Giving Compass' Take:

• Thomson Reuters Foundation highlights the efforts of countries and communities around the world working to house the homeless in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. 

• How much space is needed to safely house the homeless in your area? What donations - financial and otherwise - can close the gap in need? 

• Learn more about the need for funding for homeless people during COVID-19. 

“Stay home” - that’s the message stretching from Italy to Iran as the world tries to contain coronavirus. But what if you’ve got no place to call home, or your house is out of bounds in the pandemic?

Some 1.8 billion people worldwide are homeless or live in inadequate housing, experts say, calling for urgent measures to ensure the most vulnerable get sanctuary in the outbreak. Thousands more need a temporary place to live, either to stay close to crisis centres at the core of the coronavirus fightback or to keep housemates infection-free during weeks of lockdown.

“Housing has become the front line defence against the coronavirus,” said Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. “Home has rarely been more of a life or death situation.”

To that end, officials are scouring cities for vacant spaces or disused buildings to turn into makeshift homes.

From empty motels to festival halls, conference centres to cottages - buildings are being repurposed at breakneck speed, with the homeless a top priority.

In the Canadian city of Montreal, a former hospital is this week being transformed into an isolation facility for homeless people exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus.

Patients will be kept in individual rooms in a building that sits at the top of a hill, tested for the virus and quarantined should they test positive, said a spokesman for the regional health agency, with capacity that can go up to 150 beds.

In London, the government will open a temporary hospital at the cavernous ExCel exhibition centre in east London, installing ventilators and beds in what was once an Olympic sporting venue.

U.S. communities have taken things into their own hands.

In California, a collective of homeless people and others whose housing is insecure have occupied six vacant, state-owned homes in the Los Angeles area.

Read the full article about housing the most vulnerable from Thomson Reuters Foundation at Eco-Business.