Hotel Rooms Help Fairfax County Homeless During Pandemic

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — For vulnerable persons experiencing homelessness, self-isolation or self-quarantining during the coronavirus pandemic is easier said than done. They rely on places such as shelters and daytime drop-in centers for food, laundry and other critical services. As a result, service providers have made adjustments and must prepare for the likelihood that homeless people may have been infected.

"They're much more vulnerable in terms of being more susceptible to catching the virus," said John MacPherson, executive director of the Lamb Center, a daytime shelter in Fairfax. That's why the center is checking temperatures of homeless guests at the door. If they have a fever, they can be tested for the virus by a nurse practitioner. In the meantime, there is a place for them to isolate.

Fairfax County's Office to Prevent and End Homelessness and local partners worked to establish a hotel room program to house homeless persons based on need during the coronavirus pandemic. People are referred to hotels by homeless service providers, medical providers such as Health Works of Northern Virginia and Neighborhood Health, and county staff. The rooms are geared toward those who have been tested and are awaiting results, those who have tested positive, and people at higher risk for severe complications from the virus.

Hotels are also being used to help shelters run at a safer capacity in light of social distancing.

Shelter operators such as New Hope Housing, which runs the county's Bailey's and Eleanor U. Kennedy shelters, are tasked with a goal of reducing capacity to 50 percent to decompress congregate living settings. Jan-Michael Sacharko, New Hope Housing's director of development, told Patch the shelters can each host about 50 people but that social distancing is a challenge.

"In the course of the pandemic, it's still too much because we have to space people out," Sacharko said.

New Hope Housing's executive director, Pam Michell, said the pandemic has affected few of the homeless persons the nonprofit serves. The bigger concern is prevention, Michell says, because people who have lived on the streets have likely developed some kind of underlying health condition.

At least six hotels are on board to shelter vulnerable persons around Fairfax County. According to the latest Fairfax County Health and Human Services update, 241 hotel rooms were occupied with 255 guests as of June 16. So far, 456 rooms in six hotels have been secured for the program. The capacity increased when the sixth hotel in southern Fairfax County came on board last week.

The amount of time spent in the hotel rooms varies by a person's circumstances. A person awaiting coronavirus test results would self-quarantine and leave if they receive a negative result. If the result is positive, a person will isolate for 14 days. For individuals at higher risk, there is no set timeline for their stay.

"We're continuing to keep them there for an extended amount of time to protect them from the virus," said Tom Barnett, acting director of the Fairfax County Office to Prevent and End Homelessness.

The Office to Prevent and End Homelessness, created in 2008 to carry out the county Board of Supervisors' plan to end homelessness, is working with local partners on the hotel rooms. Shelter House, Cornerstones, New Hope Housing and FACETS, which contract with the county to run shelters, are managing operations and guest services at the hotels.

Services at the hotel are managed by the nonprofit partners, not the hotel staff. The effort involves client check-ins, maintaining client files, transportation, cleaning, food delivery, site security, laundry, distribution of personal protective gear and bilingual services.

Barnett says the hotels provide not only a place to recuperate from the virus but also stability. For New Hope Housing's program, Michell says "our goal is to not move them back to [the] shelter but to housing."

The program is possible through funding from the commonwealth of Virginia and FEMA, as well as a higher-than-usual Emergency Solutions Grant to Fairfax County from federal CARES Act funding. Grant funds as well as FEMA and state funding will reimburse most expenses related to the hotel sheltering, as well as rehousing efforts for people experiencing homelessness.

The timeline of the hotel program is unclear as long as there is no vaccine for the coronavirus, according to Barnett.