By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
At Camillus House in downtown Miami, guests enjoy a game of dominos in the courtyard during the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect themselves and others, staff and resident guests at the homeless shelter are socially distancing, wearing face masks and stepping up sanitation and disinfection protocols. They are also finding additional ways to keep boredom at bay.
MIAMI | Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the CEO of Camillus House homeless shelter in downtown Miami made a quick stop at a local Dollar Store.
There, Hilda Fernandez bought up all the store’s adult coloring books and colored pencils, along with an assortment of would-be bingo prizes.
Those supplies helped keep Camillus’ 400-plus residents occupied while socially distancing from the wider community — just a small part of the toolbox that Fernandez and her staff have been using to keep the residents safe during quarantine.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
Hilda Fernandez, chief executive officer of Camillus House in downtown Miami, makes the rounds with a cart of donated books offered to residents who are staying here during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have been at this for quite a while, making sure we had supplies in stock, because we knew it was going to get complicated,” Fernandez said.
Six decades after its founding, Camillus House has grown from a small overnight shelter into a full-service center, spread across a series of new buildings and offering a comprehensive system of care for the poor and homeless. Those services include food, clothing, emergency, transitional and permanent housing, physical and mental health care, and substance abuse treatment.
At the main site downtown, the center not only houses 400 residents; it also provides a place where the homeless can get a hot meal, take a shower, pick out new clothes and receive and send mail. They can also attend classes, like culinary arts training, and consult with on-site counselors and social workers.
But to protect residents and staff from the still-expanding pandemic, the shelter decided early to tightly restrict movement in and out. Staff also determined to screen residents for coronavirus regularly, using a tool from the Centers for Disease Control.
Fernandez and her team also drew up an exhaustive list of campus and operational modifications to foster better social distancing and disinfection measures.
The coronavirus has continued to hit South Florida especially hard. As of June 7, 2020, Miami-Dade County had 19,756 known cases and 767 deaths. For Broward, the toll on the same date was 7,924 cases and 343 deaths.
Despite the crisis, Camillus House still accepts people into the program if they comply with a coordinated entry process put in place by the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust and its Homeless Helpline.
“We made a decision from the beginning that we would continue to serve,” said Fernandez, who also has worked previously with the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust. “At the end of the day, we believe [the homeless] are going to be safer inside our walls than on the street.”
Once accepted into Camillus House, residents get twice-weekly temperature checks and a weekly interview that includes a questionnaire on symptoms. That ongoing screening process takes about two and a half days each week for all 400-plus guests.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
To protect themselves and others during the COVID-19 pandemic, Camillus House has invested heavily this year in wash stations and high tech sanitation devices strategically deployed around the homeless shelter's property. Resident guests at Camillus House in downtown Miami also are socially distancing, wearing face masks and helping with clean up duties at the homeless shelter.
The clients are also expected to wear masks at all times, Fernandez said. She added that the masks are replaced on a regular basis.
“That is a little bit of a challenge, but we are very aggressive in enforcing that,” Fernandez said.
If a client appears to show coronavirus symptoms, they are sent for testing and temporarily isolated in one of six new quarantine rooms at Camillus House. The rooms are retrofitted with negative pressure and ultraviolet lighting. If testing proves positive, the client is sent to one of the quarantine hotel rooms with the Homeless Trust.
Other safety-related campus modifications at Camillus House include:
- A series of rented hand-washing stations throughout the facility.
- Dining hall seating limited to three persons per table, requiring a longer mealtime schedule.
- Six large ozone cleaners placed in night community areas, including the kitchen and dining hall.
- Mobile sprayers to disinfect high-traffic areas near the elevator, dining hall, courtyard, walls, hallways and doors.
- Guests can only leave the property for medical or other priority appointments.
- Mental and behavioral health counseling is now conducted through a telehealth video-enhanced system.
- Meal service lines are marked off on the floor to indicate at least six feet of space between residents making their way to the dining hall.
- Dormitory rooms are likewise reconfigured to promote greater social distancing among guests.
Camillus has continued its day center services for the street homeless, including breakfast, the mail room, clothing donations and other services. That program has been significantly modified, however, with new protocols to ensure safety and prevent an outbreak.
To assist its sister agency, Camillus Health Concern, to help chronically homeless and mentally ill living on the streets, Fernandez said her team set up an outdoor tented station on the property for COVID-19 testing.
All the extra measures are straining the agency’s discretionary funds, with more than $210,000 for coronavirus-related expenses thus far.
And with residents staying on campus more, they are also eating more meals there: on average about 1,200 a day.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
To protect themselves and others during the COVID-19 pandemic, resident guests in the dining room at Camillus House in downtown Miami are socially distancing, wearing face masks and helping with clean up duties at the homeless shelter. Camillus House has also invested heavily in wash stations and high tech sanitation devices strategically deployed around the property.
An unfortunate result of the pandemic lockdown has been that Camillus House residents can’t effectively do something they may need most: seek jobs at a time when the hospitality and restaurant industry in particular remains at a standstill.
“Our poor clients — a lot of them were moving forward, trying to move on to the next step ... but no one is really hiring for the kind of jobs our clients can get,” Fernandez said. “It doesn’t mean we have stopped helping them look for jobs, it’s just a little more challenging for them to get one.”
Also more difficult now is the search for client housing. Camillus House residents who were getting ready to move out are finding it a difficult if not impossible climate for apartment searches. The outside community is a little leery of having people out on the streets, and Camillus House is trying to limit its guests’ movement outside the shelter.
Volunteers to Camillus House, too, have been asked to stay away at this time, further straining the meal service operation.
On a bright note, Camillus House successfully applied for the federal Payroll Protection Program, and moved its annual auction fund raiser to an online Zoom platform on May 8, 2020. Another fundraising event is set for December.
Even as Miami-Dade County reopens, Camillus House will likely continue its new safety and social distancing protocols, according to Fernandez.
"We will continue to have measures in place to ensure that we minimize any risk of infection being brought onto our campus,” she said.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
To protect themselves and others during the COVID-19 pandemic, resident guests line up six feet apart to enter the dining room at Camillus House in downtown Miami.
