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GMHC Co-Founder Larry Kramer Pivots Again on Charity’s Move Out of Chelsea

Gay activist and estranged Gay Men’s Health Crisis co-founder Larry Kramer is once again railing against the possibility that the nearly 30-year-old AIDS charity might be moving to a building where some of its services may not be able to follow it. We reported back in April that the move — from the 24th Street Tisch Building, where the charity has lived since 1997, to the AP Building on 33rd Street and 10th Avenue — was potentially imminent because of an enormous rent hike and new facility-maintenance fees. But at the time, GMHC leaders had convinced a skeptical Kramer that the move was a good thing. “It is time to move on to a new home,” Kramer he said in an e-mail to journalists at the time. “Stop complaining, you naysayers!” Now, though, he’s changed his mind again, upon hearing that the hot lunches and medical services — beloved and much-needed traditions at the Tisch Building — won’t be following the organization as it moves west to the new office building. “It’s just too bad because of a board’s stupidity and an executive director’s incompetence they’re going to lose all that,” he told the Journal. (“We will have increased numbers of treatment rooms, of counseling rooms,” GMHC director Marjorie Hill told the Journal. “I want the money to go to programs. I don’t want to give this money to a landlord.”) In an e-mail to members of the media, Kramer added: “Electing to go ahead into this truly idiotic move is one of the great mysteries of the present moment.”

AIDS Group Divided Over Planned Move [WSJ]

GMHC Co-Founder Larry Kramer Pivots Again on Charity’s Move Out of Chelsea