What does “shelter-in-place” mean to us?

Last Thursday (3/19/2020), California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a statewide “stay-at-home” order to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 in the state. This move follows an earlier San Francisco Bay Area “shelter-in-place” announcement on Monday by local officials. Essentially, shelter-in-place means staying at home in order to not spread the virus or any infectious agents through human contact.

Although the homeless populations across the Bay Area are not subject to this order, the local government has urged unhoused individuals to find shelter and told agencies to take steps needed to provide shelter.

Diane Yentel, the CEO and President of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition says in an interview about this unhoused population,” They tend to be, on average, sicker… They have underlying conditions and are also very vulnerable to catch and spreading disease because of the very nature of homeless encampments… There are no opportunities to implement social distancing. “

Challenges for current homeless shelters:

Yentel also pointed to the challenges of implementing social distance in her comments. “Shelter providers are also really struggling right now… I know of about fifteen shelters that have closed doors entirely or cut back services substantially. For shelters that are doing their best to implement social distancing that means taking out half of the beds so they can space them. That means serving half as many people and not taking new residents.”

Having spent the past two weeks in social isolation myself, I am asking now how we can confront this crisis around the need for the homeless to shelter-in-place in a more humane way.

What research tells us:

Research published in late 2015 by University of Southampton, UK indicated the rapid inactivation of human coronavirus occurs on brass and copper nickel surfaces at room temperature (21C/69.8F). Coronavirus stay alive on other materials such as PVC, ceramic, glass, and stainless-steel surfaces more than 4 -5 days.

Another study published this March in The New England Journal of Medicine also found that, “On copper, no viable SARS-CoV-2 was measured after 4 hours and no viable SARS-CoV-1 was measured after 8 hours. On cardboard, no viable SARS-CoV-2 was measured after 24 hours and no viable SARS-CoV-1 was measured after 8 hours.”

Image excerpt from “Aerosol and surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1”. Fig 1, published online March 17, 2020

A question for myself:

Therefore, in this prototype design I will use copper and cardboard/paper (and those are locally available) as the essential elements for the emergency shelter for unhoused population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those materials can be quickly set up in a park or a vacant lot.

Ingredients are:

Option 1 (this type is good for located vacant lots with asphalt or similar hardscape)

Option 2 (this type is good for located at parks, with grass and soil)

Aftermath

While we are contemplating how to end this global pandemic and helping those vulnerable, I want to share a glimpse of optimism that ending homelessness is possible. The homelessness trend goes downwards: as the national population increases each year, the percentage of homeless people decreases from 0.21% in 2009 to 0.18% in 2020. If we could spark some creative housing solutions for the homeless community, we might end the next public health crisis more swiftly.

Last update: 6.22.2021

Notes and References: