Hospice helps scaled-back AIDS project

The AIDS Community Project once had 31 employees and 1,000 clients. Then funding problems nearly forced it to close. But with help from the larger agency, it is still assisting clients.

By SHARON TUBBS

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2000

CLEARWATER -- Three years ago, board members for AIDS Community Project of Tampa Bay voted to close the agency after donations dropped and other problems persisted.

But today, in a downtown Clearwater office owned by the Salvation Army, the county's oldest agency created to help people infected with the virus that causes AIDS remains, albeit smaller than it once was.

"We've come through some pretty tough times," said Pattye Sawyer, executive director.

In 1999, the organization served 336 HIV-infected clients, providing counseling, support groups and help coordinating Social Security and benefit payments, Sawyer said.

Three years earlier, however, things weren't going well for AIDS Community Project, a grass-roots, non-profit outfit. Michael Condron, who later died of AIDS, founded the organization by merging three AIDS organizations, designing it to be the only AIDS organization serving Pinellas.

Officials said at one point that the organization served 1,000 through counseling, support groups, food, clothing, housing and money.

In the late 1990s, however, the agency saw a decline in donations, threatening its $400,000 budget. Advances in medical treatment had begun to lengthen the life spans of patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. So AIDS Community Project was getting less money from memorial donations, said Lou Bader, who was president of the board of directors.

"It was just harder and harder to keep the agency afloat," Bader said.

Other problems arose. An aggressive effort to build a transitional housing facility for homeless HIV patients fell through after residents near the proposed site protested.

The organization's lease with Clearwater for space in a city-owned office ran out and the agency had to find someplace else to operate.

Bader and other board members voted in 1997 to close the agency. Then, Hospice of the Florida Suncoast stepped in, agreeing to take over administration for the smaller agency.

"Hospice was a major organization, and they had no problem getting funding," Bader said. "We did."

Although managed by hospice personnel today, the group maintains a separate non-profit status. The organization is a scaled-back version of what it once was.

Bader and several others who spent their days working on the volunteer effort are no longer involved.

Also, AIDS Community Project no longer offers a family component or its pet therapy programs, Sawyer said. There are 11 employees, down from 31 who worked there in 1997. Sawyer said funding and the deletion of programs account for the staffing cuts.

A hotline remains available, as well as counseling and support groups, she said.

Sawyer, the executive director, oversees programs for families and children, as well as for ethnic minorities afflicted with the disease. AIDS Community Project clients also have access to those programs, Sawyer said. Hospice budgets about $1-million for AIDS programming that includes AIDS Community Project.

"The partnership has definitely been to the benefit of both the staff and the clients," Sawyer said. "We're building a much more comprehensive HIV program."

The Salvation Army owns the AIDS Community Project site at 410 N Fort Harrison Ave. Sawyer said the Salvation Army has plans for renovations at the site in coming years. She hopes the project's site will expand in years to come.

"We'd like to have more space," she said.

-- Information from Times files was used in this report.

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