Extending Leases and Lives
On Sunday, October 15th [1989], AIDS activist and long-term survivor John Bohne died. His death was sudden, and came as a shock to those who had seen him at a meeting of ACT UP's Treatment and Data Committee that Wednesday, and to those who had seen him Friday, when we went to an appointment at Gay Men's Health Crisis.
Something else happened to him that Friday: he received a "Notice to Quit," the first step in an eviction action, on his apartment. A good friend of his, Mike Frisch, who took John to the hospital on Saturday night, says John was very troubled by the threat of eviction and thinks that it just might have been what broke John's spirit.
John had lived in the Manhattan Valley apartment for more than three years with his lover, Bill McCann, until Bill died in May, 1988. The lease to the apartment was in Bill's name.
How the hell is someone who is fighting a virus inside his body in order to stay alive, and fighting the FDA bureaucracy for access to drugs in order to fight the virus, supposed to muster the energy to fight his landlord in housing court?
In July we all celebrated the Braschi decision, in which the New York State Court of Appeals said gay couples could legally be considered families. Specifically, the case involved a couple who had been living together in an apartment for ten years. The man in whose name the lease was held died of AIDS, and the landlord attempted to evict the survivor. The court decision granted him succession rights to the lease, and stated that "the term family...should not be rigidly restricted to those people who have formalized their relationship by obtaining, for instance, a marriage certificate or an adoption order."
Then why was John Bohne's landlord able to refuse to renew his lease and try to evict him?
One reason is that the Braschi decision has yet to be translated into specific enforceable regulations. Nearly four months after the decision, it has not been implemented. What's happening?
It depends on who you ask. Tom Viola, a spokesperson for the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), says "We are seeking a legislative solution. If that is thwarted, then we'll go administratively." The problem with that is that the Republican-controlled State Senate has for years refused to extend lease protections to non-married partners, and has refused any protection for lesbians and gays, even in the context of bias-related violence. So it really is a foregone conclusion that legislative efforts to bring the law into accor- dance with the Braschi decision will be thwarted.
Our advocates seem somewhat more hopeful. Lesbian and gay and tenant groups have been lobbying DHCR to issue administrative regulations. According to attorney William Rubinstein of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who won the Braschi case, that victory "gave us great impetus and power at the bargaining table.II Another attorney involved in the talks, Evan Wolfson of the lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, reports that "They [DHCR] have agreed in principle to protect the family in a comprehensive and realistic way, including lesbian and gay families." But, says Rubinstein, "We would have liked to have seen something happen by now."
Time is of the essence. It is AIDS which made the whole issue of succession rights so pressingly important to our community, and AIDS which makes so many of the very people who stand to be protected by these regulations so vulnerable. The last thing anyone living with AIDS needs is a legal battle to keep his or her home.
As the people fighting for housing for homeless PWAs have been stressing, a home is a precondition for survival: what use is medical care without a stable and nurturing living environment?
This week it was John Bohne, and presumably others in similar straits, who received eviction threats. John Bohne was dead less than 48 hours later. Who will it be next week?
Will it take four more months for the principle affirmed by Braschi to be given force in state regulations?
— Sandor Katz, OutWeek Magazine No. 20, November 5, 1989, p. 34.
