Days after Manitoba declared a public health emergency over rising HIV rates, a Christian home for people living with the immunodeficiency virus is afraid it may have to close its doors, potentially leaving residents on the street.

“Payroll is next week. We don’t have money to pay our staff,” said Moe Feakes, director of House of Hesed, a rambling two-storey red brick house on Edmonton Street currently home to nine people living with HIV.

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On a warm afternoon earlier this week, two residents were sitting on the front porch enjoying a smoke in the sunshine. But inside, in a hallway lined with inspirational Christian posters, Feakes, a wiry 69-year-old woman with a pixie cut dyed a fiery red, was pressing her palms into her cheeks, trying to keep from weeping.

Donations have dropped off and costs have spiked. House of Hesed operates on a monthly budget of about $25,000. Employment and Income Assistance provides $589 for each resident every month, the same amount provided to emergency and transitional shelters.

That adds up to less than $6,000. Everything else comes from private donors and seven churches that support the ministry.

Feakes wrote to the provincial government last year, pleading for more. She was told the amount is set by legislation and can’t be raised.

“I’m tapped. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t understand how anybody thinks that $589 is enough,” she said.

Feakes was in her mid-30s in 1992 when she held the hand of one of her best friends as he died of complications from AIDS. She then turned her grief into action. She began volunteering with an agency that paired........

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