Honorable Andre Dickens
Mayor of the City of Atlanta
&
Esteemed City Council Members
from the City of Atlanta
Dear Mayor and Council Members,
Congratulations on nearing your first 100 days in office. Thank you for your diligent efforts in working to address the many issues impacting communities in Atlanta. We wish you continued success in what remains of your terms in office. This letter serves as a notice and opportunity for Mayor Dickens and the City Council to work together to improve the lives of your constituents living with HIV. We ask that Mayor Dickens and the City Council address the four points in this letter.
First, when you took office, there was a crisis within the City of Atlanta, the ongoing crisis within the Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS (HOPWA) federal program. Recently, the Commissioner of the City of Atlanta’s Department of Grants and Community Development, Deborah Lonon, has implemented a new monitoring-based reimbursement system that promises to streamline and rectify the long-standing issue of reimbursement payments to HOPWA service providers in Atlanta.
The community needs to be made aware of the progress of this new system, and the city needs to be fully transparent. Answers must be made available to questions such as “Will reports be publicly available? When will they be available? What percentage of organizations have been reimbursed, and what timeframe do the payments represent?” These answers should be expressed as a numerator, denominator, and percentage. In the past four months, two HOPWA providers in Atlanta have closed their doors to providing HOPWA services. They have ended their contracts with the city. We encourage you to do all you can to prevent more providers from being lost.
Second, reports have shown that between 150 to 1,400 individuals and families are currently on a waiting list seeking HOPWA services. The disparity between both numbers is so large should be alarming to everyone. We need to know precisely how many people are on the HOPWA waiting list and the status of their services. As we learned in early March, Congress passed the FY22 budget, funding HOPWA at $450 million and falling deeply below funding the needs of persons living with HIV in Atlanta, which will become the hardest hit city by this funding. With this woeful funding decision, Atlanta will have $10 million less to fund HOPWA. This is sure to exacerbate the list of people and families living with HIV and seeking HOPWA services on the city’s waiting list.
Commissioner Lonon has stated that the waiting list is an issue for everyone to work together to fix and has agreed to be a part of those efforts. The city’s mismanagement of the HOPWA program has contributed to the extensive waiting list, so it must take
some measure of ownership and accountability. Repairing relationships with providers and landlords will go a long way to increasing capacity by allowing more vouchers and assisting in alleviating the waitlist. We encourage the mayor and city council to commit to supporting, addressing, and finding solutions for the waiting list of persons and families living with HIV seeking HOPWA services? Including seeking partnerships throughout the 29 county metropolitan area so that there is available housing to eliminate this waiting list.
Third, Jenifer Keenan has been appointed by the mayor in a HOPWA liaison volunteer position. Mrs. Keenan has done a great job meeting with the community and providers to eliminate some of the issues that have come up in communications with the city. Unfortunately, her role as housing liaison is voluntary, which creates the perception of a lack of accountability. Atlanta’s HOPWA crisis cannot be solved on a project basis; it requires the City to permanently improve its contract and reimbursement systems. We encourage the establishment of a full-time paid position, which will accomplish three things:
- Promote sustainability to alleviate issues and confidence that what is resolved is maintained.
- Demonstrate the City’s commitment to the HOPWA program’s issues and an understanding of its severity.
- Demonstrate the City takes seriously the housing needs of constituents living with HIV – who are predominantly black and/or marginalized populations.
Lastly, persons living with HIV and using HOPWA services are vulnerable to being detrimentally impacted by housing instability. Suppose circumstances lead individuals and families to become evicted from their homes. In that case, they face long-lasting consequences when seeking new housing. Landlords will refrain from offering housing to persons with an eviction history. HOPWA recipients shouldn’t have to face these additional challenges and barriers to stable housing. An expungement of previous housing status is necessary for these individuals and families. Expungement procedures could be accomplished through a two-step process:
- Step 1: Investigate the number of individuals evicted in whole or in part due to late payment/non-payment from the City. This must be done in collaboration with HOPWA provider agencies (currently and historically funded).
- Step 2: Partner with Legal Aid or a similar community-based legal agency to provide legal assistance such as expungement. This partnership must be formally documented through appropriate methods.
The HOPWA program and the people it serves are facing an impending crisis as federal funding for this program is scheduled to be reduced by as much as 63% in the coming years due to changes in the federal funding formula approved by Congress in 2016. Additionally, Congress’s passing of the FY22 appropriations budget with funding of HOPWA of $450 million leaves the Atlanta EMA with a $10 million loss. Because of the ongoing challenges with the management of the current program, the City of Atlanta has wasted valuable time over the past five years preparing for this eventuality.
Therefore, we encourage the Office of the Mayor and members of the City Council to work together to ensure that these four points are met. There is much to celebrate with the progress made so far with the leadership of Commissioner Lonon and the Department of Grants and Community Development, but much is left to do. We welcome the opportunity to work closely with you to ensure promises made before getting elected are kept and these four points addressed.
Sincerely,
Our collectively concerned community,
Jeff Graham, Executive Director Georgia Equality
Eric Paulk, Deputy Director, Georgia Equality
Larry M. Lehman, CEO, Positive Impact Health Centers
Nicole Roebuck, Executive Director AID Atlanta, Inc.
Bruce Garner, Chairman, The Metropolitan Atlanta HIV Health Services Planning Council
Stephanie Burks, LCSW, Director of Residential Services CaringWorks, Inc.
Margaret Shuelke, Co-CEO Project Community Connections, Inc.
Daniel Driffin, MPH, Vice-Chair The Metropolitan Atlanta HIV Health Services Planning Council
Lauren Waits, Board of Directors Project Community Connections, Inc.
Jamie Shank, Learning Collaborative Program Coordinator, ThriveSS
Erik Moore, MSW, HRSA Program Manager
Positive Impact Health Centers
Kenny Okafor, MPH, Program Manager , ThriveSS
Reginald Austin, Linkage Coordinator ThriveSS
Kennedi Lowman, MT(AMT) Community Member Engagement Case Manager ThriveSS
Latonia Wilkins, Community Member Case Manager, ThriveSS