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Keith Cylar- HIV+ Activist, Founder of Housing Works Dies at 45
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"Keith Cylar, Who Found Homes for AIDS Patients, Dies at 45"
By WOLFGANG SAXON
NY Times
April 8, 2004
Keith Cylar, an entrepreneur among AIDS activists and co-founder of Housing Works, which helps homeless New Yorkers living with AIDS, was found dead in his apartment in the East Village on Monday. He was 45.
The immediate cause of death was cardioarrhythmia (cardiomyopathy), according to Housing Works, of which he was co-president and chief operating officer. Its announcement said that he had returned from an AIDS conference in Houston on Sunday and died in his sleep. He had had AIDS since 1989, and also had a serious heart ailment, cardiomyopathy.Advertisement
Mr. Cylar came to the cause through the radical group Act Up and its housing committee. He formed Housing Works in Manhattan with three partners in 1990 and helped build it into one of the country's largest AIDS self-help efforts, with an annual operating budget approaching $30 million.
Trained as a clinical social worker, he oversaw all client services and supplied his own brand of practical business acumen.
Militant in its tactics, community-based in its reach and often the agency of last resort in the five boroughs of New York City, Housing Works has found shelter for 15,000 people, by its count. It offers social services like health and mental care and referrals. In January, it said more than 2,000 H.I.V.-positive people were being helped by its centers, which also offer job training and assistance in applying for other benefits.
Its income comes from private donations but also from sources like fees for services covered by Medicaid and returns from its own nonprofit ventures. Millions are raised through its catering division, a used-book cafe in SoHo and four thrift shops whose offerings include donated designer clothing.
Keith Cylar was born in Norfolk, Va. He was a 1982 psychology graduate of Boston University and received a master's degree in social work at Columbia in 1988, by which time he had lived with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, for several years.
In the 1980's, he worked as a therapist and social worker at a number of places, among them Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital, the Lower East Side Service Center and Montefiore Medical Center, where he was a case manager in 1989.
In 1987, he joined the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — Act Up — and helped found its housing committee, a forerunner of Housing Works. In his earlier activist days, he took part in noisy street demonstrations, and his advocacy at Housing Works also led to confrontations with public officials.
More recently he and the organization became more involved in projects like research for the Rand Corporation on the cost-effectiveness of H.I.V. services. He was an investigator in a national venture with Beth Israel Medical Center to provide minority patients with better access to AIDS clinical trials.
Mr. Cylar is survived by his partner, Charles King, a co-founder and his co-president at Housing Works; his mother, Anna E. Patton of Shaker Heights, Ohio; and his foster parents, Marva and Harry Langaster of Portsmouth, Va.
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