Coronavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 has hit the nation’s 552,830 homeless population hard, not only because they have limited or no heath care but because they have a disproportionately high amount of life-threatening pre-existing conditions. When 73-year-old President Donald Trump ordered the country to “shelter in place” March 23 to stop the spread of coronavirus, no one could imagine the damage to the U.S. economy. With a booming stock market and record low unemployment, locking down the country was the last thing Trump wanted to do. Convinced by infectious disease experts like 80-year-old National Institute’s of Health for Allergy and Infectious Disease Chief Anthony Fauci, Trump ordered the country to “shelter in place,” with most states following suit or putting their own “stay at home” orders in place before the federal government. Now comes the fallout from “shelter in place.”
Going on six weeks, spiraling unemployment topped 26.5 million, driving the record low unemployment to recession levels at 8%. With more weekly filings for unemployment, the crisis hasn’t yet peaked, with unemployment expected to rise to around 15% to 20%, a shocking reversal of fortunes for a prosperous nation with virtually every ethnic and minority group lifted further from poverty. As “shelter in place” around the country slows the spread of the coronavirus, it also creates equally disturbing collateral damage to the working poor now being driven into homelessness. No matter how much the government’s $2.2 trillion relief bill signed by Trump March 27, it’s a temporary fix to the nation’s unemployed. Government bureaucrats and elected officials don’t quite get what happens when working folks are deprived of earning a living, no longer able to put food on the table.
Trump’s practically stood on his head trying to get the nation back to work, producing a three-phase plan to bring that about. But much of the country’s governors are reluctant to go against “science” that has urged states to continue “shelter in place” or risk a recurrence of the infection. Trump has warned that he doesn’t want the cure of “shelter in place” to be worse than the disease of Covid-19. No medical authority advocating “shelter in place” thinks about the collateral damage of locking down the country. With 2,921,456 cornavirus cases worldwide and 203,289 deaths, there’s no calculation of the numbers of working poor driven by the pandemic into homelessness. New York hit a grim milestone of 960,696 cases and 54,265 deaths or 26,6% if total coronaviurs deaths worldwide. No country has been hit harder than the U.S., especially the New York City area.
No state is hit harder by homelessness than California, with 151,278 living on the streets. “Shelter in place” orders prevent ordinary citizens from gainful employment have added to intolerable levels of homelessness. If that weren’t bad enough, locking down the country doesn’t take into account adding insult-to-injury in the nation’s already spiraling homeless population. “People who are experiencing homelessness are our most disenfranchised neighbors and fellow citizens,” said Marybeth Shinn, Cornelius Vanderbilt chair of the Department of Human and Organizational Development. Shinn contends that crowded conditions on the streets and in homeless shelters gives coronavirus a ready breeding ground. Poor sanitation complicates the transmission of infectious diseases like SARS CoV-2. Shinn thinks that funding should be used enhance facilities in homeless shelters.
Street encampments usually involve a variety of tent-structures make enforcing “shelter in place” orders all the more difficult. When you add high frequencies of chronic diseases, homeless populations are especially vulnerable in the current global pandemic. “One of the things we want to do is not to break up encampments right now, but to try to make encampments safer,” Shinn says, advocating for municipalities to install mobile sanitation, including outhouses and hand-washing stations. But apart from improving conditions for existing homeless people, the government must take a serious look at whether current disease control measures have driven more ordinary folks into homelessness. No society can prevent people, citizens or not, from working without lethal repercussions. Slowing the virus at the expense of driving more unemployed workers into homelessness does no one any good.
When Trump’s coronavirus task force tries to figure out what to do next, it’s clear that “shelter in place” orders have created more collateral damage, driving more ordinary workers into unemployment and homelessness. With rising cases and deaths in New York, it’s going to be difficult for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to defy heath experts and open up New York for business. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also has some big decisions to make soon, with “right to work” protests erupting around the country. No one denies the presence of coronavirus but ordinary folks must get back to work to put food on the table. Whatever the infection and mortality rates, it’s getting to the point that the collateral damage from “shelter in place” orders is causing more unemployument poverty, disease, homelessness and death. Clocks tick around the country about a date soon when citizens will have to bear and risk and return to work.
