The coronavirus pandemic is operating like an X-ray of the inequalities and injustices of American society, with differences in economic status outrageously correlated with the odds that one lives or dies. Many white collar workers are able to work from home now that self-quarantine has become the dominant strategy for combatting the spread of the virus, while millions of workers in service industry jobs have no choice but to keep working and so increase their chances of falling ill. Better-off workers have sick days to use if needed, while those less privileged have faced the impossible choice of either taking time off and being fired, or working while sick with a potentially deadly disease. National legislation extending sick leave to all on a temporary basis can’t paper over what has already been so harshly revealed. To go back to the way things were, with Americans having no guaranties to sick leave or health care, would be to embrace a system we have now seen, in undeniable, broken action, to be a machine for killing those not lucky enough to have the right job.
But what we’re seeing in the life or death inequalities exposed among Americans based on their socio-economic status finds its most vivid and extreme expression in the threat faced by our homeless neighbors in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. According to reporting in The New York Times, “Once infected the chronically homeless are more likely to get much sicker or die because of underlying medical conditions and a lack of reliable health care,” in part because, as The Washington Post notes, the population is also older than other groups of Americans. The Post also reports that basic hygiene, like washing hands, has become even more difficult than before for many without shelter, as restaurants and other locations they previously had access to are now closed. The idea of self-quarantine is something of a joke when you don’t have a home, though organizations across the country are working to find solutions. But even when the homeless are able to stay in shelters, the crowded conditions are ideal for the spread of a disease like coronavirus.
The Times remarks that “[t]here are also concerns for employees at shelters — nurses, administrators, charitable workers — who, like health care workers at hospitals, could find themselves exposed multiple times if the virus were to spread among the homeless community.” I have little doubt that before very long, the president and his allies will be seizing on this possibility as a way to scapegoat the homeless population as at least partially responsible for this pandemic; the idea that the homeless are sources of contagion has already been a theme of the president’s so-called thoughts on the homeless.
Long before now, the notion that thousands upon thousands of our fellow Americans have been condemned to live without shelter, without stability, without prospects for a better life, should have sparked sufficient national outrage that sufficient resources and energy had been invested to resolve this admittedly complex problem. But now, with homelessness being a proxy for one’s chances of living or dying in the coming months, we have no further excuses for seeing it in its actuality: as the most profound and unforgivable violation of these Americans’ civil rights. And not simply their rights to health, wellness, and life itself, but also the rights to thrive, to be part of their larger community, to participate in the politics and economy of our nation.