There’s No Place Like Home

When Dorothy kicked her heels together in The Wizard of Oz and chanted "There’s no place like home" to get back to Kansas, she ended up warm and secure in her bed. Wouldn’t it be great if this really worked?  Being diagnosed with HIV can throw lots of people’s lives out of whack, including their living situation. Ontario’s Positive Spaces Healthy Places research aimed to look at the effects of housing uncertainty on people with HIV. Not surprisingly, it found that housing security is a big stressor.

 Ruthann Tucker, who was one of the key researchers, is taking her findings to an international audience. A satellite meeting on housing and HIV will be held at the International AIDS Conference later this summer in Mexico. And PWN is hoping to take the lead on research in BC to reinforce what advocates have been saying for years: secure housing is essential for the best health outcomes. Marcie Summers, PWN’s Executive Director says, “Not only does safe, affordable housing lead to better health and quality of life, stable housing is also a key prevention tool. People are less vulnerable to disease if they have a home.”

At present, we provide housing subsidies for women living with HIV, but we know that solid research will help to emphasize the need for more housing options, both in numbers and in formats. (If you’d like to contribute to making more housing subsidies a reality, please consider joining the PWN team as we participate as a community partner in BCPWA’s Scotiabank AIDS Walk for Life on September 21).
 
There is no place like a safe, affordable, accessible home. Now we just have to ensure everyone has access to one…

-  Janet 

This was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Networking, News . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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