LOS ANGELES _ On a recent morning, Katrina Johnson, Ralph Gomez and Kenya Smith are eager to hit the streets. Outreach workers for a homeless agency serving South Los Angeles, they want to catch up with their clients before the weekend, to make sure everyone is safe for the days ahead.
Standing in their office off Slauson Boulevard, they put together their game plan but pause when they come to the supply closet. Its shelves are close to empty.
The 2-ounce containers of hand sanitizer are gone. Wipes are in short supply, and their van needs its daily cleaning. They scrounge for what they can find: granola bars, cookies, crackers, a few personal care items.
The scarcity, they hope, will be temporary, but they can't be certain. The threat of the novel coronavirus hangs over them, invisible and menacing, threatening to infect them and their clients _ the men and women struggling with homelessness.
But they wonder and worry.
By hitting the streets each day _ assessing needs, delivering food _ they know that they represent a possible source for transmitting the virus to a population that is fairly isolated. More than just a fever and cough, the resulting disease COVID-19 could lead to pneumonia, organ failure and death, worst-case scenarios for the most vulnerable.
At a staff meeting a day earlier, outreach teams discussed new protocols: social distancing, no transporting of clients, no salad deliveries, placing water or prepackaged snacks on the ground, leaving pens with clients instead of reusing them.
They are a tight group, the employees of Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System, or HOPICS, conditioned by months, if not years, of standing on the front line of what was once the city's most conspicuous public health crisis.
"This is what we've always done," Johnson says. "We just need to take it to another level entirely."
The simplicity of the measures, the outreach workers say, is what makes them so challenging. They are so basic, they are easy to forget.
But forgetfulness, they know, comes with a price, especially among a population whose health is already compromised by preexisting conditions, stress, addiction and the squalor of the streets.
Age, too, is a risk factor. According to the most recent government-mandated homeless count, 13,600 men and women in Los Angeles County are at least 55 and older. By another estimate, close to 4,000 are older than 65. While COVID-19 infects people of all ages, mortality among seniors has been especially high.
The outreach workers know their jobs will change in the coming weeks, that their focus will be on seniors and the medically vulnerable. But on this day _ while they can _ they would like to help Orlando get his Social Security card and locate Mary, who has been approved for a bed in a shelter but is missing.
A light rain is falling. The odds are against them. In the rain, clients tend to scatter into fast-food restaurants, libraries, any place to get out of the wet and cold.
But Johnson, Gomez and Smith have to keep trying, even as they stand at this strange confluence of crises where homelessness and disease meet.
.jpg?w=600)
