Subject: NY Blade: Audit reveals AIDS housing is a wreck
From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 20:38:24 EST

Audit reveals AIDS housing is a wreck; 
Division of AIDS Services found to be paying twice for some support 
services 

By Heather Boerner
NY Blade
February 19, 1999

Comptroller Alan Hevesi released a report last week that found the 
Division of AIDS Services and Income Support is placing people with AIDS 
in unsafe housing, is not monitoring them adequately, and is often 
unsure whether it is paying for the same services twice. 

The audit, conducted between June and September of 1998, states that the 
division paid hotels several times for housing the same client and 
continued to pay housing costs for some patients who had already died. 
It also found that the division sent clients to the hotels " called 
single-room-occupancy hotels " that did not have city contracts. The 
audit also found that about 14 of the 46 SROs contracted with the city 
received citations from the Department of Housing Preservation and 
Development or the Department of Health for poor sanitation and safety 
conditions. 

"Generally speaking, there are two levels of problems here," said David 
Nustadt, a spokesperson for the comptroller's office. "One is that the 
people [living with AIDS] are going to SROs that are not as clean and 
safe as they ought to be, and that the field workers who are supposed to 
be helping clients are not present. The other is that they don't have 
good control of their finances, which is costing the city money."

The audit estimated that double payments and payment for deceased 
clients cost the city $78,842 in 1997. During the same time, the city 
paid SROs a total of $16 million for the care of 4,198 clients. 

The Comptroller's office recommended that DASIS's computer system be 
revised to assure that bills are not paid twice and that the city is not 
paying to house dead people. It also recommended that the Human 
Resources Administration, which runs DASIS, restructure the office so 
that field workers visit SROs more often to assure they meet the city's 
standard for AIDS housing. 

This is not the first time DASIS has come under fire for the way it 
handles housing for people with AIDS. Another report, conducted by the 
Mayor's Office of AIDS Policy Coordination in 1997, found that three 
hotels on Manhattan's Upper West Side and two in the Bronx were the site 
of rampant drug activity, including extortion, prostitution, and 
drug-dealing.

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