The National AIDS Foundation is a part of Father Joe's Villages in San Diego. Father Joe Carroll started offering shelter to AIDS patients in 1988. In those days, he says, the shelters were essentially hospices where people went to die.
But now, he says, the shelters are places where people with AIDS live while they learn new skills, adjust to their disease, then move back into life.
Carroll : We have people in our chef's training program who've gone on to be chefs in restaurants. We have other people who go on to different types of office jobs who are now renting from us in our affordable housing projects.
Over 20 years of operating AIDS shelters, Father Joe says the face of AIDS patients has changed, too.
In the beginning, there many more women and children. Married men took the HIV virus home with them. Now, Father Joe sees few women or children. Most of the AIDS patients he sees now are single men who've contracted the virus either through unprotected sex or intravenous drug use.
