SAN FRANCISCO: PLEDGES TO KEEP HIV CLINICS OPEN

City health and UCSF officials have pledged to keep open two federally funded HIV prevention programs for transgender people. Both programs were jeopardized by the ouster of a professor who specializes in services for transgenders and secured the federal grants in the first place. An audit by City Controller Ed Harrington released Monday recommended that the Department of Public Health take over a program called TRANS that runs a drop-in center and refers transgender people to substance abuse programs. The city would select a community organization to run the program under contract. San Francisco supervisors would have to approve spending $150,000 to keep the program running until Oct. 1, when a federal grant of $400,000 would kick in to finance its fifth year of operation. Barbara Garcia, deputy director of the city's Department of Public Health, said the department is very supportive of the TRANS project and is working with Supervisor Bevan Dufty to secure the $150,000 needed to keep it going. Harrington's audit concluded that unexpectedly high rent for the TRANS office had caused the program to run out of money for this fiscal year. Instead of spending $2,000 a month as budgeted, the program's directors were forced to pay more than $10,000 a month after two other tenants that were to share the office had dropped out. SOURCE OF THIS STORY