The COVID dilemma for people experiencing homelessness — one family doctor’s observations
By Thomas D. Huggett, MD, MPH
April 2, 2020 — Reflections on offering to move persons experiencing homelessness with symptoms of COVID-19 but not yet tested from a large congregate shelter — where 250 men stay in one room all day, and 150–200 women stay in another room all day — to a hotel for isolation and testing:
After it was explained to folks who had been placed in isolation (but were still in a large congregate setting room) that moving to a hotel would help them be more isolated from each other to decrease their chance of getting sick, and that their hotel room would have a TV with a remote, free wifi, three meals a day, daily medical checks, that I, a family doctor, would be staying overnight at the same hotel, and that they would get free testing for coronavirus, most overcame their skepticism and were enthusiastic about going to the hotel.
But one man I remember in particular during this process. He was sitting outside of this largest shelter in Chicago — in the sun on a concrete step waiting for transportation to the hotel, with his head down and shoulders slumped, thinking hard.
He said to me, “But if I test negative, that means that I have to come back to this big shelter? I know that people with coronavirus are already in there. If I am negative, why would I have to go back in there?”
The only thing I could say in response was, “What you say makes a lot of sense. I will tell what you have said to those who have power and money. We need to get people a decent place to call home to keep themselves safe. I don’t have a millions bucks (he echoed, ‘I wish I had a million bucks’), but what I can do is tell people what you said — and that is what I will do.”
Thomas D. Huggett, MD, MPH, is the Medical Director for Mobile Health for a Federally Qualified Health Center based in the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.
