When asked about her Christmas plans, the rail-thin 43-year-old said
through a face mask, "to try to avoid it." Then she burst into
tears.
The tent city that has served as Bender's neighborhood for the past
seven months is in the middle of downtown Phoenix, just down the
road from luxury high-rise apartments and expensive restaurants.
To deal with an exploding homeless population and encourage social
distancing during the pandemic, Marcipoa County officials turned
this pair of asphalt-topped parking lots into the area's newest
homeless shelter. The county has more than 7,500 people on the
streets, and nearly 5,000 dead from COVID-19.
Inside the crowded encampment, ringed by security fencing and barbed
wire, each family has been allotted a 12-by-12-foot lot, marked by
paint, to separate people as much as possible.
Phoenix is just one example of a slow-motion disaster unfolding in
many large U.S. cities as homeless numbers, already growing in
recent years, spike during the global pandemic.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2020/Nov/23/images/ads/current/culligan_sda_daily_FESTIVALS_2017.png)
The virus presents a compounding threat. Not only are these
populations some of the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, but by
destroying millions of jobs, the pandemic threatens a wave of
evictions that experts warn could lead to a catastrophic housing
displacement and even more people living on the streets.
With cities facing a steep hit to their tax bases due to lockdowns
aimed at curbing the virus's spread, homeless advocates say the
federal government must step in, and estimate another $11.5 billion
is needed immediately.
New funding for the homeless is not included in a $900-billion
pandemic relief package passed by Congress on Monday. The fate of
the bill was thrown up in the air the next day after outgoing
President Donald Trump threatened not to sign it.
Meanwhile, the $4 billion provided earlier this year through the
March CARES Act bailout and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development is running out, advocates say.
"It's not just the pandemic, it's the financial fallout from the
pandemic and the complete lack of a comprehensive response to the
pandemic from the federal government," said Diane Yentel, an advisor
to President-elect Joe Biden and the president of the
Washington-based National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Biden's transition team did not respond to requests for comment. But
fixing the affordable housing crisis was a pillar of his campaign
platform, and included a pledge to spend $640 billion over 10 years
to create affordable housing and "end" homelessness.
“Addressing homelessness remains the most pressing health equity
challenge of our time. And it’s about to get worse,” said Dr. Howard
K. Koh, a professor of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
who chairs its new initiative on health and homelessness.
EVICTION SURGE
As the coronavirus began to ravage the United States in the spring
of 2020, federal, state and local governments issued temporary bans
on many evictions, with an eye on the economic and health
consequences of increased homelessness.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2020/Dec/23/images/ads/current/charrons_bch041713.png)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in September
followed up with a nationwide ban that the stimulus deal would
extend to Jan. 31.
Still, since the pandemic began, more than 162,000 evictions have
been filed in the 27 cities tracked by the Princeton University
Eviction Lab.
So far, Congress has no clear plan to deal with the expiration of
the CDC's ban, when up to 40 million people will be at risk of
eviction, according to the Aspen Institute. Overnight, more than $70
billion will be owed in back rent and utilities, said Moody’s
Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi.
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2020/Nov/23/images/ads/current/watkins_lda_CHRISTMAS_2020.png)
The National Alliance to End Homelessness
estimated the U.S. homeless population at nearly
600,000 in 2019, before the pandemic hit. The
potential health repercussions of a significant
increase in that number due to evictions and
joblessness are enormous, made exponentially
worse by the pandemic, academics and health
experts say.
Already, homeless
families with babies in New York City shelters live amidst mold,
mildew and vermin, according to an audit released on Monday by the
city comptroller. Subway closures between 1 and 5 a.m. for COVID
cleanings have forced many of the city's homeless who go there for
warmth to burrow deeper into the system's tunnels or freeze in the
tarp encampments and grocery-cart hovels that have become a feature
of the city's sidewalks. New York City’s homeless
die of COVID at a rate 78% higher than the general population,
according to the Coalition for the Homeless.
In Los Angeles, several members of the city council want the city to
use the convention center as a homeless shelter. San Diego already
did that - and now its convention center is suffering a COVID-19
outbreak, with 190 residents and staff testing positive.
Another homeless shelter in Chicago is reeling from an outbreak just
as freezing temperatures fuel demand.
Twenty-seven states that let local moratoriums on evictions expire
over the summer, before the CDC ban, had a 5.4-times higher COVID
mortality rate, according to a report released on Nov. 30 by
researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other four other
universities.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2020/Dec/23/images/ads/current/castlemanor_sda_FINANCIAL_2017.png) TRUMPVILLE
Phoenix's unshaded tent city is called "The Zone" by its
inhabitants. Some of them call it "Trumpville," an echo of
Depression-era shantytowns named "Hoovervilles" after President
Herbert Hoover, who was accused of not doing enough to keep people
sheltered.
The Zone's hundreds of residents are packed together - often not
wearing masks, with many living just in sleeping bags or on a tarp.
Without running water or plumbing, simple pandemic health protocols,
like handwashing, are difficult. Although the city has posted
portable toilets and washing stations along the perimeter, feces and
garbage litter the property. In some spots, the stench is
overwhelming.
COVID is a constant worry. Those who test positive for the virus can
check into a 136-bed hotel provided by a nonprofit — if they can get
a spot. If they prefer to remain on the streets, there's a
"shelter-in-place duffle" that contains food, water, hygienic
supplies, masks and a tent. Bender, a former foster
mom with the leathered tan of someone who lives outside, said the
homeless population has become more varied since the pandemic hit -
she's met a former doctor, paralegal and even an opera singer.
"A lot of us want to work, we want to get off the streets," she
said.
But the pandemic has made that seem even more impossible, she said.
"I can't even get online" to apply for jobs, she said, "because the
libraries are closed." Her congressional stimulus check? "How would
I even sign up for that or get that without a computer, or an
address?"
"I didn't think my life could get any worse," said Bender. "But it
did."
(Reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Sonya
Hepinstall)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |