Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission—a shelter that can house more than 1,000 people per night—was well stocked with hand sanitizer.
Hand-washing stations were set up at the shelter’s entrances. Staff consulted with public health officials and encouraged residents to follow social distancing guidelines, says CEO Andy Bales.
But that wasn’t enough to prevent an outbreak of COVID-19 that has left one resident and employee, Gerald Shiroma, dead. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced that at least 42 other people at the mission have contracted the virus. Bales says an additional 13 positive tests have come in since then.
“This has been the biggest challenge of my life,” he says. “We were not prepared for this monster.”
In a nightly address Tuesday, Mayor Eric Garcetti suggested the outbreak was the result of overcrowding at the shelter and that a reduction in the number of people living at the mission would help contain its spread. “That was a danger... to have people crammed in that much,” he said.
The city is continuing to build and open new shelters, but a growing number of researchers and advocates are questioning the wisdom of those plans.
“We’re not sure the shelters are safe,” says Randall Kuhn, associate professor of community health sciences at UCLA.
A new report co-authored by Kuhn highlights how vulnerable homeless residents are to the virus. It finds that people experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and two to three times more likely to die than the general population.
The report’s authors suggest that, compared to shelters, hotel rooms and other “private accommodations would dramatically reduce the likely transmission of disease.”
That’s a position supported by No Vacancy, a newly formed coalition of homeless advocates demanding that California commandeer enough hotel rooms to house the more than 150,000 homeless residents who reside within the state.
“I’m not going to say the shelters are bad,” says No Vacancy spokesperson Jed Parriott. “But if someone gets [the virus], it can spread to everyone else so quickly.”
Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out Project Roomkey, a plan to secure empty rooms for those exposed to the virus or at the greatest risk of severe illness. In Los Angeles, local officials aim to lease 15,000 rooms for people who are over the age of 65 or suffer from chronic health conditions that could make them more likely to develop a life-threatening case of COVID-19.
Parriott says a better goal would be to find rooms for anyone who needs one.
“Every unhoused person is vulnerable,” he says. “Why aren’t we at least committing to getting everyone into a room?”
Many shelters in Los Angeles, including emergency housing sites established at local recreation centers, have open layouts in which residents share living spaces and bathrooms.
To safeguard residents from exposure to the virus, shelter operators are spacing beds at least six feet apart. Kuhn says these precautions are necessary, but that there are still so many unknowns about how the virus spreads that it’s difficult to guarantee that they will be fully effective.
Parriott says he’s spoken with unhoused residents who’ve avoided shelters because they’re worried about getting sick.
Even before the arrival of COVID-19, some homeless residents were reluctant to stay in shelters. A 2018 KPCC investigation found evidence of “bedbugs, rats, foul odors, poor lighting, harassment,” and other issues in some of the 60 shelters funded by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority at that time.
But finding individual rooms for the nearly 60,000 people in Los Angeles County who experience homelessness on a given night could be challenging.
Roughly three out of four unhoused residents sleep on streets and sidewalks, or in vehicles. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says the shelters are “a valuable resource” because they provide those residents with access to soap and water, food, and medical care.
Kuhn acknowledges these are important resources that are particularly difficult to find on the street. He says the pandemic should be a “wakeup call” for California leaders and homeless service providers—one that illustrates the need to prioritize permanent housing for all Angelenos.
“It’s unfortunate that the wakeup call is coming at a time when shelters might not be the answer,” he says.
After a major outbreak at one of San Francisco’s largest homeless shelters, the city’s Board of Supervisors ordered Mayor London Breed to secure enough hotel rooms to house nearly all of the city’s 8,000 homeless residents.
Chris Herring, a PhD student at the University of California Berkeley who works with the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, says the speed at which infections multiplied at the shelter—jumping from five to 70 in just three days—illustrates just how tough it is to contain the virus once even a single case is identified.
“A lot of us were hoping that if you test everybody weekly you can control the shelter setting,” he says. “This really upended some of the key assumptions we had that could have made shelters workable.”
Herring is a co-author of a new UC Berkeley report that finds that “high-density congregate settings” like shelters “are not safe,” even if operators follow current guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—such as spacing beds at least six feet apart from one another.
“Residents of these shelters need the types of physical barriers provided by single-occupancy units to protect themselves from infection or to protect others from their presumed or test-confirmed infection,” the study authors write.
Still, finding enough apartments or hotel rooms for nearly 60,000 homeless residents in Los Angeles could be difficult. As of Tuesday, just over 2,500 hotel rooms had been leased by county officials—but fewer than 750 were occupied.
