Methods that are being done to reduce spread of COVID-19 in homeless community

Shelters, meal programs and other organizations have teamed up to create a condition for homeless community to enable physical distancing. The organizations have teamed up to create a condition where they make the shelters more spacious and have the beds spread out further to reduce the risk of spread for COVID-19.

In Montreal, Calgary, their government and shelter personnel created additional strategy to move homeless people who are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to be moved into hotels and motels.

In addition, the programs have requested to move people who have shown symptoms of COVID-19 and create drop-in sites which have been already implemented by the government and shelter personnel in locations: Calgary and the region of Peel in Ontario.

There has to be more additional funding to shelter programs and human resources in order for sufficient support toward homeless community during the pandemic.

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How Each Respective Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations’ features of homelessness, its prevalence, its consequences, and all the policy and other approaches to minimize COVID-19

Federal Government

• Canada homelessness strategy is a community based program that helps to prevent and reduce homelessness in Canada. It has been helping to reduce the needs and provide funds to enhance the situation for homelessness at a federal level. It already has been taken into action pre-Covid. Ever since covid-19 pandemic has begun, homelessness strategy has been redesigned federal homelessness program to adjust to the new situation to adapt their strategies to minimize COVID-19 within homeless community. They have been altering to do just more than funding and meeting basic needs such as funding and providing more shelters across the major cities.

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• The new re-designed programs of the federal government to minimize COVID-19 include:

  • Outcomes based approach
    • All housing first investment targets work toward to remove to give communities more flexibility to match the wants and needs to prioritize COVID-19 situation.
    • Housing first investment works toward moving people experiencing homelessness.
    • Housing first ensures to prioritize homelessness community. Housing first provides freedom and flexibility for homeless people to choose their desired living style, and make it closer to the feeling of an actual tenant living at their own place rather than a homeless facility. Overall, it provides more comfort and lifestyle that is closely matching with people who are living at their own place.

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  • Coordinated Access System

    • Coordinated Access system coordinates and prioritize homeless people who are the highest in needs. Therefore, the federal homelessness program would be able to assist those who are highest in priority to lowest in priority. The system is quite useful during COVID-19 situation, because coordinated access system allows to prioritize those who show symptoms of COVID-19 or tested positive for COVID-19. They also would be able to assist the patients who are in a critical condition due to COVID-19 complication, then move on to assist the patients who are in a less deadly condition. This also ensures more peace among the homeless community and facility, since it helps to organize who are most in need, and so on.

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  • Homeless Individuals and Families Information System

    • Homeless individuals and Families information system is a data collection where it helps facillities to be able to have a clear analysis on the actions that are being taken in homeless individuals and facilities at the moment. This system is useful during COVID-19 pandemic among the homeless community, because situations are always changing so rapidly, and unpredictable. Therefore, the data analysis regarding homeless individuals is crucial to letting the public and facility members to know the policies and how the pandemic situation changing everyday.

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  • Increasing the understanding of homelessness

    • By increasing the understanding of homelessness by the federal government’s effort. It ensures to increase homeless community’s awareness especially during COVID-19 situation so that the public and facilities would be more cautious and empathetic of the situation. All the marketings, tools and updates are available and have taken care of more precise updates because of how the situation within homelessness community is switching more frequently ever since the pandemic.

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  • Addressing Indigenous homelessness

    • The federal government’s re-designed programs have raised their funding and investment to address indigenous homelessness issues after the pandemic. They find it crucial to add funding to the indigenous homeless people as indigenous people tend to be more prone to discrimination in Canada. They cannot be excluded nor discriminated in this urgent situation during COVID-19. Therefore, the re-designed program has decided to provide more funding to indigenous homelessness community.

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  • Addressing homelessness in rural and remote areas

    • After the pandemic, the funding was doubled toward addressing homelessness in rural and remote areas. Under Reaching Home Program, the re-designed federal government programs were able to reach its funding to double as now.

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  • Expanding the program’s reach

    • What is being done now during COVID-19 pandemic is that they are continuing to aim for higher needs and demands. Federal government programs are continuing to reach higher investment reach and promoting awareness for homeless community. They are also trying to increase awareness for what is going on in the homelessness community during COVID-19.

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Provincial Government

• Albertan Government
  • In Montreal, Calgary, their government and shelter personnel created additional strategy to move homeless people who are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to be moved into hotels and motels.
• Ontario Government
  • In the government in Peel region, the programs have requested to move people who have shown symptoms of COVID-19 and create drop-in sites which have been already implemented by the government and shelter personnel in locations

Organizations

• The Rights of Passage Program
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