President Trump: "We're All in This Together"
by John Lawrence, March 17, 2020
Does that include the homeless, Mr. Trump? Are the homeless over 65 being asked to shelter in place? Does that mean that they keep their same place on the sidewalk? Does it mean that they social distance 6 feet from the next homeless person? Or does it mean that gatherings of 10 or more in homeless shelters need to disperse? Does it mean we should close down the homeless shelters? Does it mean that NIMBYS who don't want parking lots open to homeless people living in their vehicles need to shut their mouths? We want to know, Mr. President. Youth wants to know.
There are 500,000 homeless Americans living on the streets. Are they being asked to shelter in place? It's ridiculous. Rather than have a crash program to put them into single room occupancy units (SROs), they are not even mentioned, not even considered in the President's speech, nor of those of his "team." The coronavirus should sound a clarion call to do something about the homneless situation. Where do you think a pandemic would spread? Probably among the dense crowding of homeless people in San Diego, Los Angeles and Seattle. Especially places where it has been raining a lot. I saw a policeman stop his squad car in the middle of traffic the other day, turn on his patrol lights and deliver a sandwich to a woman who was sitting alone on the sidewalk in the pouring rain. God bless him! My rider told me that his family were all police and they did that a lot. If so, good on them. I know the police are dealing with the homeless a large part of their time which costs money. Also the emergency rooms. Probably bbetween the police and the emergency rooms more money is spent on the homeless than it would cost to put them in SROs.
A few short years ago there was an outbreak of hepatitus A among the homeless in San Diego and elsewhere. The Washington Post reported:
The hepatitis A outbreak in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and San Diego, long considered a model of savvy urban redevelopment, is the extreme result of a booming state economy, now driving up home prices after years of government decisions that made low-cost housing more difficult to build.
Unlike in some other large U.S. cities, the homeless population in San Diego has been rising sharply, outstripping the local government's ability to manage its scope. State lawmakers passed more than a dozen measures in the recent legislative session to address the state's lack of affordable housing, none of which will help resolve the crisis in the short term.
Nowhere is the need more urgent than in this prospering city, where the number of people living on the streets rose 14 percent in the past year, tracing a hepatitis A outbreak that thrives in unsanitary conditions. Health officials believe an epidemic that has infected more than 500 people statewide since March began in San Diego County, where 19 people have died as a result of the disease, nearly all of them homeless.
So the hepatitis A outbreak was an epidemic, a few short steps from a pandemic. Washing stations were provided then, and washing stations are being provided now, but so far nothing much has been done about the homeless situation in San Diego and elsewhere. Measure C on the ballot recently, which would have provided $25 million a year to address various issues dealing with the homeless population, failed because it didn't quite achieve a two thirds majority. It garnered about 64% of the vote while it needed 67% to become law. So close but no cigar. So now what? More hand washing stations evidently.
Governor Newsom has moved hundreds of homeless people into hotel rooms “to get people out of these encampments.”. This was after a homeless person died from the coronavirus. The Mercury News reported:
Officials have also said they plan to distribute trailers around the state where homeless people can shelter or be quarantined. And on Monday Newsom said shelters were working to create distance between beds to help stop the spread of the virus.
California has more than 100,000 residents who sleep on the streets on any given night, including thousands of people in the Bay Area.
“We will overwhelm ourselves if we don’t move with real urgency in this space,” he said.
Newsom said his team had identified more than 900 hotels that could be suitable for housing the homeless. His team, he said, was in the process of negotiating to convert some of them into temporary living quarters for the homeless.
Now that there is some urgency in dealing with the homeless situation, you'd think that the state would move to a more permanent solution or are they waiting for the coronavirus to subside so they can just let the homeless go back to living on the street. By the way, "Officials also said that homeless people would be exempt from a Bay Area-wide order to shelter in place. But they urged homeless people to seek shelter and said local governments should work to make shelter available as soon as possible." Really??
UPDATE:
From Voice of San Diego:
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher also noted the county is working to secure at least 2,000 motel rooms for vulnerable San Diegans – whether they are homeless, nursing home residents or simply don’t have a safe place to stay – who may be awaiting a test result or showing symptoms of coronavirus but not require hospitalization.
As of Monday, Fletcher said, the county had secured 227 rooms and the Regional Task Force on the Homeless is working to obtain more motel rooms for homeless San Diegans who are at risk of coronavirus who have not been referred by a healthcare provider.
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