Collaborations

Shared Interest partnered with Home Loan Guarantee Company (HLGC) in the establishment of the Housing for HIV Foundation, which enables HLGC to manage its HIV and Aids exposure in South Africa. HLGC is one of South Africa’s leading facilitators of affordable housing. The Housing for HIV program addresses a sector of the population in South Africa that is at high risk of the pandemic that continues to ravage South and Southern Africa, despite expanding government initiatives and intensifying grassroots mobilization. The program provides access to voluntary counseling, testing and appropriate care for lower income home loan borrowers who are or become HIV-positive.

The Housing for HIV Foundation was established specifically to fund Housing for HIV South Africa, which in turn provides the required voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) and treatment for affected borrowers. The Foundation was originally funded through a financial structure, with a significant loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), with subordination from a consortium created by JPMorgan UK. The investments from these funds provide a significant return to OPIC as well as $3 million per annum to the Foundation. The Housing for HIV Foundation donates these funds to cover the costs of VCT and treatment for affected borrowers, to ensure their continued health.

Services like these are vital, because the combination of hunger and AIDS, as Stephen Lewis says, “is the most ferocious assault on women ever.”

30 million Africans are HIV-infected – more than 7.6 million in South Africa alone. They constitute nearly 15.6 percent of South Africa’s population of 48.7 million inhabitants. Most victims of the virus are young women and men in their most productive years. In South Africa, the average age of those dying from AIDS is 37. Recent studies show that incomes in poor rural households with an HIV-positive member can fall by half. Children, especially girls, often miss school to look after the sick or to grow food. As in the rest of Africa, more women than men are infected.  South Africa’s government is now devoting substantial resources to fighting the epidemic. Housing for HIV’s experience shows an approximately 18 percent HIV-positive rate of the population of lower income home borrowers that it has tested.

In South Africa it is possible for HIV positive individuals to purchase life insurance, which is a prerequisite for mortgage loans.  While treatment is a precondition for the coverage, it is neither provided nor facilitated, which becomes problematic for potential borrowers. The Housing for HIV program has facilitated access to home loans for people who would have been disqualified because of HIV and AIDS. The organization is further working to prevent the most devastating effects of HIV/AIDS, by attempting to prolong and improve the quality of its sufferers’ lives, by protecting affected families from homelessness, and by combating the stigma against people living with the virus.