Marty’s Place President and Board Member, Michael Rouppet, discusses how they change lives one person at a time.
The following is a transcript of the conversation between Karl and Michael.
MICHAEL
We are self-governed for people with HIV by people with HIV.
KARL
Welcome to “+Talk” on +Life where we’re all about turning positive into a plus. My guest today, Michael Rouppet. We are talking Marty’s Place, an affordable living for those of us with HIV. Hey, Michael. Good to see you.
MICHAEL
Hi. How you doing?
KARL
I’m doing really well. Marty’s Place. This is a phenomenal home in San Francisco. Tell us a bit about what it is, who it is, ’cause I know Marty’s Place has kind of been around for a while, hasn’t it?
MICHAEL
Yeah, it’s got a very distinguished history with HIV and our mission. The building was actually purchased by a Franciscan friar in the early ’90s before meds. So it was a place of refuge for people, because there were intersections. Going back to when people were diagnosed with HIV, we often lost housing. We lost our jobs. We were ostracized from our families. Sometimes if we were coupled up, families were vicious. So Richard Purcell, our founder, bought this building for his brother Marty, and hence the name Marty’s Place. Marty passed away soon after he had purchased the property. And we don’t know whether or not Marty actually lived here, but Richard continued the mission until about 2011 when he passed away. But he brought people in and there were many, many generations of people who lived here and passed here. And the way that they did it was out of a compassionate care model. So he had bequeathed and left the building to a nonprofit here in San Francisco under the terms that they continue the mission of housing people with HIV, and today we are the product of that wish. Today we’re the only self-governing cooperative in the United States, if not the world. We are self-governed for people with HIV by people with HIV. So we have adopted the Denver Principles as one of our key values, and two of us who live here are co-drafters of the San Francisco Principles 2020, which also called to renew the call for the Denver Principles that we need to be involved at every level of decision making about us, and this includes housing. So of our calls was nothing about us without us.
KARL
So tell us, just for those people who don’t know, what the Denver Principles is.
MICHAEL
In the principles, we demanded not to be called AIDS patients, but people living with HIV and AIDS. There were also demands that we needed to be involved at every level of decision making about us from the boardroom to outward conversations and our representation needed to be included because people were making horrible decisions about us without our involvement. And-
KARL
Seems shocking that that’s happening here in the United States, doesn’t it? That people are making decisions on behalf of others with no real knowledge. How strange.
MICHAEL
Right? Is it really that shocking?
KARL
No.
MICHAEL
So again, and in 2020, a group of us were delegates to the International AIDS Conference. And if you recall, everything was virtual at the time. And there was a group of us who had met afterward and kind of did a debrief or, like, what did you think? And we just drew on the Denver Principles, how there needed to be a new list of demands with a living, breathing document that needed to be applicable beyond even the terms that we could describe. And so we released the San Francisco Principles in 2020, which renewed that call of nothing about us without us.
KARL
How does something like Marty’s Place, the model that is Marty’s Place, a co-op, how does that empower those of us living with HIV who thought, “Where am I gonna go? I don’t have any family. I don’t have any money. I’m going to die alone, probably homeless?” How does having a model like Marty’s Place change that and empower somebody?
MICHAEL
We are an intentional community and we are brought together by common cause and so it’s easy for us to unite, and because we’ve all experienced discrimination. A lot of us who, particularly who are long-term survivors, held our loved ones as they died in our arms. We lost our community and we were here to experience that initial impact when people had Kaposi’s sarcoma. And thank God we continued to fight because we have established that generations that follow us, a lot of them have been protected from not having to experience that incredible traumatic sense of loss. But the older groups, we continue to experience that. And so we’ve come together in terms of housing. Our housing has a non-discrimination policy, so anybody with HIV. We work with community partners. Our community partner is Shanti, the Shanti Project here in San Francisco. We hope to be expanding that to other service providers to work with them to make sure that Marty’s Place is the best fit.
KARL
How does it work then? How many residents are there at Marty’s Place in San Francisco? How does the house function?
MICHAEL
On our webpage, it’s mpahc.org, we are public. We hope to replicate this model. In fact, we are willing and we are looking at, looking ahead, we’re looking at offering consulting to work with other people to replicate and duplicate this model. How we function is we meet regularly. We are a 501c3. So as the 501c3 works, everyone pays rent through their 501c3 and the 501c3 has a formal contract to the property owners, so it acts as a buffer. And as an organization, we are 100% democratic, which means our board of directors includes residents and a few non-residents. Right now, we have one non-member director who is a non-resident. And we are looking at, in time, to develop a vision, a long-term vision, and we are working on our next summary development plan in the next year, but it requires 100% participation. It requires us to be transparent. It requires us to operate by the principles that we’ve adopted as key organizational values.
KARL
Yeah, Michael, it seems like a model that could be and should be adopted nationwide because, you know, I can speak, you know, as a middle-aged gay man living with HIV, I often sit and think, “What happens when I don’t have any family left and I am by myself and I’m not doing this job anymore? Where do I go? How do I pay the bills? How do I make this work?” And it seems to me that Marty’s Place offers a really good solution not just to put a roof over one’s head, but to keep that sense of community and family, which is so important.
MICHAEL
There are components that have to be addressed, I think, to remedy in terms of, because San Francisco generally tends to break housing down into a few categories. We have independent living, which Marty’s Place is, and then there are supportive living to deal with people who have facilities that provide, you know, up to palliative care or extra kind of care or mental health support. We do not offer those kinds of, I could see Marty’s Place expanding in two areas. One, to continue that independent living and for those who live and work and are actively engaged to continue living in community, but also for what does the long-term vision look like for us as we age? And I think for folks with higher needs, there is room to develop a supportive living model where there could be facilities with staff members or professionals, qualified professionals, to offer that kind of in-home support and care for people all the way through the end of life phases, including palliative care.
KARL
Well, I think, you know, I’m inspired by Marty’s Place and by you and your story and you should mention all the amazing work you’ve done over the years, not just through Marty’s Place, but, you know, for the cause as an activist yourself. Michael Rouppet, thank you so much for joining me on “+Talk.”
MICHAEL
Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to meet you all.
KARL
Thank you. That is gonna do it for this episode of “+Talk.” We’ll put all the information, including the website and links that Michael spoke about, up on our website when we post this. Remember, you can follow +Life across social media platforms. We are at @PlusLifeMedia. And you can always check out the website, pluslifemedia.com. Until next time, be nice to one another. We’ll see you soon. Bye-bye.