1. National AIDS Housing Coalition
Policy Tool Kit
Lauren Nussbaum, NAHC Program Associate
Presented at the World Urban Forum
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
March 24th, 2010

2. National AIDS Housing Coalition: Mission & Vision
Vision: The National AIDS Housing Coalition envisions an international community where housing is a human right and HIV disease ends. It is clear that housing improves health outcomes of those living with HIV disease and reduces the number of new HIV infections. The end of HIV/AIDS critically depends on an end to poverty, stigma, housing instability, and homelessness.
Mission: The National AIDS Housing Coalition (NAHC) works to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by ensuring that persons living with HIV/AIDS have quality, affordable and appropriate housing. NAHC accomplishes this through policy and resource advocacy, fostering, synthesizing and disseminating research, and convening leaders to affect change at the local, national, and international level.
The National AIDS Housing Coalition has always come from a human rights framework – that is the basic foundation of our work. Our original slogan, “Housing is Healthcare,” was based on the belief that housing should be a given.

3. The Link between Housing Stability and HIV/AIDS According to The Experts
“Adequate housing must be accessible to all. Thus, such disadvantaged groups as older persons, children, persons with disabilities, the terminally ill, HIV-positive individuals, persons with persistent medical problems, victims of natural disasters, people living in disaster-prone areas and other groups should be assured some degree of priority in housing law and policy.” – UN Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik, report on Mission to the United States, pg. 16.
“Urbanization, poor city planning and design, informal settlements and lack of access to housing influence the degree of insecurity of women and girls and create conditions that place them at a greater risk of HIV and that limit their access to public services. In addition, forced migration and displacement place women and girls at risk of being deprived of much needed HIV and reproductive health services and are likely to interrupt their access to treatment. The AIDS response needs to anticipate and address women’s and girls’ complex vulnerabilities to HIV through multisectoral approaches to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” – UNAIDS Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV, pg. 1.

4. NAHC Policy Toolkit: http://nationalaidshousing.org/policy-toolkit/
Developed by NAHC to help advocates inform national and local resource allocation, planning and health care practice through the use of tools and strategies that demonstrate the link between housing and health for persons at risk of or living with HIV/AIDS.
Tool kit home page:
Why This Tool Kit?
How To Use This Tool Kit
The Tools
Endorsers
Success Stories

5. Summary of Key Findings on Housing & HIV
Homelessness and unstable housing are linked to greater HIV risk, inadequate care, poor health outcomes and early death.
Studies also show strong and consistent correlations between improved housing status and:
Reduction in HIV/AIDS risk behaviors
Access to medical care
Improved health outcomes
Savings in public services

6. Yet Housing Is an Unmet Service Need of PLWHA
1.2 million PLWHA in the United States—half (600,000) will need housing assistance at some point.
In a study conducted by COHRE in Uganda, 72 of the 80 HIV-positive women interviewed lived in inadequate housing.
In La Paz, Bolivia, 3.5% of the homeless/street population is HIV-positive.
In Saint Lucia, almost half (200 of 450) PLWHA are either homeless or live in insecure housing.

7. Toolkit Goal: Advocacy for HIV Housing Assistance:
As a basic human right;
As a necessary component of systems of care to enable PLWHA to manage their disease;
As an exciting new mechanism to end the AIDS crisis by preventing new infections.

8. What’s in the Tool Kit? Housing and HIV/AIDS policy papers
Issue fact sheets
PowerPoint presentation of research findings
Annotated presenter’s guide to the PowerPoint presentation
Sample letter to elected or appointed officials
Talking points on frequently asked questions (policy obstacles)
Summit IV briefing book

9. The International Declaration on Poverty, Housing Instability and HIV/AIDS
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of him [or her] self and of his [or her] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his [or her] control.
- Article 25, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
When we wrote the International Declaration on Poverty, Housing Instability & HIV/AIDS, we started with Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes housing in the “standard of living adequate for health and well-being.”

10. Whereas adequate and secure housing has long been recognized as a basic human right,
Whereas growing empirical evidence shows that the socioeconomic circumstances of
individuals and groups are equally or even more important to health status than medical care and personal health behaviors,
Whereas in the case of HIV/AIDS, the link between poverty and disparities in HIV risk and health outcomes is well established, and new research findings demonstrate the direct relationship between inadequate housing and greater risk of HIV infection, poor health outcomes and early death,
Whereas poor living conditions, including overcrowding and in extreme cases, homelessness, undermine safety, privacy and efforts to promote self-respect, human dignity and the attendant responsible sexual behavior,
Whereas the lack of stable housing directly impacts the ability of people living in poverty to reduce HIV risk behaviors and homeless and unstably housed persons are two to six times more likely to use hard drugs, share needles or exchange sex than similar persons with stable housing,
Whereas, in spite of the evidence indicating that adequate housing has a direct positive effect on HIV prevention, treatment and health outcomes, the lack of adequate housing resources has been largely ignored in conferences and policy discussions at the international level, and
Whereas the United Nations, in both its 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS, embraced the goal of universal access to comprehensive prevention programs, treatment, care and support by 2010.
Therefore, we hereby demand that policy makers address the lack of adequate housing as a barrier to effective HIV prevention, treatment, and care; and we further demand that all governments fund and develop housing as a response to the AIDS pandemic.
Then we included the evidence and the UN Declarations and Commitments on HIV/AIDS to conclude with our demand that “policy makers address the lack of adequate housingas a barrier to effective HIV prevention, treatment, and care; and we further demand that all governments fund and develop housing as a response to the AIDS pandemic.”

11. Success Stories
This Declaration was presented to and accepted by the International AIDS Society at the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City
The Canadian AIDS Society have adopted the International Declaration on Poverty, Housing Instability and HIV/AIDS
The United States Congress has resolutions in both houses “expressing the sense of the Congress that the lack of adequate housing must be addressed as a barrier to effective HIV prevention, treatment, and care, and that the United States should make a commitment to providing adequate funding for developing housing as a response to the AIDS pandemic.”
In the Dominican Republic, advocates are working to modify a law to guarantee housing for all people living with HIV/AIDS, given that “according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all human beings have the right to their own shelter, which contributes to their development, security and peace.”
In Nigeria, advocates are working to include make sure that a bill to combat stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS includes housing discrimination.

12. Get Involved! Stay in touch with NAHC - www.nationalaidshousing.org
Join the International AIDS Housing Roundtable -
Endorse the International Declaration on Poverty, Homelessness and HIV -
Use the NAHC Policy Tool Kit to inform local policy & funding decisions
Share your successes - let NAHC know how you use research findings to inform practice and policy

13. North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit V
Save the date!
North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit V
June 2nd - 4th, 2010
Toronto, Ontario
Convened by
The National AIDS Housing Coalition
and
The Ontario HIV Treatment Network
in collaboration with
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
For updates, go to: