While the coronavirus is terrifying, imagine facing it without a home. As Leilani Farha, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, put it, “Housing has become the front line defense against the coronavirus. Home has rarely been more of a life-or-death situation.” However, for the more than 550,000 people experiencing homelessness in the United States, sheltering in place is a “luxury.”
Much deadlier and more contagious than the typical flu, the coronavirus is particularly devastating for homeless communities. People experiencing homelessness are often crowded into hotbeds for disease, such as encampments, shelters and jails, and already face higher rates of chronic illness and death from the yearly flu.
Yet, homelessness is not inevitable, nor is it the individuals’ fault. It is the result of policies that keep the minimum wage flat, restrict zoning in metropolitan areas, create power imbalances between landlords and tenants and stand in the way of creating more affordable, adequate housing.
For millions of Americans making the minimum wage or less, homelessness is unavoidable. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that, in 2019, a full-time worker, working 40 hours a week for a full year, needed to earn $17.90/hour to afford a modest one-bedroom. This is substantially more than the current national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and still more than the $15-an-hour minimum wage-increase the U.S. House considered last year.
However, most cities “criminalize” rather than address homelessness, arresting people for simply doing what they must to survive.
The actions taken by governments across Miami-Dade County responding to the coronavirus are cases-in-point. The city of Miami, for example, cleared out a homeless encampment in Overtown, going directly against CDC guidance for containing the virus’ spread. Miami Beach further made panhandling a crime as part of its plan for reopening.
Beyond causing incalculable human suffering and violating basic human rights, criminalizing homelessness simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t end the condition or take people off the streets. It just shuffles them to different parts of a city.
Moreover, criminalizing homelessness wastes city resources. According to one study, jail people experiencing homelessness and diverting police resources to enforce these laws cost cities two to three times what it would to simply provide housing and case workers to people who are homeless.
There are further public-health costs. By allowing viruses to spread in the homeless community, we keep those viruses alive and create a reservoir for continuing infection. Diane Yentel, the CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, “If we don’t have homes to stay in, we put people at an immediate and extreme risk, and we risk the health of entire communities.”
We as a nation are rich enough to eradicate homelessness forever. Yet, we stand largely alone in the international community by refusing to commit to a right to adequate housing and recognize basic social and economic rights.
It is time to take a different path.
Congress has made some provisions in the CARES Act for homelessness assistance during the pandemic, and many state and municipal governments have issued eviction suspensions to keep the homeless population from growing with rising unemployment. However, unless governments take steps to provide for adequate housing, it is unlikely that we will be able to slow the spread of the disease among people experiencing homelessness.
In the short term, we need to stop the spread of the coronavirus in homeless shelters. The only way to do this is to provide immediate individual housing in hotels, dorms or other currently unoccupied spaces where people who are homeless can socially distance and maintain proper hygiene.
In the long term, Congress and state governments should use stimulus funding to close the housing gap and ensure no one is forced to go back to living on the street. Access to adequate housing would both address homelessness and safeguard against future public-health risks.
It’s a luxury to shelter in place in this country, but it shouldn’t be. Every human has a right to shelter, but more than that, every human has a right to adequate housing. Until we guarantee that right, we will bear the costs.
Tamar Ezer is the associate director and a lecturer in law with the Human Rights Clinic. at the University of Miami. David Stuzin is a student-attorney at UM’s Human Rights Clinic.
