![]() At least 43 homeless people have died of the disease in New York City so far. Close to 6,000 people are already being sheltered in hotel rooms, but an estimated 17,000 remain in shelters. New York Council Speaker Corey Johnson and his allies want the city to do the same. San Francisco isn’t the only city where debate is raging over hotel housing for the homeless. “When we have something so contagious, I’m concerned that if we don’t squash the virus, we might not be able to fully open up”. “In past epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and hepatitis homeless folks would carry these diseases longer than the general population,” says Chris Herring, an organizer with the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness and a Ph.D candidate at UC Berkeley who contributed to the School of Public Health’s report. The existing policy will make both homeless people and the general population more vulnerable, advocates argue. On the streets, meanwhile, people like Wilson are exposed to the elements and cannot access the levels of food and assistance that they normally would. The alternative is leaving unhoused residents in shelters, where outbreaks like the one at MSC South are a continual danger despite the city’s effort to de-densify the population. That’s why an April report from the University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health recommended that hotel rooms be used “not just for quarantine and isolation,” but for housing all the region’s homeless people.Īfter all, San Francisco still has 30,000 vacant hotel rooms, and at least 8,000 homeless people who are not in quarantine or isolation. Covid-19 appears to be especially virulent in confined, congregate settings like prisons, nursing homes, and homeless shelters. In early April, an outbreak rapidly spread through the Multi-Services Center (MSC) South, the city’s largest homeless shelter, resulting in over 100 residents and 10 staff members being infected.Īdvocates had been warning such an outcome was inevitable as long as shelters remained the principal way the city housed the homeless. San Francisco’s response is one of the most aggressive in the US, but advocates and the city’s Board of Supervisors argue it isn’t nearly enough to address the full scope of the challenge presented by Covid-19. “We are also seeing a level of personal hygiene accessibility for unsheltered people being deployed at a scale that we have not previously seen”. ![]() “ has never been used at the scale that we’re seeing now and with the speed of procurement,” says Samantha Batko, a research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. In cities such as New York and Boston, with cold winters and large unsheltered populations, authorities have rented small numbers of hotel rooms when shelters get overwhelmed.īut these pandemic-related interventions are on a different order of magnitude. In recent years, municipal governments have rolled out public hand washing stations and easily cleaned outdoor bathrooms in an effort to ameliorate the pre-pandemic homelessness crisis. Outdoor restrooms are being installed, shelter populations thinned, encampments policies softened, and hotel rooms rented for those who have to quarantine. ![]() San Francisco’s blueprint is similar to programs that have since been set up in many major cities. It ended its policy of breaking up encampments of homeless people, in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The city also set up 15 outdoor bathrooms and 30 hand washing stations in addition to the existing 25 locations in the Pitstop Program. “Now, we’re opening these things in three or four days”. “The work of opening a permanent supportive housing site, which are very similar to the hotels that we are opening, can take nine months to a year on a regular basis,” says Emily Cohen, interim director of strategy and external affairs for the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. San Francisco accounts for approximately 5% of the state’s overall homeless population. About 25% of the hotel rooms obtained for the state’s homeless population, so far, have been given to individuals in San Francisco, according to Mayor London Breed. That’s far beyond what other cities in California have accomplished so far. Over 1,500 rooms have been rented by the city to house the homeless and other needy populations, where residents can get three meals a deal and their own bathrooms. ![]() To get a room, a person has to test positive, be over the age of 60, or have been exposed to an infected person. San Francisco was the most aggressive jurisdiction to take up California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Project Roomkey, which funnels federal and state funds to local governments to rent unused hotel rooms to house the most vulnerable homeless residents. ![]()
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