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Seattle's Shelter Response During COVID-19

Publish Date: 4/21/2020
Description: COVID-19 has forced us to take unprecedented measures to help stop the spread of the deadly disease. One group especially vulnerable is the homeless population. The City of Seattle, under Mayor Durkan, has moved swiftly to protect these residents by opening seven new shelter locations. The added shelter capacity has helped re-distribute homeless residents, enabling them to use social distancing to stay healthy. For updated information please go to http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/covid-19.
SPEAKER_01

The city of Seattle has taken unprecedented measures to open up as many shelter spaces as possible during this COVID-19 outbreak.

The city is beginning to open 95 units of new shelter capacity.

TC Spirit, a tiny house village in the Central District.

We expanded the number of tiny houses that are available at Lake Union Village.

and also Lakefront Community House.

It'll be a 24-7 shelter with services.

12 rooms on this floor, and this would be a typical room setup.

We have a commercial-grade kitchen.

We have an exam room, doctor's office.

Lakefront Community House has the ability to serve 50 people, all aimed at helping people who are living unsheltered access permanent housing.

but we are also opening additional spaces inside of community centers, at Seattle Center, so that we can de-intensify the number of people who are living in congregate shelter spaces.

In order to combat the spread of COVID-19, we wanted to make more spaces available so that we could de-intensify or redistribute those large populations to more spaces so that people weren't sleeping so close to one another.

We're working with Salvation Army, who manages the City Hall shelter.

That's an overnight shelter, serves 180 people every night.

We have both upstairs and downstairs at City Hall.

We took half of that population and made use of Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center, so that that population had more space.

SPEAKER_00

It provides 24-7 care, and we're able to provide meals here too, so we make sure that the individuals staying here have two solid meals per day.

SPEAKER_01

I'm really proud of how the city has responded to the COVID-19 outbreak.