County details resident aid plan

How Broward will help low-income families quarantine for free

People infected with coronavirus will be encouraged to voluntarily move to a hotel for 14 days to wait out the virus and stop the spread to their family — all on the government’s dime, Broward officials said Monday.

And their families left behind would get help, too, with food assistance, and utility and water bill payments.

Details of the plan and how it would work are expected to be unveiled by Broward County on Tuesday at a commission meeting. Some questioned if the county was going to move out their relatives against their wishes, but Broward says that isn’t the case — no one will be moved out of their homes against their will.

County Administrator Bertha Henry said the program will assist people who want the help, using federal funds to do it. The program would help people who have no means “to effectively self-isolate or quarantine … to ensure other family members are not exposed due to lack of resources.”

Who will benefit?

“Contact tracers” are sleuths who figure out who’s been infected with coronavirus and who they’ve come into contact with.

When a resident tests positive, these sleuths would refer people who are likely to need financial help, those deemed to be low income. No figure was immediately available of how many people could be helped and the criteria for who would qualify as low income.

The county intends to work with the Florida Department of Health, which has access to positive test results for new coronavirus patients.

Those patients, who might live with parents, grandparents or children who need to be especially protected, would be encouraged to isolate.

“Whatever that family needs for the [two]-week period to sustain themselves,” Henry said.

Henry said Monday that the idea is to encourage that person

not to go to work, where they could infect others.

That person, if they are the family breadwinner, might otherwise feel pressure to go to work to earn money to pay bills that the county will now take care of instead. And the county would take care of the hotel bill and food for the person in isolation, too.

“This virus spreads so quickly, if we do not give people the opportunity to feel safe, or feel like they can stay home when they’re sick with this virus,” then they don’t get the help, she said. “We want people to feel comfortable to stay at home and not put their families at risk.”

The county has gotten some response about the program that Henry said was “misunderstood and misrepresented.”

“There is nothing sinister about this program. The objective is not to tear households apart,” she said.

Who pays?

The price tag for the program hasn’t been figured out yet, but Henry said the county will dip into its $340 million share of the federal coronavirus relief bill to pay for it.

“To say what that number looks like, we’ve been working with the Health Department on that,” she said.

She said she’ll enlist the help of nonprofits, too: “If the infected family member is the breadwinner … these agencies can provide support services to the family, including food, personal protective equipment, assistance with sanitizing the home, and other social services, including rent assistance.”

Although Henry said the program has not formally started yet, it did already help one family that had three children at home and “they had no means of isolating, we had to help them.” Details of how that family was assisted were not available.

“We know that’s going to become more and more an issue. If we’re going to avoid a major outbreak, they don’t have to go to work sick and we’ll help them and their family,” she said.

The Florida Department of Health would only comment in an email: “This initiative is led by Broward County, and the Department of Health provides support as needed.”

Broward Mayor Dale V.C. Holness said the intent is “if we find a situation where a family is in need to quarantine so it doesn’t spread within that household. If it spreads in the household, we’ll have more issues.”