The residents usually show each other around and learn about each other's lives. If anybody gets sick, other clients often help. Mr. Schade said. There is no typical client, he said. About 75 percent are men, but they have ranged in age from 21 to 60.
Nobody is rejected.
AIDS Project helps provide medical services, a local church brings evening meals and volunteers drive clients to appointments if they don't have cars. DeLaCerda is exactly the kind of safe haven its founders hoped to create. Robb Dussliere, a Quad-Cities man with AIDS, was instrumental in planning the house during the early 1990s. He died three weeks before it opened. Mr. Dussliere's original concept of opening a hospice was scaled down into a housing facility, Ms. Russell said.