A splitting headache, fatigue, and fever; the ever-looming possibility of unemployment; and an unexpected encampment sweep that sends your life-preserving medication into the nearest trash receptacle. This is life for homeless people with HIV.

Homeless and HIV Positive: Understanding the Connection

Millions of Americans endure homelessness each year. Among them are people who are HIV Positive. Today, we examined the tribulations of navigating a life-threatening, highly stigmatized illness from the trenches of tent encampments, rundown motel rooms, and city sidewalks. This is what happens when unfathomable obstacles collide with an incurable disease.

“When someone is homeless, people often think the solution is simple: get housing, get a job, get stable. But for people living with HIV, disability, trauma, mental illness, and poverty, those steps are not simple. Every solution requires executive function, transportation, communication, paperwork, money, emotional stability, and support. Those are often the very things homelessness destroys.”

— Best-Selling Author and Founder of Media Company in a Box, Joshua T. Berglan, on being homeless twice while living with HIV.

50% of HIV Patients Will Face Homelessness After Their Diagnosis

Along the scattered streets of our nation sit thousands of tiny villages built on broken dreams. These are the tent encampments constructed along the riversides and across the street from industrial complexes. They are the parking lots where people slumber in the cars they can’t afford to put gas in.

From motel rooms to neighbors’ sofas, abandoned buildings to underground transit stations, homelessness exists hidden or in plain view. It is one of the most evident shames of our society, opulent and wealthy, yet still so poverty-stricken and cruel. And estimates reveal that within these vulnerable unsheltered communities, many of the inhabitants have HIV or AIDS.

In a candid conversation with Invisible People reporters, Joshua Berglan, a formerly homeless and HIV positive author, shared his story.

Berglan was living with HIV, dissociative identity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and later frequency-induced tremors. He described the first time he was homeless as a demoralizing experience.

“It happened right after I made a serious life change,” he said. “I had finally surrendered. I had stopped running from what I believed I was created to do and made the decision that I was going to do the work to become who I was created to be. Then, I got out of jail and walked into homelessness.”

Read the full article about the plight of people who are HIV positive and homeless at Invisible People.