Anxious times, close quarters: Life in a boarding house during COVID-19

Danielle Goldsworthy spent nights awake in her bed listening to the scratching sound of rats gnawing at her door to get inside. Now she's worried about what else might be coming through the door.

Goldsworthy used to livein a boarding house on LeMarchant Road in St. John's with 15 makeshift units and two shared washrooms. She's since moved on to a differentplace, but her concernscontinue.

She's afraid the buildingcould be ground zero for a COVID-19 clusterand says more people should be aware of the issues in substandard, subsidized housing.

"It's a community health problem," she told CBC News. "All the diseases and the dirtiness of the place, having all those people living in one area and using the same two bathrooms. I just feel like places like that, obviously it's going to be a hub for disease."

Goldsworthy lives inwhat's considered secondary homelessness she has a roof over her head, but only temporarily, and often moves from one place to the next.

With so many people migrating between houses, the risk is high for infections to spread quickly across the downtown core of the city, affecting people with little support in their lives.

The provincial government is looking at ways to mitigate the risks for people living this way.

"COVID doesn't impact everyone equally," said Children, Seniors and Social Development Minister Lisa Dempster."The group you're talking about are some very vulnerable people."

Plans are still evolving and changing day to day, but one thing that is in place is a hotline for vulnerable people to speak with a representative from Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation and a health care professional from Eastern Health.

If the person is found to have an immediate need, Dempster said staff are on call to assist with whatever problem they are facing.

The phone number provided by the department is1-833-724-2444. Anyone with a medical questionis asked to call 811.

Hotel plans set aside

The housing corporation was in the midst of putting a plan in place to ease congestion in boarding houses and move anyone with an underlying health condition into the Super 8 Hotel on Higgins Line.

While a nice idea in theory, Dempster said, it came with more problems than solutions.

The department wouldhave to continue paying rent at the boarding houses to keep a person's place for when the pandemic is over.

It would also pull peopleaway from resources like the Gathering Place, where they can eat and access health care.

"Pulling them out of that downtown space where they are able to access the supports that they need to get them through there was a whole bunch of reasons why that didn't work. But we're feeling cautiously OK that we have things in place should something move and tomorrow we find ourselves in a place different than we are today."

Shelters cutting capacity, hotels on standby

Dempster's department, along with the non-profit End Homelessness St. John's (EHSJ), have secured two hotels in St. John's to house the homeless if the shelter system becomes flooded.

Doug Pawson, executive director of EHSJ, said his group will be ready to move people in as early as this week if there is a need.

Following public health guidelines, the province's homeless shelters have cut their capacities to ensure there is room for physical distancing. Despite a slash in capacity, the shelter system has managed to hold the line so far without any overflow.

Part of the solution to date has been private, for-profit shelters. The provincemoved away from its reliance on thoseafter a CBC News investigation in November.

Several shelters saw their clientele dry up, but are now operating full houses again to keep people off the streets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If there is no rush of overflow, those clients could be moved into the hotels at a lower nightlyrate, where they would beoffered medical care and harm-reduction supervision by a group of doctors known as theDowntown Health Collaborative.

Deeper dive needed, minister says

Goldsworthy hopes the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation can take some of the strain off boarding houses in the city, which are located primarily in the downtown region.

She has moved on from the rat-infested LeMarchant Road house, and is now living in one that is slightly cleaner.Sheis worried she could befacing eviction again, however, despite being in the midstof a pandemic.

Her situation exposes complexitieswithin the system.

She needed a fixed address to qualify for a prescriptiondrug program, so she gave her parents' address, a place she tries to avoid staying for health reasons.

She doesn't qualify for other housing services because she technically has a fixed address. That leaves her bouncing from boarding house to boarding house.

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Still, herconcerns lie elsewhere, with people who havereduced mental capacity and spend most of their daysonthe streets and most nights in unclean and crowded conditions.

"They have no place to go and they are wandering around the city. A lot of them don't know the difference, they don't know much about COVID."

Dempster shares a similar concern.

In the aftermath of a historic blizzard in January that shut down the entire city of St. John's for a week,Dempster saidher department saw glaring issues with how people were living.

She hopes that out of COVID-19 can come some permanent solutions to housing problems that have existed for a long time.

"This for me has exposed that we need to take a deeper dive and really challenge ourselves on how we can do better for folks who may not be homeless, but they are precariously housed," she said."Their current situation is anything but ideal."

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