Collins, Reed Introduce Bill to Improve Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Formula

U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jack Reed (D-RI) introduced bipartisan legislation today that would update and improve the outdated formula used to distribute funding for crucial housing programs that serve people with HIV/AIDS. Senators Collins and Reed serve as the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD), which oversees spending for federal housing programs. A similar measure is being sponsored in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressmen David Price (D-NC) and Robert Aderholt (R-AL).

The Collins-Reed bill would adjust the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program to allocate formula funding based on the number of persons currently living with HIV instead of the cumulative number of AIDS cases since 1981. At present, 55 percent of the cumulative AIDS cases used to process the formula represent deceased individuals, which diverts funding away from parts of the country where the HIV/AIDS prevalence is more recent and unfairly distributes it to large cities that experienced the AIDS epidemic early on.

"The HOPWA Program is vital to ensuring that individuals living with HIV/AIDS, who have an elevated risk of becoming homeless, are able to access safe and affordable housing," said Senator Collins. "The current method for distributing HOPWA Program funds is unfair to the regions of our country where individuals are feeling the effects of HIV/AIDS most acutely. Revising this outdated formula will allow these funds to benefit low-income individuals living with this illness and their families, precisely the population this program is intended to help."

"HOPWA provides housing stability to help HIV-positive residents stay healthy. Medication is extremely expensive, and having a roof over their head enables people to better manage the disease, reduces the risk of HIV transmission, and results in better public health outcomes," said Senator Reed. "We need to strengthen HOPWA, but the current formula shortchanges the most vulnerable. This bill provides a fairer and more accurate formula to meet the needs of those who really need assistance now and in the future."

Persons living with HIV/AIDS who are homeless or unstably housed have been shown to be more likely to demonstrate frequent and prolonged use of high-cost hospital-based emergency or inpatient services. Approximately half of all persons diagnosed with HIV will face homelessness or experience an unstable housing situation at some point over the course of their illness. Despite the need for this funding, a recent Government Accountability Office report noted that, "Because HOPWA funds are awarded based on cumulative AIDS cases, these funds are not being targeted as effectively or equitably as they could be."

The Collins-Reed bill transitions current grantees to the new formula over a five-year period by including a "stop-loss" provision so that grantees can lose no more than five percent of their share of HOPWA formula funds in each successive fiscal year from 2017-2021. Similarly, grantees can gain no more than 10 percent of their share in each successive fiscal year.

The legislation is cosponsored by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Brian Schatz (D-HI).

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