The Peabody House, the only long-term assisted living facility in Maine for people who have HIV and AIDS, is closing after 13 years.

The six-bed facility, located on Portland's West End, has been home to 71 people with HIV and AIDS since it opened on Valentine's Day in 1995. Thirty-nine residents died there.

New drugs have been helping people with HIV/AIDS manage the disease better and live longer, and the closure of the Peabody House is, in part, a reflection of those advances.

"We've seen a decline over the years in a need for this type of services, and as we've seen that decline we've seen more of an increase in people wanting independent housing because they're living with HIV," said Patti Capouch, executive director of the Frannie Peabody Center. "So we're really going to be shifting our focus. We have independent housing programs, so we're going to really be focusing on those."

Capouch emphasized that only the Peabody House is closing. Other programs of the Franny Peabody Center "are still going strong."

Capouch said there are five people living in the house right now, and the facility will not close until the center can transition them to other services.

"I want to make sure that it's understood that people are still getting real sick with HIV, that HIV has not gone away," she said. "We enrolled more people last year in our case management program than we ever have in the history of the organization, so we've got a lot of work to do."