the city, including the drop-in location, and has an annual budget of $3.3 million. The drop-in location is its sole intake site, and all AFC clients first come through there.
Congressman Jerrold L. Nadler, who represents parts of Manhattan's West Side and of Brooklyn, joined Siciliano at the press event and slammed the city for the cut.
"Those of us in Washington who have fought very hard, every year we have fought very hard, to maintain and increase HOPWA funding are not pleased that the city, without any direction from Washington, suddenly takes it upon itself to eliminate an entire category of funding within the HOPWA program, leaving so many vulnerable young people exposed," Nadler said. "It is intolerable that these funding cuts can eliminate a center like the Ali Forney Center."
The city told AFC that it was one of five programs doing "outreach" with HOPWA dollars that were being cut and that the dollars would be used to build housing.
"The use is not a bad use, you want more housing," Nadler said. "This kind of thing is critical, so you shouldn't be diverting this money for that."
Nadler recruited Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Richard Gottfried, state Senator Thomas K. Duane, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer to join him at the press conference.
All four roundly criticized the decision to cut the AFC dollars and they released an October 14 letter they sent to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asking him to reverse the cut.
"This is a tough community to raise private funds for generally," said Duane, who is openly gay and represents Chelsea. "Ali Forney depends on government funding and it's precisely the kind of program that deserves government funding so, believing that Mayor Bloomberg has a heart, I believe we can save this program."
Nadler, Gottfried, and Glick all said that the city, state, and federal governments had been very generous with tax cuts or abatements when the economy was healthy, but when it turned sour, they ask the most vulnerable populations to sacrifice.
"If the real issue is that the city doesn't have the funding for housing, then perhaps they should hold on to some of the money that they give to developers for luxury housing that goes in the form of tax abatements," said Glick, an out lesbian who represents portions of Manhattan centered on the West Village.
"New York State and New York City as well as the federal government have year after year been relentlessly giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our society," said Gottfried, who represents Chelsea. "For any level of government to say 'Well, sorry, it's tough times, we don't have the money,' that doesn't wash."
City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Councilmembers Rosie Mendez and Lewis A. Fidler signed the letter, but did not attend the press conference.
Asked for comment, the health department wrote that it "continues to fund housing for people living with HIV/AIDS and will support more than 330 newly constructed housing units next year." The department said it would fund one outreach contract per borough in the 2010 fiscal year that begins next July.