For a while there in the late 1990's in New York, there was a
cohort of new organizers running AIDS Services and Harm Reduction Organizations
- Jennifer Flynn
Walker, Daliah Heller, Jeanne Hussein Bergman Eustacia
Smithmany others. There were elders such as the wild man Keith Cylar and Eric Sawyer and Charles King. And then
there was Gina Quattrochi who was
behind the effort to recognize HIV as a Housing Issue. We met at meetings. And
she seemed more on top of the dynamic, the research, the policy, the activism
than any of us. She mentored us and supported the movements in which we worked.
She fought for services. And she changed laws. She was always on the right side
of history. When Keith got sick and passed out on the elevator at housing conference,
it was Gina Quattrochi who was
there to help catch him and get him back to his room. She did that for a lot of
us. For a while there in 1998, I worked at Bailey House. And left in a
hurry. Gina Quattrochi and I
remained friends for years after that. I saw her at Occupy Wall Street. And I
saw her at meetings and rallies for year and years and years after that. She
never let a fight get in the way of a conversation about differences and ways
to learn from each other. I tried to interview her and we could never arrange a
time. I should have tried harder to arrange a time. But I have so many memories
of her now. I will always remember her as she was here in February of 2015 at
City Hall, speaking out for HASA for All. Speaking out for homeless youth,
freezing in the cold, speaking out for those who had so much less, speaking out
for history, for the right side of the story.RIP Gina Quattrochi!
Gina Quattrochi was my
mentor. For whatever reason, she took the time to invest in my leadership. Even
when I did things she disagreed with, she would send me cards and take the time
to talk to me about potential pitfalls. For a few painful months, she didn't
talk to me, but she then arranged to meet to talk it out. That willingness to
struggle thru vs just writing someone off is something I so deeply admire.
I'm grateful that she came to my
wedding and that we had lunch a few months ago. I was supposed to visit her on
Friday but then I didn't hear from her. I thought she was too busy, because she
was always busy, even when she was sick. I had no idea she was so close to the
end because, frankly, she seemed invincible to me. I remember her getting her
martial art black belt in her 50's and I was in awe. I thought she'd be kicking
and fighting long past me.
For a younger
queer, she taught me that I could have kids and still be a bad ass. If her kids
ever read this, I want them to know that she loved so fiercely that it made me
want to have kids. I knew that her daughter Anna loved the Spice Girls (at one
time) and acting and her son Gio was a poetic genius. She spoke of you
constantly and with overwhelming love. She believed deeply in racial justice
and she also could run an organization like a CEO of a corporation.
I'm grateful that in my last
email to her, for some reason, I thanked her and apologized for being a
petulant punk. I had no idea why, but I'm glad I did it. I regret not seeing
her on Friday and I vow to always go see you when need me. I will try to be the
person she wanted me to be and I will try to pay forward her investment in me
into others. I truly love you Gina Quattrochi. Thank you.
Dispatches from the fight against homelessness and AIDS
Tribute to Longtime Advocate Regina Quattrochi by Charles King
Posted by Mikola De Roo ,
December 14, 2016
From L to R: Housing Works CEO Charles
King, Bailey House CEO Regina
Quattrochi, and NY State Senator Tom Duane, at a Nov. 2010 New York City
protest supporting the 30 percent rent cap initiative.
Guest post by Charles King, President and CEO of Housing Works
I first met Regina Quattrochi in 1990. The Housing Committee of ACT UP had decided to prove that homeless
people with AIDS who
used drugs would benefit from supportive housing and committed to starting
Housing Works. Four of us—Eric Sawyer, Ginny Shubert, Keith Cylar, and I—took
on the task of seeing this effort through. We turned for advice and guidance to
the then “AIDS Resource Center” (ARC),
which had developed Bailey House, the first congregate supportive housing for
people with AIDS in New
York. Over the course of that year, Gina went from being the Board chair of ARC to being its executive director, the hat
that she continued to wear until her passing yesterday. In both roles, she
served as a mentor and a friend.
Gina’s prior work was as an employee-side labor lawyer. Fighting
for the underdog was in her genes. She was most passionate about advocacy with
and for homeless people living with HIV and
AIDS—especially young people. Like those of us who started Housing Works, she
was totally committed to proving that housing is an essential HIV intervention that ranks at least as highly
as medical care, if not higher. Gina also believed deeply that every person
deserved safe and appropriate housing, and she was a founding member of the
coalition of providers, advocates, and people with HIV that in the early 1990s set basic standards
for all HIV housing programs in the state. It was out
of that passion that she also became one of the founders of the National AIDS Housing Coalition (NAHC). She
saw NAHC as a national platform for the promotion of
housing as an essential HIV intervention.
More fundamentally, she always argued that we needed to make the case that
housing is a basic human right that needs to be respected everywhere.
Keith Cylar, my life partner and co-founder of Housing Works,
was also one of the founders of the National AIDS Housing
Coalition. When he died, in 2004, the NAHC Board
invited me to take his seat. I remember attending my first meeting in St.
Louis. We all went to dinner the night before, and the level of familiarity
made clear to me that this was more than just a board. This was an extended
family. The next day, during our meeting, I made a comment that we needed to
look beyond HOPWA—Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, the
only federal program dedicated to housing needs of people living with HIV/AIDS—and
develop a vision for achieving stable housing for all people living with HIV in the United States, a vision that would
inevitably require peer-reviewed research. Gina loved the idea, promptly moved
that we establish a visioning committee, and nominated me to be the committee
chair.
That was the beginning of a series of eight HIV housing research and policy summits, as
well as a ton of published research that made the case for housing as an
effective and efficient health care and prevention intervention. I accepted the
role of visioning chair on the condition that Gina also serve on the committee,
and we worked side by side to pull off the first four of these United States
summits. Then it was Gina’s idea that we take the summit series international,
leading to NAHC’s partnership with the Ontario HIV Treatment Network to make the summit series
North American.
Gina had always been a strong
advocate for people with behavioral health issues. Several years ago, Gina had
to take a medical leave of absence for a number of months. Her first day back,
she called me up and asked me to lunch, which we scheduled for just a few days
later. Over lunch, she shared with me that she had been diagnosed with bipolar
disorder. She detailed for me her treatment experience during her leave,
explaining how it had deepened her understanding of the experience of people
with mental illness. Over and over she exclaimed that though she had the best
insurance in the world and the best support team, it often felt like she had to
fight the entire system to get what she needed.
Gina told me then that she was going to be out about her mental
illness and asked for my support. She said she saw how effective those of us
living with HIV coming
out publicly were in making our case. She said she wanted to do the same thing
for mental illness. And she did. And when Gina was diagnosed with multiple
myeloma in 2014, she became a fierce advocate for others struggling with the
same condition.
Gina was full of life, full of passion, and she loved her
children and so many other people in her life so fully that we are left with an
incredible void. I will deeply miss her. Also, I know she left one important
piece of work undone. After she served on Governor Cuomo’s Ending the Epidemic
(EtE) Task Force, she convened an ad-hoc advisory group to develop
recommendations for implementing the EtE Blueprint for women living with or at
risk of HIV. The
group met several times, but never completed its recommendations after she
began intensive treatment. I intend to make sure those recommendations are completed
and approved.
With Gina’s passing, I can’t help but renew my own commitment to
the fight against HIV, the fight for housing as a basic human right, and the fight
for health equity. She is another comrade fallen in the battle. And we who are
left behind are compelled to take up that part of the fight that she carried so
valiantly.
No comments:
Post a Comment