COVID-19 was an unexpected twist to 2020, impacting jobs, families, healthcare and beyond. While it has been challenging for everyone, COVID-19 has had devastating effects on our most vulnerable populations.
People experiencing homelessness have been in an especially difficult and vulnerable position during the pandemic. Social service providers who engage with the important and challenging work of ending homelessness, have also met unique obstacles in assisting their clients.
Shelter in Place
In March when COVID-19 shelter-in-place measures spread across the U.S. to at least 33 states, approximately 567,715 people were in a difficult situation: they didn’t have a home. That means that for about 10 percent of the U.S. on any given night, according to The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), it was impossible to abide by government mandates to stay at home. Furthermore, many shelters are open at night but are closed during the day. With many libraries, restaurants and other public places closed throughout the quarantine due to COVID-19, people experiencing homelessness had limited places to go in the daytime.
Social Distancing
According to the CDC, many homeless shelters and other social service support centers offer services in communal settings. This complicates social distancing practices, as people travel throughout the city during the day and come to sleep together at night or otherwise meet in close quarters. There are limited options for self-isolation when potential exposure and/or contraction occurs, especially if shelters do not have the resources they need to implement proper self-isolation measures. (Read more about this from Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in an interview with Vox.)
Health Care
Even as homeless shelters make efforts to reconfigure their operations to accommodate new government requirements and rally resources to help their clients through COVID-19, a large portion of people experiencing homelessness have preexisting health conditions, as well as a lack of easy access to healthcare. Many underlying health conditions that make people more at risk to COVID-19 are impacted by living in poverty including diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and others. Homeless shelters across the country have had to make the difficult decision to deny entry to people who are showing symptoms of COVID-19 or who have received positive test results in order to limit exposure to other clients.
The difficulties of the pandemic only reveal a need for greater infrastructure and resources to support the most vulnerable populations. At the Heart of Texas Homeless Coalition, we have a vision and are engaging in the important work of ending homelessness in Central Texas and beyond.
We are proud of the efforts made across the country and by our local community partners to attack and overcome the challenges presented by COVID-19, and we are grateful to community members like you who are dedicated to this cause.
To spotlight one of the many innovative solutions that arose during COVID-19 to support vulnerable populations, in cities all over the country, from Los Angeles to New York, homeless service providers partnered with local hotels to open quarantine sites. In the Central Texas area, one of our community partners, Mission Waco, engaged this solution dubbed “Hotels for Homeless” by Fox 44 News.
We are connected to a wide variety of service agencies. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly on our website for more information on how to get involved or how to get connected to the right agency to meet your specific needs. Check out our resources on COVID-19 for the latest updates in our Central Texas community.
If you are experiencing homelessness, here are recommendations from the CDC to best keep yourself safe at this time. You can also visit this link for a comprehensive list of all the agencies in our coalition.
If you are a homeless service provider, stay updated on how to plan and respond to COVID-19 with this guide from the CDC.