HOMELESSNESS AND COVID-19.
PANDEMIC MAGNIFIES DAY-TO-DAY CHALLENGES OF BEING HOMELESS
POSTMEDIA IS TAKING AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE SOCIAL, INSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES THE PANDEMIC HAS BROUGHT TO LIGHT — AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOW WE CAN SOLVE THEM.
Just past a fence made of pallets, behind the mound of bicycle parts, and through a plywood door held closed by a wire, you will find what Kris Janelle calls home: two large tarps carefully secured over makeshift walls, protecting a clothing- and blanket-stuffed tent and the rest of his worldly possessions.
About 200 other people live in similar ramshackle structures in the Strathcona Park tent city, which sprouted up last June in the urban green space near downtown Vancouver after the residents were chased out of two nearby parks.
“My house, it's pretty nice. I like it, living outside. I've lived outside for 20 years,” Janelle said.
But the pandemic has magnified the challenges of being homeless: No sink to wash your hands, no privacy to self-isolate, no walls to keep you warm if you have COVID-19 symptoms.
“To me, it's a bit of a concern. I mean, (the virus) really kills off the vulnerable,” said Janelle, 40.
“It would be nice to have a shower on a regular basis. With COVID, it shut down a lot of the normal places where we do go to have showers and take care of ourselves. It's been rough for about half a year … trying to, I guess, take care of my hygiene and stuff like that.”
The United Way estimates 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness each year, in addition to many more who are underhoused, and that the pandemic-fuelled financial crisis will make those numbers even worse. The 2020 Metro Vancouver homeless count tallied 3,634 people without proper housing in the city.
There is no clear data yet on the prevalence of COVID among this country's homeless population, but Dr. Stephen Hwang — who is overseeing a pilot project to distribute vaccines to 100 Toronto homeless shelters — said in late January that preliminary information suggests a higher risk of infection in shelters versus encampments like the one where Janelle lives.
Indeed, there have been recent outbreaks in Vancouver-area shelters. B.C.'s chief health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has recognized the vulnerability of homeless people, saying they are a priority for vaccination relatively early in the rollout.
While Janelle may prefer being outside, the unregulated camps don't come with staff who can offer health and social-services support.
Nurses and other medical professionals do visit the camp and offer semi-regular COVID testing clinics, and a handful of positive cases have been detected. People with the virus have access to isolation sites run by the health authorities and non-profit agencies, said Vancouver homelessness activist Fiona York.
She has helped more than 20 campers who were tested for COVID and had symptoms, but had to isolate in their tents until the test results came back. That was tricky when the camp's population, which ballooned to more than 300 people in the summer, had just three toilets and one urinal in the park's field house, plus a half-dozen portable toilets provided by the park board.
In January, the residents received four more washrooms with showers in a trailer, but the facilities are still insufficient for the size of the camp.
York and others are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of action by the municipal and federal governments to address homelessness, both before and during the pandemic. In fact, the tent city is nicknamed Camp KT (Kennedy-Trudeau), after Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
On March 1, the city announced it was working to end homelessness by buying a 65-room Days Inn hotel with federal money. It will not be open to house vulnerable residents until November, Stewart said.
Activists have been asking for portable washrooms for years. City Hall and B.C. Housing didn't deliver the toilet/shower trailer and a warming tent until mid-January, and only after a group of neighbours raised more than $21,000 through GoFundMe to buy them, York said. (Funds raised by the neighbours have now been spent on other necessities for the camp.)
People who own homes near the park have raised legitimate concerns about an increase in violence, crime, public disorder and garbage at the site, along with no longer being able to let their kids and pets play at the park.
Their ire appears directed mainly at governments for not better helping the homeless.
B.C.'s provincial government said it hopes to find transitional housing for the camp's 200 residents by April, including 120 new shelter beds — although advocates argue those temporary beds will not provide proper housing.
In the meantime, the battle to stay healthy continues.
“It's a constant fight to advocate for people to have potable drinking water, to have the right to 24-hour access to bathrooms,” said Chrissy Brett, an Indigenous activist and one of the key organizers inside the tent city. “When our people went into isolation in their rooms, it was our donations and community supporters who were making sure that they had food and that things were being dropped off to them that they needed.”
She praised the estimated 200 volunteers who “have been holding up this community,” including nurses, acupuncturists and Vancouverites who donate fresh water or masks regularly.
“I think that our people here are just trying to survive from day to day, and they do it the best they can in all of the crises that we're facing — from COVID, to fentanyl, to housing, to mental health services. I mean, if there were mental health services and supports for people, they wouldn't find themselves here,” Brett said.
For many people in this encampment, B.C.'s fentanyl-poisoning overdose crisis, which has claimed far more lives than COVID, is of greater concern than the pandemic.
Strathcona Park resident Brent Corkum, who previously lived in a tent city in Abbotsford, an hour's drive east of Vancouver, was offered a room in government-run modular housing about a year ago. He loved the stability and privacy it brought to his life, but he couldn't stay, he said, because of the drug use happening in the poorly ventilated building.
So he made the tough decision to live outside again, moving to the Strathcona tent city. He works long hours each day as the fire keeper, chopping wood and caring for the sacred flames where most visitors must check in before entering the camp.
Corkum has been tested four times for COVID by health officials in the park. All the tests came back negative. He keeps himself safe, he says, by washing his hands as often as he can, either in the park washrooms or using donated water. “And we have hand wipes as well. So I've been using those materials, and hand sanitizer.”
There is also a supply of donated masks, but he often doesn't wear one in the park because he finds it hard to breath. “So if someone gets too close to me — and that has happened to me many times, someone has come too close to me — I've asked nicely for them to step back. And there's only been twice that I've had to raise my voice a little bit just to let them know.”
Like Janelle, Corkum doesn't spend too much time worrying about COVID. The reality is that the people in this camp have other things to worry about each day, such as if they have enough to eat, if someone is going to steal their stuff, if they are safe — from outside forces or from their own inner demons.
But Corkum believes the people in the tent city are trying their best to protect each other from COVID and the multiple crises they are facing.
“I don't consider myself homeless anymore. I find myself part of a family here. And this is something that I'm proud to be a part of, to build this community of people and to build us all up together.”