PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – After three years on the street, Tiecha Vannoy and her boyfriend Chris Foss plan to withstand the pandemic this winter in a small white “bridge” with electricity, heat and enough space for two.
Portland gathered neat rows of garden shelters this month in three ad hoc “villages” – part of an unprecedented effort in cold-weather cities nationwide to keep homeless people safe. , while temperatures drop and coronavirus cases rise.
“We just have to stay in our little place. We don’t have to leave here unless we want to, ”Vannoy said, wiping away tears as they walked into the shelter near a downtown train station. “It’s been a long time. He always tells me to have faith, but I just got over it. “
The pandemic has caught service providers for the homeless in a cross-cutting context: demand is high, but their capacity to provide services is limited. Shelter operators who are already reducing their capacity to meet social distance requirements are facing new stresses during the winter. Coming from the cold can now mean spending a night in a warehouse, an old Greyhound bus stop, schools or an old prison.
And people facing homelessness are facing difficult choices. Many are reluctant to enter the small number of spaces available to escape the cold for fear of catching the virus.
“Those (are) people who, under normal circumstances, could walk into a center to warm up or go on the subway to warm up or go to a McDonald’s to warm up – and they just don’t have these options are available. What then? ”Asked Giselle Routhier of the New York Coalition for the Homeless.
After some projections, coronavirus cases will increase until January, when longer cold moments tend to increase the demand for shelter. With the extension of a federal eviction moratorium ending in the language on December 31, housing lawyers predict up to 23 million Americans he could lose his home.
With more space needed, suppliers have become creative.
In Troy, New York, Joseph’s House and Shelter rents 19 rooms in an old convent for a seasonal shelter. The Poverello Center in Missoula, Montana, halved its capacity in April and rushed to add 150 socially removable beds to a new winter shelter in a warehouse. Portland has opened new shelters in a former Greyhound bus station and an unused prison and rents 300 rooms at six motels in addition to the 100 bridges.
Pallet, the company that produces 64- or 100-square-foot pods, said it has provided 1,500 beds to U.S. cities and towns since the pandemic began.
Vannoy and Foss were terrified of staying in crowded shelters and worried about the safety of collecting used soda cans for change. Charities they had relied on for hot lunches, free clothes, and closed hot showers. At one point, Foss spent a month without changing his clothes. Now they have a safe space.
“People just locked themselves in the house, I understand,” Foss said of the sudden lack of services. “But it really made it dirty and ugly and you really had to put your own survival instincts into it at high speed.”
Many localities are using the federal CARES Act money to increase winter shelter options for people in the midst of COVID-19 – and some say the solutions provide a glimpse into what would be possible with more consistent long-term funding.
Portland pays $ 1 million a month to rent motel rooms for homeless people at high risk for COVID complications. In Delaware, a former 192-room Sheraton hotel bought for $ 19.5 million by New Castle County to be used as an emergency shelter opened last week.
“There’s something poetic about taking a pretty nice hotel and placing the most vulnerable individuals in those hotels to see if we can move on to something different,” said county executive Matt Meyer.
In Ithaca, New York, lawyers have expanded to camps and other places where people take refuge.
When Jose Ortiz tested positive for coronavirus last month, he managed to isolate himself in his elaborate “Jungle” shelter, a patch of forest on the outskirts of the city, where dozens of people sit in tents and more permanent structures. Lawyers brought him food, water, a propane heater and cough drops as they kept him informed, said Deb Wilke, coordinator for reducing the homeless crisis at Second Wind Cottages.
“This is my home, so here I want to be,” Ortiz said outside his camp, complete with a tarpaulin-covered “tree house” built to the waist from the ground, “and they were quite adept at make sure I had everything I needed. “
The camp is served by the Christian Ministry of Bread and Fish, which packs about 250 lunches or dinners a day for delivery in the area. Meanwhile, more staff is being hired this winter for the telemedicine services launched by the non-profit organization REACH Medical.
“I think there will be a little more work going through the snow over the mud,” said Matt Dankanich, a REACH community health worker who runs regular rounds through the forested camp with a nurse. It can connect people with doctors and other providers through encrypted video calls.
However, despite the masks and the distance, the outbreaks prevented some operations.
An outbreak that began during Thanksgiving Day at the Union Gospel Mission in Portland eventually sickened 18 people in transitional housing. As a result, the organization temporarily closed its doors, stopped the daily distribution of meals, closed the shopping store and briefly closed another winter shelter. Since then, the mission has returned and is preparing to serve over 1,000 Christmas meals.
In Missoula, coronavirus outbreaks have already sent a third of the Poverello Center’s staff into quarantine twice already. Meanwhile, the motel the city bought for shelter is full almost every day, said CEO Amy Allison Thompson.
In Ithaca, Ortiz’s health improved. Others in the camps are expected to seek shelter in the city when temperatures cool. But he is reluctant to leave his “comfortable” place in the woods behind.
“All my things are here. My house is here, “he said. “So it’s hard for me to get up and leave.”
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Hill reported from Ithaca, New York.