PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) – After three years on the streets, Tiecha Vannoy and her boyfriend Chris Foss plan to weather the pandemic this winter in a small white “pod” with electricity, heat and enough room for two.
Portland assembled tidy rows of the shelters, resembling gazebos, in three ad-hoc ‘villages’ this month – part of an unprecedented effort unfolding in cold-weather cities across the country to protect those without permanent homes like the temperature drops and the coronavirus rises.
‘We can just stay in our house. We don’t have to leave here unless we want to, ”Vannoy said, wiping away tears as they entered the hideout at a downtown train station. “It’s been a long time. He always says I must have faith, but I just got over it.”
The pandemic has hit homeless service providers in a cross-flow: demand is high, but their ability to provide services is limited. Shelter operators who have already cut their capacity to meet the demands of social distance are facing new tensions with the impending winter. Getting out of the cold can now mean spending a night in a warehouse, an old Greyhound bus station, schools or an old prison.
And people who are homeless face difficult choices. Many are reluctant to enter the limited number of places available to escape the cold for fear of contracting the virus.
“Those are people who, under normal circumstances, might come to a walk-in center to warm up, or take the subway to warm up, or go to a McDonald’s to warm up – and just don’t have those options available. ? ” asked Giselle Routhier of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City.
According to some projections, coronavirus cases will increase into January, when longer cold snaps tend to increase the demand for shelter. With the extension of a federal eviction moratorium ending in limbo on Dec. 31, housing advocates predict up to 23 million Americans could lose their housing.
As more space is needed, providers have gotten creative.
In Troy, New York, Joseph’s House and Shelter rents 19 rooms in an old convent for seasonal shelter. The Poverello Center in Missoula, Montana, cut its capacity in half in April, trying to add 150 socially remote beds in a new winter shelter in a warehouse. Portland opened new shelters in a former Greyhound bus station and disused prison, renting 300 rooms in six motels in addition to 100 pods.
Pallet, the company that makes the 64- or 100-square-foot pods, said it has supplied 1,500 beds to cities and towns in the US since the start of the pandemic.
Vannoy and Foss were terrified of staying in overcrowded shelters and worried about the safety of collecting used soda cans for change. Charities they relied on for hot lunches, free clothes, and hot showers that were closed. At one point, Foss went a month without changing. Now they have a safe place.
“People just locked themselves in the house, I get it,” Foss said of the sudden lack of services. “But it made it really dirty and filthy and you really had to gear up your own instincts to survive.”
Many places are using federal CARES Act money to expand winter shelters for people during COVID-19 – and some say the solutions provide a glimpse of what could be possible with more consistent, long-term funding.
Portland pays $ 1 million a month to rent the motel rooms for homeless people at high risk for COVID complications. In Delaware, a former 192-room Sheraton Hotel opened last week for $ 19.5 million that was purchased by New Castle County for use as an emergency shelter.
“There’s something poetic about taking a beautiful hotel and putting the most vulnerable individuals in those hotels to see if we can transfer them to something else,” said County Executive Matt Meyer.
In Ithaca, New York, lawyers have extended their reach to camps and other places where people take shelter.
When Jose Ortiz tested positive for the coronavirus last month, he was able to isolate himself in his carefully crafted shelter in “The Jungle,” a patch of forest on the outskirts of the city where dozens of people settle in tents and more permanent buildings. Lawyers brought him food, water, a propane heater, and coughing fits while keeping an eye on him, said Deb Wilke, homeless crisis relief coordinator at Second Wind Cottages.
“This is my house, so this is where I want to be,” said Ortiz outside his camp, complete with a tarp-covered “tree house” built to medium height, “and they were pretty good at making sure of it. make sure I had everything I needed. “
The camp is served by the Loaves & Fishes Christian ministry, which packs approximately 250 lunches or dinners per day for delivery to the area. Meanwhile, more staff will be hired this winter for telemedicine services of the non-profit REACH Medical.
“I think it will be a bit more work trudging through the snow on the mud,” said REACH health worker Matt Dankanich, who regularly makes laps around the wooded camp with a nurse. It can connect people with doctors and other healthcare providers through encrypted video calls.
However, despite masks and distance, outbreaks have hampered some operations.
An outbreak that began over Thanksgiving at the Union Gospel Mission in Portland ultimately sickened 18 people in temporary housing. As a result, the organization temporarily closed its doors, stopped the daily provision of meals, closed its thrift store and briefly closed another winter shelter. The mission has since been restored and is preparing to serve more than 1,000 Christmas meals.
In Missoula, outbreaks of the coronavirus have already quarantined two times a third of The Poverello Center staff. Meanwhile, the motel bought by the city for shelter is packed almost every day, said executive director Amy Allison Thompson.
In Ithaca, Ortiz’s health has improved. Others in the camps are expected to seek shelter in the city when the temperatures get frigid. But he hesitates to leave his “cozy” place in the forest.
‘All my stuff is here. My house is here, ”he said. “So it’s hard for me to just pick up and go.”
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Hill reported from Ithaca, New York.