March 2020. Hotels and offices will be converted into emergency safe spaces under a national action plan drawn up by Tony Blair’s former homelessness expert, to protect rough sleepers from coronavirus. Louise Casey, hired by Boris Johnson last month over the issue of homelessness, was scheduled to start her role after Easter but deepening disquiet that the government was “sleepwalking” on homeless people’s vulnerability to Covid-19 led to her being drafted in to spearhead its response. The strategy to safeguard the homeless will be announced on Monday and follows the lead of California in allowing vacant hotels to be requisitioned into homes for rough sleepers and those vulnerable to the virus. In practical terms, protecting the UK’s population of homeless people and rough sleepers by offering safe space to self-isolate means that up to 45,000 “self-contained accommodation spaces” need to be urgently found. Empty hotels have been pinpointed as a ready-made solution because they have separate cleaning facilities and rooms, and can be leased by the government using funding allocated to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Modelling by University College London found that placing vulnerable groups in hotels was also significantly more cost effective than treating individuals in hospital.
Mar 2020. The World Homeless and the Coronavirus
