Vaccinating San Francisco’s homeless: Classes realized
San Francisco has one of the highest vaccination rates of any city in the country, but the challenge of the COVID-19 virus is far from over for its most vulnerable residents.
There have been 1,610 confirmed cases of COVID among residents of single occupancy hotels and 39 deaths since the pandemic began, according to DataSF, a public portal for The City. This year has been more deadly in SROs than last year, with eight deaths in 2020 and 31 in 2021 so far.
In addition, at least 963 homeless people have contracted COVID, with the number of cases skyrocketing in July and August 2021, even after the vaccine became available. Seven people died in the process.
While nearly 80% of San Franciscans are fully vaccinated, it has been more difficult to reach the same number among the homeless population. In August, according to the city in the public press, around 39% of the homeless were vaccinated.
Although the Ministry of Health was unable to provide updated estimates, service providers said they had made significant progress in the past few weeks.
“We really got to the people who have a belief system that keeps them from getting the vaccine,” said Kenneth Kim, director of strategic initiatives at Glide, a social justice and service organization in San Francisco. “I can’t say we’re in here, but I think we won through the variety of hesitation.”
As The City looks to life beyond the pandemic, it becomes less difficult to mitigate the acute emergency and more about making sure these communities are protected from a virus that is likely to appear here in the long run.
According to experts, part of this work must also be the further dismantling of barriers to access to health care.
When the vaccine was approved, city authorities acted swiftly to target vulnerable populations, from those living on the streets or other shelter in need, to key workers and low-income earners who don’t have much time, energy, or money to spare , to make an appointment.
The city partnered with service providers, organized pop-up events at animal shelters and camps, and sent roving vaccination teams to neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Bayview, and the Mission. It brought vaccines to shelters and held briefing sessions with patients in emergency rooms and emergency services.
Such initiatives are designed to make it as easy as possible to get the vaccine for someone who does not have a consistent schedule, stable housing situation, or mental health crisis. You should also work through familiar faces in the community, people who could help alleviate suspicions about outreach programs and build trust in the information provided.
To protect all residents from the likely ups and downs of COVID or its variants in the years to come, it is important to ensure that such interventions become a permanent fixture.
“Much of what we asked for is due to the pandemic,” said Kim. “Let’s try to build on that instead of going back to normal.”
A proactive introduction of vaccinations marked a stark contrast to how the city handled the early days of the virus among the homeless.
Communicable diseases have always been a threat in animal shelters, and COVID has exacerbated that risk. Knowing this, proponents urged officials to move people to remote rooms as soon as the virus emerged. But they saw little movement from city officials until 70 people at San Francisco’s largest animal shelter, Multi-Service Center South, contracted the virus in April 2020.
The city has added 200 beds to its total offer in the last four months – but it seems that accommodation will look different in the future.
That includes maintaining strategies to prevent COVID like social distancing, masking, increased hygiene, and following federal guidelines on bed spacing, according to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. But it could also involve rethinking how facilities are configured, according to proponents.
“That could mean that we use our existing rooms and create private units in these common areas, it could mean that we have private room options,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness.
Kim said this process wouldn’t happen overnight, but providers like Glide can continue to use the pandemic-era vaccination and contact methods that have since proven effective, such as outdoor health centers and mobile centers.
“We will still have a lot to do to prepare for modernization due to the pandemic,” he said.
Proponents also hope to expand something like the shelter-in-place hotel program, where the city rented empty rooms to provide temporary shelter to many at risk of homelessness.
Private hotel rooms not only gave people coming from emergency shelters or dangerous road conditions the opportunity to distance themselves socially, but also made it possible for The City to more easily provide services and support to a traditionally hard-to-reach population.
“The people who came into the shelter-in-place hotels saw a tremendous change in their lives, but the people who stayed outside saw a massive decrease in their quality of life,” said Friendenbach.
Since the hotels opened in April 2020, they have accommodated 3,709 people. Only 729 of them have been permanently housed since then. But seven of the 25 hotels that were used for the temporary program were closed last year, and two more are set to close by the end of 2021.
Homelessness and Supportive Housing announced Wednesday that the remaining hotels will be used for the temporary program through September 2022. Around 1,200 people remain in these units and have to be re-housed.
Finally, if there is a silver lining to the pandemic, homelessness advocates and service providers say that the spotlight is on the dangers to people affected by severe poverty and homelessness.
While they are quick to say the task ahead is daunting, they expressed their optimism that public advocacy for change may outlast the headlines of the pandemic.
“We are all reminded that the health of one person affects the health of another person,” said Friedenbach. “It created an urgency on homelessness that wasn’t there before, and it opened many doors to do things differently and better.”
cgraf@sfexaminer.com
COVID-19 Homeless Vaccines
