Death of a dream

It wasn't supposed to be this way.\nIt wasn't supposed to degenerate into this whispered recrimination, this veiled unhappiness, this behind-the-back finger pointing. \n When the Thomas H. Fox House was built in 1996, what it offered was a flicker of hope in the gloom of AIDS. The five-bedroom house with communal living areas was conceived as a place for HIV positive people to live and die. \nToday, the survival of the house hangs in the balance. The Center for Behavioral Health, which has been losing money on the house since it opened its doors, will not renew its lease in December. Difficulty in collecting rent and a lack of interest from the more than 130 HIV positive people that local AIDS coordination agency Positive Link serves have brought hard times to Fox House.\nAs the house struggles, discussions with interested parties are under way to decide its fate. \n"People are real heated about it. It's emotional because (AIDS is) an emotional disease," said Deborah Wilkin, director of Positive Link. "There's a lot of unhappiness, a lot of controversy."\nThe story of the Fox House is not just a story about its financial difficulties or the changing face of AIDS in the United States. It is the story of the end of a dream -- the end of what some say was an ill-timed leap of idealism that eventually foundered.\nProblems, problems, problems\nThe noose of financial problems hangs constantly over the Fox House.\nAlthough the house was more than 80 percent full last year, it still lost money, Fox House manager David Carrico said. He estimated that since last July, more than 80 percent of the rent owed by residents had not been paid.\nBob Fox, father of the late Tom Fox, whose name the house bears, pinned the blame on the center's poor management. He argued that by letting the rent slide from month to month, the center was partly responsible for its own financial woes. \nJoseph Ramos, a former Fox House resident, said the attitudes of some residents compounded the problem. He explained their mentality was: "I'm going to die anyway. Someone else will pick up the tab."\n"Because we are HIV positive, the program let us go without paying the rent," he said. "I think that's not right."\nCarrico defended the center's management, saying it had a good track record of managing 18 residential housing facilities serving four counties. \nHe admitted he usually waited two to three months before kicking out nonpaying residents. For sick residents, he was more lenient. Carrico explained a resident had to demonstrate a pattern of non-payment before the center could take them to court, a last resort.\nBefore he came two years ago, he said residents were allowed to default on rent for up to six months before being evicted.\nFinancial problems prevented some residents from paying their rent. Ramos failed to pay the rent at least once during his six-month stay.\nPayment of the $325 monthly rent left Ramos a little more than $200 from his monthly $530 Social Security check. Although the state paid for his monthly medication and the house was stocked with free food, sometimes day-to-day expenses ate into his rent money.\nIt was only during his third month at the house that Ramos qualified for Section 8 housing assistance -- a federal program that, among other things, helps with rent payments for people with disabilities.\nCarrico said the division of responsibilities between the center and Positive Link also contributed to the house's problems. He said an agency usually provides care coordination for the residents of a living facility it owns. In the case of the Fox House, the Center is the landlord while Positive Link provides care coordination for the residents.\nThe result is that the center has no leverage over residents when it comes to rent payment, Carrico said.\nWilkin disagreed, saying that Positive Link is unable to force residents to pay the rent because it is not the landlord. She explained that Positive Link can only refer residents to rent assistance programs.\nThe changing face of AIDS\nFox House's story might run deeper than the financial quicksand it is in. Its birth and death are closely intertwined with the changing face of AIDS.\nThe house was named after Tom Fox. Tom was a prankster, his parents Bob and Doris said. AIDS could not blunt his humor; the pain could not dull his optimism. \nTom died in 1989. His death changed Bob and Doris profoundly. Bob said they could not understand Tom's homosexuality. Doris recounted her horror of AIDS -- her terror of kissing or hugging her son.\nBut instead of turning away from the disease, Bob and Doris plunged into AIDS support and education. They helped start the first AIDS support group in Bloomington in 1987. They stood up for gay rights, helping form the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1991. They walked into the life of 20-year AIDS veteran Jill Moberly, then-director of the now-defunct Project FIND. \nIn the early days of the epidemic, AIDS patients died slowly and painfully, Wilkin said. A lot of her clients died gruesome bleeding deaths alone at home, some in their living rooms.\n"It was horrendous," she said. "It was extremely emotionally stressful and discouraging for us."\nBut Bob and Doris provided a bedrock of support. They bought groceries, paid for cable TV and drove people to doctor's appointments. They did all the little things that made the end of life easier for AIDS patients.\nSo when Moberly conceived Fox House with a few others, she named the house after Tom, whom she had never met. As much as the house was the product of the sweat and toil of the local AIDS community, its naming was in some ways a testament to the legacy of the Foxes' involvement with AIDS support in Bloomington.\nFox House fired the imagination of the local AIDS community. Wilkin was thrilled when she first heard about the house -- it would provide a place for her clients to die with dignity, saving them the trip to a nursing home, a move many dreaded.\nThe local community rallied around the house. The city helped with the funding. Project FIND volunteers painted the house. Bob and Doris helped furnish it.\nBut the birth of the house might have borne the seeds of its end. \n"It was obsolete really before it opened," Wilkin said.\nIn the same year that the Fox House was built, the first AIDS hospice founded in San Francisco closed because fewer people were dying of AIDS in the United States.\n"Now, there is more the concept of living with AIDS rather than dying from AIDS," Bob said.\nHIV-positive people in Bloomington now lead more active lives. Discrimination by landlords has mostly faded. People still die from complications of AIDS in Bloomington, but Wilkin said the numbers are lower. Death comes quickly, usually from liver failure -- in days, not weeks.\nMore than just a house\nThe smell of a slow-burning incense lingers in the Fox House dining room. A Georgia O'Keefe print adorns the hallway. Potted plants sit in the living room. The walls of the house are splashed with pastel colors of blue, orange and white. White doors with brass numbers open to each bedroom, four of which now lie empty.\nBrinegar described it as "A lovely, peaceful place."\nBut the house was not always peaceful and lovely. Ramos called it "Animal House," describing the drug abuse and the beer kegs sitting in ice-filled bathtubs he saw when he was there.\nFormer Fox House resident Sam Shannon argued that while some drug abuse might have taken place, it never caused any problems.\n"What anybody did behind closed doors was their business," he said.\nAll the former residents interviewed agreed the house did much good. Not one wanted to see it go.\nFor Shannon, it was his sanctuary. Fox House helped him come to terms with himself and his disease. It helped him face the world again.\n"If it wasn't for Positive Link and Fox House, I don't think I'd be alive today," he said.\nFor Ramos, the house was a refuge where he could open up and share his problems with other HIV-positive people.\n"It was my home," former resident Kenneth Jessee said.\nBut he conceded that with the current face of AIDS, HIV-positive people are better off living by themselves. \n"It has to become something that will keep it alive. As the epidemic changes, so must Fox House," Moberly said. "I think just like anything, it has to adapt or die."\nThe dream might wither; the house might lose its name. But whatever happens, the Foxes said their involvement in the local AIDS community will not end. They will continue to touch the lives of HIV-positive people, only this time on a more one-on-one basis.\n"If (the house) fades away, we won't be disappointed," Bob said. "We won't go underground"