AIDS Housing Alliance Inspired by Dream

On the morning of Dec. 15, 2002, Brian Basinger woke up at 9 a.m. and immediately said, "I'll do it, but it has to be connected to the people."

The recipient of this pledge? Simple: "God."

"I woke up because there was this loud, booming voice in my dream," Basinger said, waving his hands in the air to emulate the voice. "The voice said, 'You must organize housing for people with AIDS.'"

Whether it was the dream, the medication he was on, destiny or insanity, Basinger doesn't care. Since that day in 2002, he has successfully built the AIDS Housing Alliance, an organization that helps HIV-positive people find housing.

During that time, he had been taking a new medication that gave him the "best dreams in the world." After his revelation, he got up, put on water for coffee and before the water had boiled, his phone rang. It was his new landlord, who Basinger had met during a harrowing five months of trying to find an apartment with his boyfriend.

"He told us, 'You guys are so wonderful and I want to help other people with AIDS find housing,'" Basinger explained, imitating his landlord's Midwestern twang. "We have two building units open, could you find anyone to live there?"

Basinger and his boyfriend, James, are both HIV-positive. During the housing hunt, James was living in a Single Room Occupancy and Basinger was being evicted from the apartment he had spent half of his life and seen 30 HIV-positive friends die in. Basinger's landlord decided to give the couple housing because his brother had died of AIDS.

The dream and the situation clicked. Basinger immediately called the Bay Area Reporter and the San Francisco Chronicle. He called someone at a housing organization and got a desk. By noon, the AIDS Housing Alliance was born.

"The cost to house someone with AIDS is $6,000 per year," he said. "When people have stable housing, it cuts AIDS transmission in half. Housing is the most documented, cost-effective tool we have."

The White House is currently holding town hall meetings across the country in order to discuss the national HIV/AIDS strategy. On Oct. 16, Jeffrey Crowley, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, met with the San Francisco community at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UC San Francisco. The issue of housing took the stage for a period and many, including Basinger, emphasized the need for housing to be part of the discussion.

"I was doing some lobbying and Jeff Crowley invited me to come up with recommendations for the first AIDS Housing Plan," Basinger said. "In the next two weeks, I'm putting together a group of people in the Bay Area to help inform about our contributions to the national plan."

As well as helping people with AIDS find housing, AHA helps them obtain jobs for the pride in obtaining employment and because a steady paycheck makes for easier findings in the housing hunt.

One of Basinger's employees is Rodrigo Ibanez, a 40-year-old gay man who was born in Mexico City and used to work in San Diego as an accountant, lost his job due to the financial turmoil and decided to move to San Francisco. He thought things would be better here; there was a thriving gay community and he had experienced the welcoming warmth of the Castro and the shopping opportunities of Union Square as a tourist.

"When I moved here, it was as hard as it was in San Diego," Ibanez said. "I ran out of money, my savings and I was homeless. I never slept in the street, and I'm lucky for that, but I could never secure housing."

Ibanez eventually started living in the Drake Hotel, an SRO in the Tenderloin.

"I appreciate that I never had to live on the street, but that place was such an experience," Ibanez said. "It was awful and dirty, there were roaches and rats and I was in a state of shock. Even coming from Mexico City, I was not prepared for the Tenderloin."

Someone eventually told Ibanez about AHA and he came initially as a client, looking for housing. He started living in Brandy Moore Rafiki House, where he still lives today. Once he got settled, he started volunteering at AHA and was offered a job as the financial services coordinator.

"I went from being out of control to helping people in the same situation," Ibanez said. "It is wonderful, and I love what I do."

Working in the Tenderloin, Ibanez still shudders when he has to walk past the Drake Hotel.

"I get that feeling of desperation and hopelessness is triggered every time I walk by," he said. "But it makes me more willing to do what I can do for the people who come in here."

There are $660 million new medical costs due to HIV/AIDS a year in San Francisco alone, according to Basinger.

People searching for housing are sure that discrimination against people with AIDS plays a part in limiting options.

"I had an SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and a Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS (HOPLA) grant," Ricky Darnell, 51, said. "It didn't take landlords long to put two and two together."

Darnell has had AIDS since 1989 and has lived through various housing situations. Currently, he is staying at SROs as an alternative to living with a friend who is "a huge junkie and a total mess."

"I'm taking a break from him this week," Darnell said.

Because he was employed until recently, Darnell has never gone to AHA but knows their work.

"It's a great agency," he said. "If I'm in this conundrum for much longer, I'm going to do an intake with them."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study in 2007 saying homeless or unstably housed persons were two to six times more likely to "have recently used hard drugs, shared needs or exchanged sex" than people who also had low incomes, but were stably housed.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health also found that 10 percent of the homeless population has "full-blown AIDS," according to Basinger.

