More than 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV and an estimated 56,000 people become newly infected each year. Some of the highest HIV-infection and death rates in the US are found in southern states such as Louisiana, where deep poverty combines with harmful laws and policies that increase the risk of acquiring, transmitting and dying of HIV. In the city of New Orleans, many people struggle for survival by exchanging sex for money, drugs, or life necessities while trying to protect themselves from HIV. This report presents the voices of sex workers, drug users, transgender women and others neglected, punished, and stigmatized by state laws and policies that endanger their safety, health and lives.
Eight years after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, many in New Orleans continue to feel its devastation. More than half of New Orleans’ 350,000 residents live in or near poverty and the city has the second-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. One quarter of the city’s housing stock is blighted or vacant. Yet the Louisiana state government does little to invest in housing, health care or support services for people unable to meet their basic needs. At the same time, state criminal laws block rather than facilitate a public health approach to sex work and injection drug use, which contributes to a death rate from AIDS in Louisiana that is more than double the national average.