For the past 30 years, the Foley House in Provincetown has provided housing for low-income people living with HIV/AIDS. Now, funding questions put the house's original mission at risk.
That's according to Paul Benson of the Provincetown Independent. CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Paul recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist How did the Foley House get started in Provincetown and who has been operating it all these years?
Paul Benson So, the Foley House goes all the way back to the real height of the AIDS crisis when it was one of the leading causes of death in the whole country. And, of course, in Provincetown, it was an incredibly serious disease. And so the Foley House, which was 10 rooms with two kitchens [and] a sort of congregate living [space], was a place for low-income people with HIV to move into, oftentimes really at the end of their life, and receive care and social work and the kind of attention that they needed to die with dignity. It quickly evolved. That was in 1996. So the rollout of AZT [azidothymidine] and other really powerful drugs quickly changed that place from what was essentially a hospice to something very different, which was a long-term living situation for low-income people with HIV to have stable housing.
GG The Provincetown Housing Authority and the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod disagree over the future of the Foley House. So, what's the sticking point?
PB Right, so these two organizations have been running the Foley house since 1996. The housing authority owns the property and the building. The AIDS Support Group provides the medical case management [and] the social services. The sticking point is that permanent funding for housing for people with HIV pretty much disappeared around 2014. There was a series of legislative changes. They weren't unique to Provincetown or the Foley house. And without that stable federal funding, the property has been running at a deficit for, gosh, going on 10 years now. They've managed that a few different ways. There was a periodic infusion from the AIDS Support Group or facility help from the town using CPA [Community Preservation Act] money, but without a long-term subsidy, the housing authority is preparing to go to the state and try to change the mission of the property to something broader. Maybe it includes hepatitis C, maybe it includes some other kind of thing that the state is funding so that the housing authority can get a long-term—we're talking many years—subsidy for the property. The AIDS Support Group, which helped create this institution—and it's named for Alice Foley, the founder of the AIDS Support Group—really is not willing to see the mission of the Foley House change away from being for low-income people with HIV. And so that creates a sticking point where the AIDS Support Group has offered to provide annual funding—we're talking in the neighborhood of $50,000—to subsidize the rents that are paid by the tenants there. But that being just annual funding, not really permanent, the housing authority wants to move in a different direction.
GG What impact does the Foley House have on the community in Provincetown? In other words, what would be lost if it stopped being a place specifically for low-income people living with HIV?
PB That's an interesting question. So there are two rooms out of 10 currently open that have been held open for three years. The process of filling those rooms from the very long wait list that the housing authority [has] is moving forward, but moving forward alongside this other process of trying to redefine the lease, the memorandum of understanding and the federal subsidy, which might mean redefining the entire property. So those rooms have been sitting empty, which is the immediate sticking point. The AIDS Support Group says there are homeless people with HIV who could use that housing right now in the cold. The housing authority says there are long-term problems that need to be resolved and the attention of staff needs to go to working with the state to solve these long-term funding issues, and that two empty rooms is not the real crisis. The real crisis is the permanent loss of funding. People at the AIDS Support Group will say there's a 40-year agreement that started in 1996 to have this be housing for low-income people with HIV. They say that was a promise that the community made in 1996, and it shouldn't be regarded as something that can be changed.
GG With the Provincetown Housing Authority and AIDS Support Group at something of a standstill at the moment, what's next?
PB One of the interesting things is the amount of money involved—$50,000 a year for rents, maybe $20,000-30,000 year for capital needs—is not in the grand scheme of things a very large sum of money. Provincetown makes $5 million a year in hotel and short-term rental taxes. Of that, 30 percent is dedicated just to housing. That's about $1.5 million every year. So $80,000 on $1.5 million is about 5 percent of Provincentown's housing funds. Then there's also Community Preservation Act money, which is dedicated to housing in the town. It has about $500,000 a year for that purpose. So it's not out of the question that the town can provide the subsidy. It's also not something that the housing authority is currently looking for. They're looking to the state for something that is not a one-time allocation, but something that would last forever. So it not clear if the town stepping in is something that all parties agree should happen.
The Provincetown Housing Authority and the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod plan to meet next on February 24.
