GET HELP® Monitors the News
Below are the news and articles shared on our social media
April 2020
Below are the news and articles shared on our social media
April 2020
April 22, 2020
TOPIC: How’s Your Recovery
Dr. Lloyd Sederer, GET HELP Board of Advisors chair, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the author of The Addiction Solution: Treating Our Dependence on Opioids and Other Drugs, takes calls from listeners struggling to manage their addictions and compulsions during isolation. Listen here by clicking on play to the left, or listen at WNYC by clicking link below.
April 20, 2020
Los Angeles will provide COVID-19 testing and additional resources to Skid Row and other encampments in the city on Monday to protect the homeless population from the virus.
Rapid-results field tests, health and wellness screenings, physical distancing counseling and transportation to shelters or hotels are among the services that will be provided by “street medical teams,” the mayor’s office said.
April 18, 2020
Hoping to prevent a surge of deadly coronavirus cases in the homeless community, Los Angeles officials have launched a new effort to move an unprecedented 15,000 people out of overcrowded shelters and encampments and into hotel rooms.
It’s a daunting goal, given that nearly 60,000 people live without permanent shelter in L.A. County, most of them sleeping in the streets each night. Getting every person into an emergency shelter or a hotel room is probably an impossible task.
But in recent weeks, city and county officials, guided by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, settled on the smaller number of 15,000 because it accounts for the segment of the homeless population most likely to die on the streets — with or without the pandemic. Those who are seniors and are medically fragile.
April 17, 2020
Penn’s group, CORE, has been helping to bolster city and county efforts to offer free tests across the county.
In a city of movie stars, it made sense that at some point L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti would invite one to his daily public COVID-19 briefings.
But Sean Penn’s appearance Thursday evening at the Crenshaw Christian Center testing site wasn’t about star power.
Penn’s disaster relief foundation, Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), has been helping to spread testing across the region in an effort to contain the pandemic.
The effort has boosted L.A. city and county efforts to build the region’s testing capacity.
April 15, 2020
The Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row is seeing a rash of coronavirus cases after one of its staffers passed away from COVID-19, and now the shelter will decrease its capacity by 50 percent.
Reverend Andy Bales, the President and CEO of Union Rescue Mission, said there are six confirmed cases, including Gerald Shiroma, the beloved full-time driver who passed.
April 11, 2020
“The Definition of Insanity” premieres Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 10-1 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBSVideo App.
A few years ago, I was in Miami for a conference. I had contacted Judge Steven Leifman (Associate Administrative Judge, Miami-Dade County Court, 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida), who kindly agreed to meet and talk. Instead of going to his judicial chamber, we went to a large, concrete building, under construction, within the City of Miami.
The space had been hollowed out. Echoes bounced off its cement walls and floors. Yet, Leifman gave me a virtual tour, explaining what each area of the building would become and provide. The story I also heard
April 9, 2020
How do you stay at home if you are homeless? CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at how cities across the U.S. are handling the homeless crisis during the coronavirus pandemic and why everyone’s health matters.
April 4, 2020
Opinion
The coronavirus has infected over a million people around the world. As the pandemic sweeps across the country, tens of thousands of people are living on the streets of California. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California warned that as many as 60,000 homeless people could be infected with Covid-19, overwhelming the state’s health care systems. In Los Angeles County, where roughly 60,000 people are homeless, there are at least nine confirmed cases of coronavirus among unsheltered people.
Shelters are nearly full, and the places where many can find food, shelter and a bathroom, like libraries, gyms, and soup kitchens, are closed. The county has started setting up emergency temporary shelters in city recreation centers, and deployed portable toilets, hand-washing stations and mobile shower services at some encampments. But this will not be enough to stem the spread of the virus.
April 2, 2020
As Los Angeles prepares for a storm of coronavirus cases, efforts to get homeless people off the streets and to secure rooms for patients to stay without risk of infecting others are off to an uneven start.
So far, Los Angeles County’s hastily compiled network of quarantine and isolation sites have largely remained empty, while its plan to add thousands of beds in hotels and motels is just getting underway.
The city’s 13 new homeless shelters, meanwhile, were 95% full on Wednesday, according to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s spokesman Alex Comisar. The mayor’s office opened the shelters inside city recreation centers in the past few days and, since then, has been hustling to convert more in hopes of lowering the threat of the virus spreading among the high-risk population in encampments.
April 1, 2020
In Las Vegas, the Catholic Charities’ homeless shelter has long served as a facility for people in need of accommodations
But after one homeless man who used the facility tested positive for coronavirus last week, the shelter was forced to close, leaving 500 homeless people scrambling for a new place to stay. Even Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, a nearby open-air facility, was unable to take in more people as it was almost at capacity.
So City of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada officials decided to create a makeshift homeless shelter — in the parking lot of Cashman Center.
Over the weekend, the parking lot of the center, which is normally a convention and baseball stadium complex, transformed into a sleeping space with help from volunteers.