Building trust with DC’s homeless community as vaccines roll-out

Mayor Muriel Bowser announces vaccines rollouts will begin on February 25 prioritizing disproportionately affected zip codes and homeless community.

WASHINGTON – As the pandemic has reached its one-year mark, the homeless community and the organizations that serve them continue to struggle to find a way to operate to their full potential while being a Covid safe-space.

With the city placing capacity regulations on restaurants, shelters followed that lead and have limited their available space. This has forced more people to move onto the streets into encampments around the city like those found in Dupont Circle or the NoMa area. With this added risk of exposure, the city has rented rooms in hotels for homeless people to quarantine if they are experiencing symptoms or awaiting test results but still face many limitations.

Homeless shelters and non-profit organizations combating homelessness have had to reimagine their programs leading to a decrease in people they can provide services to. ThriveDC, a nonprofit that pre-pandemic provided hot meals, showers, counseling, and reintegration programs in Columbia Heights has felt the effects as they have reduced or completely halted some programs meaning the homeless community is not receiving the usual services many rely on.

“There are just a lot of people who aren’t getting what they were getting through that program,” said Rockwell about how these changes have affected the number of homeless people that attend their counseling programs. “There are people who are in poor health or have mental health issues that we just haven’t seen in a while. We don’t know if they’ve found somewhere safe to be for the last couple of months, or if they’ve passed, and that’s just a hard situation.”

ThriveDC, which originally provided hot meals twice a day to over 200 people every day, has adapted to social distancing precautions by partnering with local food banks to give out to-go meals to their local community with minimal contact. Although this part of the organization continues, other programs including counseling and job training that help homeless people and those coming out from incarceration to reintegrate into society have come to a halt hurting the progress many of the organization’s patrons were making, said Rockwell. But despite the limitations on the services the organization can provide, they have seen their community step up to support those in need.

“People recognize that there is an issue and are taking it upon themselves to provide the capacity for that work to be done,” said Rockwell. “A lot of people are using their stimulus checks to give Thrive extra money because they’re in a position where they don’t need it, but they know that so many other people do.”

As a continuous effort on part of the city to help the homeless community, Mayor Bowser announced that starting on February 24 homeless people would be prioritized in the city’s vaccination plans. The city of DC has partnered with shelters and respite care centers to provide vaccines on location and create pop-up sites for the street homeless community.

The decision to prioritize homeless people in the vaccine rollout does not come without much consideration. According to Katie League, the COVID-19 Program Manager at National Health Care for the Homeless a national organization focused on bringing affordable health care to end homelessness, two main limitations are part of the conversation of ensuring there is trust with the community when providing vaccines.

First, League says, that at the front of the conversation is making sure that vaccine sites are set up in accessible areas and equipped with enough number of vials to cover the community. To do this, the city is focusing on larger groups of homeless communities in prioritized zip codes, like Columbia Heights where ThriveDC is located. These areas are predominately BIPOC communities, highlighting those who have been disproportionally affected by Covid cases and homelessness. They are also doing outreach work to other locations to bring those with limited access to the sites.

“Even among people experiencing homelessness, there is still a need to make sure we are being very equitable in terms of who is being impacted,” said League about the consideration given to the intersections of homelessness. “It’s multi-layered so even though we know we are already in an at-risk community and we are a marginalized community, there are marginalized communities within our marginalized community.”

The second issue is that homeless people often move from shelters and are difficult to track making administering a second dose difficult. Although with the restrictions on the number of occupants in shelters, more people are remaining at one location longer, diminishing this concern, League said. Another consideration to combat this worry is the recent Johnson and Johnson one-dose vaccine. This vaccine has been approved by the FDA and has begun to be rolled out but there is debate about its effectiveness when compared to the two-dose options.

“People experiencing homelessness is a community where trust is essential; it is the backbone of the work that we do,” said League about the concern of deciding for homeless people on giving them a possibly less effective vaccine. “We must earn their trust. We should not be entitled to it, especially when the healthcare community has treated people experiencing homelessness like second class citizens.”

As the city begins to administer the available vaccines and mutations of the virus are discovered, those involved in the fight to ending homelessness will have to continue to adapt to provide the services that support the community. Not only have these organizations had to figure out how to adapt to COVID-19 safe practices but also think about what this means for future operations in a post-pandemic life.

“The solution is that DC needs to be really intentional in how it reopens that it prioritizes equity at the center of this new development,” said Rockwell about keeping homeless people in mind post-pandemic policymaking. “That when it makes budgets for the next year, these have to be moral documents that creates support and capacity for the most vulnerable populations.”