Australia has managed to house the homeless in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic. We now have an opportunity to be thinking about longer-term solutions.
A homeless woman sits outside a fenced-off camp in Vancouver after a 12 p.m. deadline for the park to be vacated in Vancouver on May 9, 2020. The province relocated hundreds of people from tent encampments in Vancouver and Victoria to hotel and community centre accommodations.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Without sufficient safe shelter space and universal testing, cities are forcing homeless people into encampments, limiting their ability to stay safe and violating international human rights laws.
The scheme will encourage people who can’t afford to buy homes or are homeless to believe the government has forgotten them.
People wearing protective masks form lines to receive free food from a food pantry run by the Council of Peoples Organization on May 8, 2020 in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
For economically strapped Americans, the financial fallout from the epidemic may be permanently embedded in their digital profiles, making it harder for them to regain their economic footing.
This former school site in Dallas, Melbourne, is one of many sites suitable for public housing that are being prepared for sale in areas with high housing need.
Roland Postma
Of 2,646 hectares of public land being prepared for sale in Victoria, 24 sites are suitable for building high-quality public housing in places of high need. Why isn’t the land being used for this?
A woman uses her feet to pull herself along in a wheelchair among cherry blossoms at a homeless camp at Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver in April 2020 that was recently evaculated due to COVID-19. The coronavirus has exposed and fed upon other societal issues in true ‘syndemic’ fashion.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
When two or more epidemics co-exist and compound one another to worsen health, they are said to be syndemic. COVID-19 is feeding on other crises and diseases.
Americans without bank accounts may have delays in financial aid.
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
A loose patchwork of measures and systems has left millions at risk of slipping through the cracks as the pandemic’s economic downturn hits.
Inmates work in the laundry room at Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility in Santee, California, on April 22, 2020.
Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, missteps in transitioning the incarcerated back to their communities places this already vulnerable populace at greater risk of getting and transmitting the virus.
Now is the time for a two-pronged strategy to ensure everyone has a home: a spot-purchasing program to find homes for people now in emergency accommodation, followed by social housing construction.
A homeless person lies in a tent pitched in downtown in Toronto on April 18, 2020. Many of the city’s homeless population have taken to staying in tents around the city as concerns mount about the safety of the shelter system due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Police officers are integral front-line workers during this extraordinary crisis. They should be empowered to act as protectors of the vulnerable, not as persecutors of homeless people.
Protesters demanding a freeze on rents in Minneapolis.
Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via Getty Images
Current measures prohibiting the eviction of tenants and helping them through the financial crisis won’t last forever. A 40-year-old voucher program might be a longer term solution.
The system isn’t working to prevent young Australians becoming homeless and to house them when they need it. New research finds a shift to proven community-based approaches can end decades of failure.
A pedestrian walks past graffiti in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Nonprofits and concerned residents are teaming up with the local government to solve a daunting problem in a city with the nation’s highest per-capita rate of homelessnesss.