Kim Holmes doesn’t like to sit still. When she’s busy — and she usually is, volunteering as an outreach worker and peer advocate for people struggling with substance use disorders — it’s easier to not think about the past. A trauma-filled childhood spent in West Baltimore’s Two sons lost to gun violence.
Family members claimed by cancer. Years spent with a heroin and cocaine addiction that consumed her every waking thought. And then an infection that attacks the immune system and can become AIDS without treatment.
At her sickest, Holmes required dozens of prescriptions and daily blood transfusions to stay alive. Now 62, Holmes only takes four pills a day. She has an apartment near Morgan State University in Northeast Baltimore and recently celebrated her 15th year sober.
That wouldn’t have been possible, she said, without the help of Johns Hopkins Medicine and groups like Project PLASE, which provides temporary housing, case management and other services to unhoused residents. But some of the programs that Holmes credits with saving her life — and many more organizations across Maryland that provide counseling, education and other services to people with HIV — are in danger after a surplus fund operated by the ran out of money last fiscal year. The Baltimore City Health Department sent a letter in April to providers, telling them that for the fiscal year starting July 1, it would receive 76% less state funding for HIV-related programs than it had expected fo.
