Results: .Tenderloin Health has been providing services to the community since 1990. Tenderloin Health was formed from a merger between Continuum and TARC in 2006.
Target demographics: Demographics of the population served by the agency. (Gay/straight, male/female/transgendered, % of low income/homeless, etc): Tenderloin Health (TLH) is a not-for-profit community-based organization whose primary target area is San Francisco, California, which is the 13th largest city in the United States, yet has the third largest number of residents diagnosed with AIDS, as well as having the third largest population of homeless persons, behind the much larger cities of New York and Los Angeles. Our program targets SF’s District 6, known as the Tenderloin (TL) / Civic Center. While every SF community has been impacted by HIV/AIDS, the dual impact of these two public health crises is unparalleled in the Tenderloin (TL) district. Although the TL is comprised of only 60 City blocks and contains just 10.4% of the City’s population, it has the highest concentration (46%) of homeless persons in the City, the highest proportion of residents living in poverty, and has become the neighborhood that is the epicenter of new HIV infections in SF. People living with HIV/AIDS in the TL are more likely to have co-morbidities with mental health, substance abuse, hepatitis, tuberculosis (TB), sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and other health problems. Homelessness further diminishes their access to health care. A further subset have extremely chaotic and disorganized lives and have frequent encounters with criminal justice, emergency, and mental health crisis services. Three out of the five most densely populated census tracts in SF are in the TL, according to an analysis of 2000 federal census data by SF Cityscape. One census tract, number 122, a piece of the TL bounded by Van Ness, Leavenworth, Post, and Ellis Streets, has a population density equivalent to 99,085 people per square mile. Since the population is clustered so close together, and there are few alternative spaces available, the streets are often used as public space, the report noted. In combination with poverty and other social issues, the concentration of residents makes communicable diseases easier to spread. The TL is an overwhelmingly low-income area: while median city-wide income in 2001 was $55,221, the median household income in the TL was $20,363, and while SF’s overall poverty rate was 11.3 %, the poverty rate in the TL was 27.4%, the highest of any area of the city. With 88% of the TL’s households designated as low income the neighborhood contains the highest concentration of the city’s poor. U.S. Health Resource and Services Administration's (HRSA) Bureau of Primary Health Care rates the census tracks in the TL as a Medically Underserved Area community with a Medically Underserved Population.
Service providers based in the TL who recently undertook a neighborhood needs assessment estimate that between 2,000 and 2,500 TL residents are living with HIV or AIDS; of these, 1,300 to 1,500 have co-occurring mental illness and substance addiction. A reason for the ongoing increase in new AIDS cases in the TL is linked to the number of homeless injection drug users (IDUs) and their sex partners as well as transgendered individuals and sex workers. Over the last five years, the number of new AIDS cases in SF has continued to decrease, yet in the TL, this has not been the case.
The TL has the largest concentration of homeless residents in the City, the most transgendered persons, and is the node for both male and female street-based sex industry workers, which attracts IDUs, men who are on the “down low” (MSM and Male-to-Female transgenders who do not identify as gay) and MSM IDUs. It can be inferred from data on Persons Living with HIV/AIDS and community evidence that the primary risk groups in the TL are MSM, MSM IDUs, transgendered persons and IDUs other than MSM, including transgenders.
Direct beneficiaries per year: Number of people with AIDS/HIV served in the past year by the agency: Eight-thousand unduplicated clients with HIV/AIDS were served last year
Programs: Providing permanent, emergency and transitional housing and services to low income san francisco residents who are the most at risk for hiv/aids.
provide health and social services to residents of san francisco who are low income and infected with hiv/aids. Also provide hiv testing and prevention services to san francisco residents to limit the spread of hiv.
provide oral health care and provide work force development for san francisco residents infected with hiv.
