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Shelter director hopes pandemic shows failure of existing homeless system

May 8, 2020, 12:29 PM

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The Exhibition Hall at the Seattle Center housed a temporary men's shelter in May of 2020. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

The coronavirus pandemic has forced Seattle, King County, and the state to change the way homeless shelters operate in order to help reduce the risk of an outbreak among vulnerable populations. Daniel Malone, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, hopes some of these changes become permanent.

“There were some inherent problems with just congregate settings to begin with where people were around each other, using the same bathrooms and other facilities, for example, and so King County leased some hotel properties for this purpose and made one of those properties available to my organization,” Malone said.

King County works to prevent spread of coronavirus among homeless

“The experience of homelessness is extremely harsh on people. It damages their health, it damages their mental health,” he added. “When you concentrate people in those conditions together, it’s kind of a recipe for conflict and outbursts.”

Some of the shelter operations were moved to the hotel property in order to provide shelter to people outside of a dormitory setting with individual rooms and bathrooms.

While homeless shelters and directors have long been dissatisfied with these congregate environments, they continue to operate as it is better than the alternative of having more people on the streets.

“This just about a month long experience having shelter operations happen in a hotel space has showed us that it makes a huge difference on the the day to day experience of the people we’re trying to help,” Malone said. “Some people have suggested that they now feel prepared to take on the hard work of dealing with substance use problems they have. We’re seeing fewer outbursts related to symptoms of mental illness that people have. It’s been a very positive change.”

The true solution for homelessness, Malone believes, is to provide housing for everyone. But the least we can do is offer shelter that shares some of the key features of housing, like privacy and individual rooms.

“We have long known, and the evidence is extremely clear that housing is what solves this problem, and people do way better, and their conditions improve,” Malone said. “And so we’ve been pushing hard for years now for the additional investment in housing.”

Malone does recognize there is an added cost to shelter people in individual rooms. However, the costs that may be more expensive up front would pay off over time.

“You have to go through a transition period where you may be spending more money to achieve that transition,” he said.

“A lot of the evidence shows that it’s actually extremely expensive to maintain the status quo, that because people are in these conditions where they’re under such great stress and strain, there frequently needs for there to be very expensive interventions done, crisis system care in both the health care and criminal legal system arena,” he continued.

The housing has to first be created before we would see it pay dividends to the criminal legal system and the health care system, he explained.

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As far as what the future holds after the virus is considered to be under control, Malone isn’t sure what will happen in the homeless community.

“My crystal ball is cloudy as anybody’s, I’m sure,” he said. “I want to think, anyway, that this pandemic highlighted the utter inadequacy and societal failure to deal with homelessness that people recognize before but maybe were less concerned about because now it’s much clearer that my health is linked to your health and so fort. We can’t ignore groups of people.”

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Shelter director hopes pandemic shows failure of existing homeless system