Giving Compass' Take:
- To avoid Covid-19 outbreaks in crowded prisons and homeless encampments, cities are renting hotels for the homeless and those released from crowded prisons.
- How can communities support vulnerable groups in the midst of a pandemic?
- Learn about why some racial groups suffer disproportionate effects from the pandemic.
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The pandemic has prompted law enforcement officials throughout the country to make difficult decisions to try to prevent outbreaks in crowded jails, where people often cycle in and out as they wait for trial or serve short stints. Some agencies have released thousands of people early. But when people leave jails, where do they go?
It’s a thorny question in the best of times, and cities are trying to find answers. Some metropolitan areas, where COVID-19 has shut down tourism, are leasing hotel rooms so that homeless people, including some newly released from jail, can self-isolate.
In New York City, the Department of Homeless Services offered rooms to homeless people released from Rikers Island, the city’s jail. But perhaps nowhere is the housing need as pressing as in California, where the pandemic overlaps with a historic homelessness crisis.
Makeshift tent encampments line highways, railroad tracks and parks. There are an estimated 150,000 homeless Californians, driven to the streets by soaring home prices—the median price has surpassed $570,000— a housing shortage and lack of access to mental health care. It’s become the top concern for state voters, and Gov. Gavin Newsom devoted his recent State of the State address to the problem, calling it a “disgrace.”
With COVID-19 cases rising, Newsom signed an executive order that includes $50 million to lease hotel rooms or buy travel trailers for homeless people, including those released from jails. On Friday, the governor said the state had secured 7,000 hotel rooms so far. Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat and chair of the California Assembly Budget Committee, said lawmakers allowed flexibility for local governments to house particularly vulnerable people, like homeless prisoners.
Oakland is among the first localities in California to get a hotel lease, according to the governor’s office. State officials and advocates for the homeless are hopeful as they watch Oakland’s experiment.
Read the full article about sending the homeless to hotels by Abbie Vansickle at The Marshall Project.