The HIV component of our work is “relatively simple,” says the SHARP Foundation Executive Director Floyd Visser. He explains that there are several other factors that make managing the disease difficult for SHARP’s residential clients, such as aging, co-infection with diseases like Hepatitis C, mental health, neurological issues, physical disability, and addiction…

The quest for housing is a road paved with lingo. To help smooth out some of the bumps in the road, we’ve put together a glossary of some of the terms that you may come across when searching for affordable housing.
Rent Geared to Income
Rent Geared to Income housing is when the cost of your rent is adjusted based on how much you earn. This means that if your income increases, your rent increases, but also if your income decreases, your rent decreases. Usually, the adjusted rent is …

HIV is a serious health problem in Ontario. HIV continues to be a life threatening illness with no cure. An estimated 24,891 Ontarians are currently infected with HIV, 8,799 have died, and over 1,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. Historically, the populations most at risk of HIV across the province have been…

Maxine Davis, Director of the Dr. Peter Foundation in Vancouver, BC describes the care of people with HIV/AIDS as “complex care,” because the often unstable lives of HIV positive individuals makes it very difficult for them to access or sustain treatment.
“As a health care system we haven’t figured out how to effectively connect and engage people in a sustained way with the treatment…It is because the profile of individuals who have yet to benefit from HIV treatment are individual’s whose lives are made very chaotic by mental illness and addiction,” …

HIV/AIDS and housing instability can often go hand in hand. The cost of treatment, combined with periods of illness and other issues, can make it difficult to make ends meet. Without support, the financial and physical burden of the disease can lead to housing insecurity and sometimes, homelessness. The recent 12-month findings of the Positive Spaces, Healthy Places project show that 42% of research participants…