UNITY of Greater New Orleans awarded $800K to support those with HIV/AIDS
23rd January 2023 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
A New Orleans organization supporting people with HIV has received one of more than $13 million in grants from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development; the funds are earmarked for housing support services and other types of assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS.
The HUD grant program, tabbed the Housing Opportunities with People with AIDS (HOPWA), awarded UNITY of Greater New Orleans grant money totaling more than $834,000, according to a HUD release from December 2022. The HOPWA program awards financial support in the form of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), which provides tenant-based rental assistance, supportive services and other housing activities to people with HIV/AIDS.
UNITY has received HOPWA grant funding for more than 20 years, and the current round of funding announced last month will allow UNITY to continue to press forward with its mission of providing needed help to those in the HIV/AIDS community in both Orleans and Jefferson parishes.
“[The HOPWA funding] has been and continues to be critical to ensuring that people living with HIV in our community are able to survive and thrive by ensuring they have decent, safe and affordable housing with services,” said Martha J. Kegel, executive director of UNITY for Greater New Orleans.
Kegel said the ability of those with HIV/AIDS to secure a home often affects the rest of their lives, making housing a crucial need to fill.
“Housing truly is a very important component of health care,” Kegel said. “Without stable housing, people cannot store and take their medications properly and cannot maintain a good diet. Without stable housing, people cannot get a good night’s sleep, which is so important to maintaining health. Without stable housing, people cannot focus on all the things that they need to do to take care of themselves.”
Kegel added that research indicates that homelessness often causes early mortality, a development that particularly impacts people with health issues, including those living with HIV/AIDS. As a result, she said it “is vital that all people, and especially people with disabilities and potentially life-threatening conditions, have decent, safe and affordable housing.”
A spokesperson for HUD said that the HOPWA funding is the only federal program dedicated to supporting low-income people with HIV with their housing needs. The spokesperson said that “[t]he ultimate goal of all HOPWA funded activities is to assist people with HIV and their families to obtain or maintain stable, permanent housing.”
“It’s really challenging to think about keeping medical appointments or taking medicine if you don’t know where you are sleeping that night, or if you’re worried about paying for rent,” the spokesperson added. “All of the eligible HOPWA activities have a focus on housing stability, with the ultimate goal of improved health outcomes for clients.”
The HUD representative also noted that people of color are disproportionately impacted by HIV, with the Center for Disease Control’s national HIV surveillance system finding that Black/African Americans compose 12 percent of the American general population but make up 41 percent of new HIV infections. In addition, Latinx people compose 17 percent of the U.S. population but represent 29 percent of HIV infections.
Correspondingly, the demography of HOPWA clients show similar ethnic patterns, with Black/African Americans making up more than 54 percent and Latinxs comprising 19 percent of clients served in fiscal year 2021.
The spokesperson added that in UNITY of Greater New Orleans’ last reporting year, the organization reported that more than 61 percent of clients served with their HOPWA grant were Black/African American.
The announcement of the HOPWA grants came less than two weeks after World AIDS Day, which is on Dec. 1 each year.
This article originally published in the January 23, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