Kuhn points out that local officials face difficult financial and logistical hurdles when securing rooms.
“They have to get these hotel rooms ready, train staff, install computer systems—it’s not like they can just use the Hilton guest registration system,” he says. “It’s painful to say, but I don’t know if there’s anything more they could be doing. Even 15,000 rooms could be a stretch.”
Bales says that the hotel rooms already available came just in time. Nearly 200 people previously residing at Union Rescue Mission moved into those vacant rooms earlier this month.
“Who knew that hotels would all be empty and they would be available to address this situation?” he says. “It really took the pandemic for us to make places for people to go.”
Comments
The homeless are safer outside, especially now that it’s Summer. Viruses don’t like warmer weather and sunlight. Keep people indoors and they’re more likely to get infected. That’s why this lockdown is insanity.
By Jose Rios7 on 04.22.20 5:44pm
Safer Outside.
By myislandXP on 04.22.20 8:46pm
I read that almost 100% of the infected homeless show NO symptoms.
Living on streets boosts immunity to diseases.
By Ivan III on 04.22.20 9:08pm
So all 3 of you are also against hotel rooms for the homeless as well? Those are inside.
By Ravid Dyu on 04.22.20 9:40pm
You need to go outside. Sunshine on your skin gives you vitamin D and strengthens your immune system. Don’t be afraid.
By LastFirst on 04.23.20 11:38am
Is Curbed LA every going to acknowledge or write about Garcetti, Bonin, et al. failing to do anything about this for the past half-decade? Or about how they used the $1.2 Billion from HHH to funnel money to corrupt non-profits and corporate developers? And how they are building luxury apartments that cost as much as $600,000 per unit to pursue something that can’t even be called a "solution" because the homeless are increasing faster than the units are being built. This is a failure of epic proportions. The pandemic is exposing incompetent leaders for who they are (see, e.g. Trump, Garcetti, Bonin, Cuomo…and the list goes on).
By LADude on 04.23.20 12:37pm
[yawn]
By LosFeliz$ean on 04.23.20 4:58pm
$ean-"(yawn)"
Yes. Go to bed and stop commenting. You are utterly useless at this point.
You didn’t participate in the count and have publicly said that HHH measure (from 3 years ago and an utter failure), is your only solution.
Mommy gives you free rent, pays all your bills and provides you with 3 square meals a day. Yes you can relate to the suffering.
By Ravid Dyu on 04.24.20 6:03pm
Go try and find any homeless encampments near the mayors residence or in residential Hancock Park in general.
Its easy to proclaim compassion on TV when it doesn’t affect your life off camera.
By Ravid Dyu on 04.24.20 5:59pm
Bravo!!! You are speaking TRUTH! Now LA is whining on how much they’re spending to put homeless in hotels. Well if they had spent the HHH money wisely then we wouldn’t be here. Most states just have to say shelter in place. Not LA, first they have to find you a place to stay. Ridiculous leadership. Next will be a tax increase, new bond measure or something, for more money to do what they should have done years ago with the money we gave years ago. Cali is all talk and no action. They say they care, and give it a lot of lip action, but nothing actually gets better. California produces so much money but yet it has the highest poverty levels in the country when you take in cost of living, worst traffic, ranked 37th in K-12 education, ranked 32 in infrastructure. If you’re young and trying to build a family and have a good quality of like…get outt of Cali. Poor/low wage workers, actors, fast food workers etc stop coming here. It’s all a sham. The public image that Cali likes to project around the country or the world is just not true.
By laysclassic on 05.16.20 2:56pm
"A 2018 KPCC investigation found evidence of "bedbugs, rats, foul odors, poor lighting, harassment," and other issues in some of the 60 shelters funded by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority at that time." Shelters funded by the government , just like government funded housing, is not always the safest healthiest places to be.
By GJJ3000 on 04.27.20 12:53pm
Do you mean to tell me that all of you are just coming to these conclusions NOW??? It took you that long to figure it out? Why don’t you just go back to work and give it a rest. The LA City Council is going to do whatever it wants.
All you have to do is read about the trolleys in LA and how the General Motors (a leading bus maker as well as an automobile retailer), Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), and Phillips Petroleum, destroyed an existing system in LA. How about this? When I first entered the San Fernando Valley in 1980, I remember coming down the 5 North Freeway. I could not believe what I was seeing. It was as if a 100 mile blanket of brown was laying on a region, not just a city. You all said, "Oh, We have always had traffic." Years later, when all of you became older and your doctor told that you had COPD and/or sleep apnea and you lived here in 1980s, did you tell your doctor about that?