"Forty percent of people who get AIDS are homeless," Basinger said. "There is a need for awareness and an appropriate response. It's a communicable disease. If we house people, we cut down on transmission."

North Beach's Contributions to Pop Culture

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Campaign Headquarters

As November 4 draws nearer, the presence of North Beach’s supervisor candidates can be felt in many different ways. Shop owners place their candidate of choice’s poster in their front windows, residents talk about their personalities and policies, and the candidates themselves can be found canvassing the streets.

            In terms of visibility, however, Joseph Alioto, Jr. has a distinct edge. His presence is felt physically in the neighborhood, thanks to his campaign headquarters. While other candidates are relying on word of mouth or headquarters in other districts, Alioto is clearly appealing to North Beach citizens with his office on Columbus and Greenwich.

            “We got really lucky with this place,” campaign volunteer Jennifer Stuart said. “Our campaign manager started looking for places to lease as soon as Joe announced his candidacy and found this pretty quickly. It’s great for visibility.”

The headquarters sit directly in between the tourist’s North Beach—full of vibrant restaurants and Italian specialty stores—and the resident’s North Beach, where people meander through the library or take classes at the community center. Additionally, the headquarters are visible from Washington Square Park.

            From the street, the building is a contrast to the colorful restaurants that surround it. Instead of loud signs proclaiming “Authentic Italian Food” and “The City’s Best Fondue!” the clean windows only show campaign posters. Inside, the room is clean and nearly all white, except for a lone painting of an Italian street. Otherwise, more posters, calendars full of appointments and debates, and the endorsement of Gavin Newsom line the bleach-white walls. Volunteers bustle around taking phone calls from people who would like to donate and making calls to tell people about Alioto. Passersby come in to learn about the candidate or let the campaign manager know what’s going on in the neighborhood. When I first walk in, resident Mel Woods is excitedly talking to campaign manager Jeff Dodd. When he leaves, Dodd explains that he has taken a personal interest in the campaign and that Woods “keeps his ear to the streets for us.”

The only person missing from the headquarters in the Alioto himself, who is out canvassing the streets. Though he and his wife live only a few blocks away, Alioto spends five to six hours a day going door to door.

            “Joe has a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” Stuart said. “He loves to go around and talk to people. We have to pull him out sometimes.”

Sidewalk poetry and the oldest bar in SF

While walking up Kearny after getting off at the Montgomery stop, I was inundated by the  cityscape-- high rise buildings, suits and skirts sipping their coffee while walking to work, the Jamba Juices and Starbucks that stand in every city. I started wondering if I was in the right place during this walk. Then I passed the Italian flag on a pole and suddenly I was in North Beach, where the coffee shops are mom and pops and most buildings are scaled down to three stories instead of 30. 

The first place I went to was City Lights, the famous bookstore of the beat generation. A sales clerk behind the desk told me about Allen Ginsberg's former place of residence across the street and how he stands there sometimes to see what Ginsberg saw when the poet walked out of his apartment in the morning. The sales clerk recommended I check out the poetry room of the bookstore, a respite filled with books from every poet imaginable. The room, with chairs and desks placed throughout, could have been an English professor's private library if not for the meticulous alphabetization of the authors and stands of postcards. I learned that City Lights, which is already a publishing house as well, is having its first meeting of a new monthly bookclub on October 7th. The featured book will be Voices of the Chicago Eight and I'm excited to report on what the book club will be like. 

Poetry in North Beach is not just contained within books and the minds of people who want to emulate poet-heroes of past generations. In fact, poetry is so alive in the neighborhood that it lines the sidewalks. Written with Sharpie on masking tape, phrases like "The Freedom of Speech at its Zenith" can be found (and followed) up and down the streets of North Beach. I'm curious to find out more about these poems--who writes them (anyone, everyone, one group of people, the ghost of Allen Ginsberg?), when they post them, and how and why they started posting their thoughts on the streets.

After the poetry binge, I decided to research binges of another nature. Locals and people working in shops told me to go to the Saloon, a bar on Grant Avenue. The bar isn't merely a bar, as bartender Agatha was quick to tell me. It's the oldest tavern in San Francisco (a fact assured  by her, but disputed by some Internet research saying it was the third oldest). Agatha, now between 50 and 60 years old, says she has been working at the Saloon since she was in her 20's; her first day is still far away from the day it opened. The tavern actually opened in 1861 as part of the Hotel Fresno. Back then, a sailor might describe its location as being on the Barbary Coast instead of on the corner of Grant street. For a bar with that much history, legends abound. According to Blues.net, "The building survived the '06 earthquake, it's said, because of its unusually stout timbers. It survived the subsequent fires, it's said, because the fire brigades made sure to protect the hookers who worked upstairs." The bar is now known for its blues, something that Agatha was even more excited about describing to me than its age. For a video of a blues performance at the Saloon--and the women dancing to the music-- here.