PORTLAND, Oregon (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 “pod” with electricity, heat and enough space for two.
This month, Portland brought together rows of shelters, resembling garden sheds, in three ad-hoc “villages,” as part of an unprecedented effort in cold-weather cities across the country to keep them safe. people without permanent homes as temperatures drop and coronavirus cases increase. .
“It simply came to our notice then. We don’t have to leave here unless we want to, “Vannoy said, wiping away tears as they moved to the shelter near a downtown train station.” It’s been a long time. He always tells me I have faith, but I I was just finishing it ”.
The pandemic has caught homeless service providers in increasing intensity: demand is high, but their ability to provide services is declining. Foster operators who are already reducing their ability to meet social distance requirements are facing new tensions with the arrival of winter. Coming in from the cold can now mean spending a night in a warehouse, a former Greyhound bus station, schools or an old prison.
And people living homeless face difficult decisions. Many are hesitant to introduce the small number of spaces available to escape the cold for fear of catching the virus.
“Those people (who are) who, under normal circumstances, could go into a downhill center to warm up, or go to the subway to warm up or go to a McDonald’s to warm up, and just not have those options available So what? ” asked Giselle Routhier, of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York.
According to some projections, coronavirus cases will increase until January, when longer cold outbreaks tend to increase the demand for shelter. With the extension of a federal eviction moratorium that will end Dec. 31 in limbo, housing advocates predict up to 23 million Americans they could lose their home.
With more space needed, vendors have been creative.
In Troy, New York, Joseph’s House and Shelter rents 19 rooms in a former convent for a seasonal shelter. The Poverello Center in Missoula, Montana, halved its capacity in April and rushed to add 150 socially distant beds in a new winter shelter in a warehouse. Portland opened new shelters at a former Greyhound bus station and an unused prison and rented 300 rooms at six motels in addition to the 100 pods.
Pallet, the company that makes the 64- or 100-square-foot pods, said it has provided 1,500 beds in U.S. cities and towns since the pandemic began.
Vannoy and Foss were terrified of staying in overcrowded shelters and worried about the safety of picking up used soda cans to change. Charities they had relied on for hot lunches, free clothes and closed water showers. At one point, Foss spent a month without changing clothes. They now have a safe space.
“People just locked themselves in the house, I get it,” Foss said of the sudden lack of services. “But it really made it dirty and nasty and you really had to put your own survival instincts up to the task.”
Many localities use CARES Act federal money to increase winter shelter options for people amid COVID-19, and some say the solutions offer an insight 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 for use as an emergency shelter opened last week.
“There’s something a little poetic about taking a pretty nice hotel and locating the most vulnerable people in those hotels to see if we can move them to something different,” said county executive Matt Meyer.
In Ithaca, New York, advocates have expanded the spread to campsites and other places where people flock.
When Jose Ortiz tested positive for coronavirus last month, he was able to isolate himself in his elaborate shelter in “The Jungle,” a forest on the outskirts of the city where dozens of people settle in tents and more structures. permanent. Advocates brought him food, water, a propane heater and cough drops as they followed him, said Deb Wilke, a crisis relief coordinator for homeless people at Second Wind Cottages.
“This is my house, so this is where I want to be,” Ortiz said outside his camp, with a canvas-covered “tree house” built up to the waist, “and they were pretty good assuring- I had everything I needed. “
The camp is served by the Christian ministry Loaves & Fishes, which surrounds about 250 lunches or dinners a day to deliver them around the area. Meanwhile, more staff are being hired this winter for the telemedicine services launched by non-profit REACH Medical.
“I think it will be a little more work going through the snow on the mud,” said Matt Dankanich, a REACH community health worker who does regular rounds through the forest camp with a nurse. You can connect people with doctors and other providers through encrypted video calls.
However, despite the masks and distancing, the outbreaks have slowed some operations.
An outbreak that began during Thanksgiving at the Union Gospel mission in Portland ended up making 18 people sick in transitional housing. As a result, the organization temporarily closed its doors, stopped the daily distribution of meals, closed the second-hand store, and briefly closed another winter shelter. Since then, the mission has recovered and is preparing to serve more than 1,000 Christmas meals.
In Missoula, coronavirus outbreaks have sent a third of the staff at the Poverello Center to quarantine twice already. Meanwhile, the motel bought by the city as a shelter is full almost every day, said executive director Amy Allison Thompson.
In Ithaca, Ortiz’s health has improved. Other camps are expected to seek refuge in the city when temperatures cool. But he resists leaving his “cozy” place in the woods behind.
“All my things are here. My house is here, ”he said. “So it’s hard for me to catch up and leave.”
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Hill reported from Ithaca, New York.