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Editorial: COVID-19 and homelessness

When the pandemic began, I imagine most people expected it to be a minor thing that impacted far away places – after all, that’s a lot of what we were told going into it. However, even as those narratives were being told we saw things close in preparation, and eventually response, to the pandemic. The first things I saw was my university closing until they could figure out a switch to distance learning, happening before there was even a reported case where I lived.
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When the pandemic began, I imagine most people expected it to be a minor thing that impacted far away places – after all, that’s a lot of what we were told going into it. However, even as those narratives were being told we saw things close in preparation, and eventually response, to the pandemic. The first things I saw was my university closing until they could figure out a switch to distance learning, happening before there was even a reported case where I lived. It was just a matter of time from there, as most places began to follow suit until only what was deemed essential remained open, and we found ourselves in a sort of limbo as we isolated in our homes, waiting for something to work itself out and adapt to the changes the pandemic brought with it.

With that all said, though that was my experience of the start of the pandemic, and one that many can probably relate with to at least some extent, it is quite a different experience compared to how some people experienced it. While easily taken for granted, the ability to practice social distancing or isolation or working from home requires one to have a home to bunker down in to begin with. As one study on the topic put it, over the course of the pandemic, even being able to socially distance oneself became a social determinant of health; regardless of any possible medical factors or considerations that could influence whether or not people were infected by the COVID-19 virus, if you don’t have a home you lose the ability to engage in many of the safety practices promoted during the pandemic, and as a result or inherently more likely to be infected.

That isn’t the biggest impact the pandemic had on the wellness of homeless people, as like I pointed out at the start, just about everything not deemed necessary was closed or at least set to a reduced level of capacity and functioning, and homeless shelters and organizations aimed at helping homeless people were no exception. Efforts were made to try and alleviate these issues, such as the opening of a new location in Edmonton to try and provide access to services and programs that may otherwise have become unavailable.

Ultimately, as dangerous as COVID-19 was for everyone, it was far more so for homeless people due to the nature of their situation. And, like it has for so many other vulnerable populations, the pandemic has shown how at risk homeless people are, and how lacking some of our efforts to help them have been. Hopefully going forward, we’ll be able to take what we have learned through the pandemic and use it to better help those most in need within our communities.

Austin Mardon is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta, a member of the Order of Canada, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Jonathan Wiebe is a master’s student pursuing a degree in Counselling Psychology at Yorkville University.