Chicago-Based Care, Treatment Campus Plans To Provide Services, Housing for 100 HIV/AIDS Patients

The Boston Globe on Monday profiled a treatment and care campus established by the Chicago-based organization AIDSCare that will eventually serve more than 100 HIV/AIDS patients. The AIDSCare campus, funded by an $18 million federal grant, will include 66 apartments, a wellness center, a dental clinic, a multipurpose room, meeting rooms and a chapel. According to Jim Flosi, head of AIDSCare, the campus will "surround" HIV/AIDS patients with "all they need," according to the Globe. "We're not trying to closet the disease," Flosi said, adding, "The community needs to own up that it needs to take care of its poor and its sick without hiding it." So far, 76 people have applied to live at the AIDSCare campus, and 18 moved in when the residences opened on July 27. According to Nancy Bernstine, executive director of the National AIDS Housing Coalition, projects such as the AIDSCare campus are "necessary" because federal funding that helps HIV/AIDS patients with housing costs is "threatened," the Globe reports. "Absence of stable housing is like a death sentence for someone with HIV or AIDS," Bernstine said, adding, "You need a refrigerator for meds; you need a clean bathroom." Bernstine said that more than 33% of the estimated 900,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States are homeless or at risk of losing their homes. According to the Globe, AIDSCare aims to construct similar campuses in Chicago, where approximately 16,000 HIV-positive people reside. "What we're doing is basically a drop in the bucket," Flosi said (Ferkenhoff, Boston Globe, 8/23).