NEW YORK, NY October 16, 2003 — When prisoners are released on parole, the state requires they have an address. For parolees with AIDS or HIV, that address is often a small private rooming house. As WNYC's Andrea Bernstein found, the combination of little regulation, a souring economy - and a guaranteed stream of income -- can lead to abuse.

On a forgotten block in Bedford Stuyvesant, there's a shabby, three-story aluminum-sided building. Up a flight of stairs, Albert Jones shows us a hole in the ceiling covered in thick black mold.

Jones: See this, you know c'mon. We shouldn't have to live like that. ..You got mold and stuff from water dropping down out of the ceiling.

Jones, who has AIDS, says he's had three pneumonia attacks living in the house - and now he tells his neighbor one room over, Robert Watson, that he's moving out. Watson says he too, is looking at another building.

Jones: You mean that dump he's got over there on Myrtle Avenue?

Watson: I'd rather be somewhere than be put out in the street.

Watson and Jones live in a so-called safe house for parolees with AIDS, one of dozens around the city. The safe houses are supposed to help them stabilize their lives after years or decades in jail. But too often they're unsanitary traps the parolees afraid to leave, says Sam Rivera of the Staten Island AIDS Task Force.

Rivera: If you walk out of a place you're supposed to be living. If your parole officer comes and you're not there, immediately, a warrant is out for your arrest.

That gives the owners of these buildings tremendous power. Most of them are small entrepreneurs who own buildings in run-down neighborhoods. These buildings might command a few thousand dollars a month in rent, at best - if the landlords could even collect.

But by carving up their homes for parolees - up to 30 or more in some four-story buildings, four to a room -- the owners can get many times that. Plus, every tenant with AIDS comes with a guaranteed rent allowance of $480, paid directly to the landlords by the city. AIDS clients are most eagerly sought, because their allowance is twice that of other welfare clients.

The homes are privately run, so there are no periodic inspections by either the state department of parole or the city HIV AIDS Services Administration - HASA. It's up to the individual case workers to monitor conditions. And it often doesn't happen.

Spellman: I have a mantel in my room. I have a nice room it just needs to be fixed up.

On Jefferson Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brian Spellman stands on the parquet floor in his third floor room in the Davis El-Amin House.

Spellman moved here in January. In April - the heat and hot water and electricity were turned off because the bills were unpaid.

Spellman: As you can see the sink here it's coming off the floor, see its coming off the floor (internal edit here) the ceiling is peeling its coming down.

Spellman takes us on a tour of the house. There's light in the halls, today, because Spellman contacted the city department of Housing Preservation and Development, which got the electricity turned back on. In many of the rooms, there are clothes left behind, newspapers, even a diploma from Marist College. Some of the men left in a hurry, Spellman says, no longer able to tolerate the conditions with their compromised immune systems. But before they did, it was up to them to fix the building.

Spellman: He used to ask a couple of buys to like fix the sink or fix the basement ceiling and he would give them like 10, 20 dollars.

HASA paid a man named Eugene Davis $480 dollars for each of its clients living here in a building that's classified as a two-family home. That was while he was a fifty thousand dollar a year city employee, at the Human Resources Administration, the agency that runs HASA. His taking city money while also an employee is now being probed by the city department of investigation. There's more. Spellman says Davis would organize visits to a clinic in Queens.

Spellman: he would get everybody together to go to his clinic on Woodhaven Boulevard and he would give us like $5 to go to the clinic with him so he could use the Medicaid card I haven't even seen the doctor I just went there, took the five dollars and he used to take the card and get his money like that.

This account was confirmed, with just a few variations in the details, by seven other current or former residents of Davis's homes. Not all of them are HIV positive. Some, like Ray Everett, who's 69, come by way of another HRA agency - protective services for adults.

After we knock on his door on a recent Indian summer afternoon, he slowly climbs the stairs to retrieve his Medicare statement. It shows a number of doctor's visits, each billed at one hundred and fifteen dollars and eighty nine cents.

Bernstein: This was about once a week.

Everett: Sometimes twice a week, whenever they would tell me.

Bernstein: Each time they took you there -

Everett: All they would do is take my pressure.

After a couple of months of this, Everett stopped going.

Everett: I don't believe in going to the doctor. I got to be real sick and I'm not sick. That's why my teeth are like this. I'm scared of the doctor.

Bernstein: You're scared of the doctor, so you wouldn't have gone of your own choice?

Everett: No, for what? There's nothing wrong with me.

These activities have caught the attention of law enforcement authorities, but no charges have been filed. Unlike Everett, most of the men didn't complain.

Some, like Joe Bostic, once a parolee with AIDS himself and now co-director of the AIDS Housing Network, say this was the only world they knew.

Bostic: Remember I'm just coming out of prison this was all new to me I thought this was one of the legit houses, from my assumption this was legit.

The Staten Island AIDS Task Force's Sam Rivera agrees recent parolees are vulnerable.

Bostic: and if you complain if you believe if I make a complaint and I'm out of here and I have no place to go and prison is still an option, you might stay quiet.

Brian Spellman didn't stay quiet. He contacted a state senator, and was scheduled to meet with a local tenant organizing group to talk about taking over the building. That meeting never happened. Three days before it was scheduled, he was sent back to jail on a parole violation.

We tried to contact Eugene Davis, but he didn't answer his phone and wasn't home on several occasions we knocked on the door. Neighbors say they haven't seen him in months.

All of this troubles Jennifer Flynn of the New York City AIDS Housing Network.

Flynn: One of the big problems with using this type of housing is that there's zero accountability. No one knows they exist. They're on some list that's really hard to get a hold of, they're not required by anybody there's no contract.

Indeed, HASA says its doesn't even have a list of the buildings, saying that it is parole who makes the decision to send them there. Parole also, denies having a master list, and says its up to parole officers to make sure no one gets placed in a home that is inappropriate.

The stories are not all bleak. Over on Pacific Street in Brownsville, Philip Hogan, who had a background in social services, decided a decent home could make all the difference for a parolee with AIDS. He started Hogan's residence. Though crowded, its clean and well cared for.

Outside, James Adams is sitting in a shiny new SUV, smiling. While living here, Adams launched a carpentry business

Adams: I saved up enough to buy this jeep and send money down south to take over the house.

Bernstein: Does it ever feel crowded in here to you

Adams: Hey for the last, I say, whoa, I can't even really count the years I been living in crowded places with nothing but guys

Thanks to his experience here, he won't have to do that any more.

Adams: and I'm happy I'm going to be smiling every day I turn my key and walk in my house.

This is what these transitional homes are supposed to do. But operating far from public view and the regulatory eye of the state, so often they do not. For WNYC, I'm Andrea Bernstein.