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Here are some takeaways, the lessons learned at the 2020 Oregon Housing Conference - 450 attendees / 15 presenters / 12+ hours over 2 days - on COVID and Homelessness. Thread - 1/
States, counties, cities need to do emergency preparedness for people at all levels of the economy. People who are homeless were largely left out of plans and services - an afterthought. Emergency planners didn't learn from Katrina and advocates now need to be at the table. 2/
Federal mis-messaging on COVID impaired state, county, city response. There's enough chaos and system failure without the president lying and conniving. Lesson learned: elect competent people. 3/
No city is providing adequate shelter or services to surmount Martin v Boise, and COVID makes it roughly impossible. Often counties and cities are at cross-purposes, one providing services, the other responding to neighbors/businesses and sweeping tents & camps. 4/
People with disabilities, especially mental illness and untreated addiction, people who are old or frail, have been hurt worst by the shutdown. Maybe more homeless people have died from service abandonment than COVID. 5/
Old school congregate shelters are super-spreaders. Some cities - like Portland - are finding other larger spaces and moving people to them. 6/
Somewhere around 30 million people are at risk of homelessness when the national moratorium is lifted January 1. There's no national plan for rent relief - which could be hundreds of billions and logistically extremely difficult to manage fairly, difficult = impossible. 7/
Los Angeles is 10x the size of Portland and 10x as complicated - or more. With 66,000 people who are officially homeless and 300,000 at risk of homeless, just stabilizing the problem requires military-level money (billions) and planning. 8/
Everywhere PPE, testing, contact tracing, failed for people who are homeless. Public health agencies closed their doors, as did churches, businesses, public buildings. For awhile it was hard to get arrested. There was nowhere to toilet or shower. 9/
Numbers of COVID cases among homeless people were low through the summer because people were outdoors and naturally socially distant. That will change as the weather gets cold. Experts expect the winter to be brutal. 10/
COVID isn't done with us yet. People who are homeless and unsheltered are high on the list to get vaccinated, but actually doing it is complex and daunting and be will injured by jails, congregate shelters, symptoms & fears, inadequate medical services. 11/
COVID for people who are homeless is a "crisis within a crisis" and needs resources, research, patience, & TLC to solve, and all those things are in short supply. 12/12