And then there are the schools. In 2002, marked that time in history that one of the biggest fights erupted….The LA City Council vs. The San Fernando Valley. For what? To keep the politicians in power in the Kingdoms they had established and were not about to Abidicate. They were after, well let’s say it had nothing to do with educating children. Why do I say this? The LAUSD School Board praises itself…..Have you ever been to one of their Board meetings? It is a veritable Banquet for each of them as praise each other for the tremendous, self-sacrifing, concern. Here it is gentlement, the concern of the LAUSD School Board: 25% of the students drop out and another 25% graduate with a low "D" GPA…Are you kidding me or yourselves?….You knew the teachers passed them because of the pressure by the politicians….The ones you sat back and said nothing when they took over.
And the LA City Council, they always wore clothes with big pockets and they still do. I bet you thought just like the Germans before Hitler came to power when they whispered to each other, "Don’t worry, we’ll stop THEM." And they took over. Guess who is "THEM."
And the Homeless. Now there is a great example of Angelino Do-Gooder Activism. Oh, your wives and girlfriends went down to the Central Union Mission and gave small bottles of water to the Homeless as the Reporters??? Now that is not even questionable. They think they are comparative to the Washington Post and the New York Times. LOL LOL LOL LOL. Well, those "Reporters" took notes and had the photographers take pictures of their self-sacrificing gift to the Homeless. Their sacrifice? They missed one nail appointment. And the water, YOU got a tax deduction on $3.86 for the cost of a case of water.
In 1983, when there was an outbreak of TB in LA and I witnessed the poor Health Care Workers chasing after the Homeless in a 200 yard dash to give them a "little scrape." It was like WWII in the alleys. LOL LOL LOL And I said then, "Wait until there is an epidemic down here." And so it did happen. It as called COVID-19.
And the Do-gooder Socialites who had their picture in the LA Times, and the Ace Reporters…..well, they were never seen again. And the "HOME" of the 60,000 Homeless, now on literally on the street, look to the Central Union Mission, the place that preached Jesus and salvation and then threw the Homeless out on the street that they are now living. The Mission Do-Gooders took off probably with a suitcase of "gold." Why? These Do-gooders had managed to create the perfect place for COVID-19 to spread. That’s right. 200 beds cramed in a room on 2 floors. Now, let me think….Ummm….200 + 200 = 400. Yep, 400 men in a room with 1 television and "lights out" at 9:00 p.m. because Jesus wants it. That’s why he was crucified. And now that is in epidemic proportions down there, the Homeless keep asking…."Where are they?" "What happened?"
And now, that YOU and the Do-Gooders have created their world, unlike you, they believe in JUSTICE. PRARIE JUSTICE! AND THEY ARE EXTRACTING JUSTICE RIGHT NOW! It is a world that has its own social class lines and structure. Those in Power down there have a language that is a combination of prison slang, Gullah English, rap, beat, Spanish, and death. And believe it, they do have POWER. THE LAW OF THE HOMELESS: What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. And they have absolutely no capacity to empathize.
I do not care what the Psychologists and Social Workers have to say. They have never lifted a finger. If they want to do something, they should go read, "Lord of the Flies." Then again, I doubt that Psychologists can read and the Social Workers….Well let’s just leave it at that. Their "profession" consists of memorizing a couple "buzz" phrases and asking the client if they feel depressed. Absolute, unmitigated, intellectual giants who practice "Bumper Stick Philosophy." Psychologists and Social Workers are a perfect example that the only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.
And now, after 60 years, you want to do something? Like What? Like writing an opinion right here? Yeah! Right! You Bet! This will definitely work!! Congratulations Gentlemen, YOU have made LA what it is today. All of you that have written before me….YOU…YOU….YOU…. WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL OF THIS BECAUSE YOU SAT BACK AND KEPT SILENT WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING. SILENCE INFERS CONSENT. And so you did. And so it became. And so it will remain.
Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with one legion only on January 10, 49 BCE. This history was not meant for you. It was meant for others, the others you have created. "Sic semper tyrannis."
By Luffs on 04.28.20 3:24am
The vast majority of homeless can work, but choose not to. You don’t reward this behavior by giving them free hotel rooms to live in (which they will destroy) at the expense of those who do work.
By Steve Neman on 04.30.20 10:45pm
Are shelters safe? NO, AND THEY WEREN’T SAFE BEFORE COVID19…
By SF LARRY on 05.01.20 8:12pm