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For unhoused people living in areas impacted by wildfire smoke, “The choice is being in a congregate shelter or being outside, and [with] COVID it's pretty clear that it's safer to be outside than to be in a congregate shelter," said Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. "For people who are outside, it's just worsened their already precarious health situation."

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed how low-wage workers and their families are at particularly high risk during the pandemic. “The type of work that (homeless) people do is the type of work that we have seen to be at highest risk because it has been the type of work that you can’t do from home.”

Homeless people are among the most vulnerable populations in the COVID-19 pandemic, yet they’re largely invisible during this crisis. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, called the pandemic “a crisis within a crisis,” noting that most homeless people are usually in poorer health and, with widespread closures, had lost access to services providing food, water, and shelter.

Researchers and advocates say much is unknown about how the pandemic has affected the estimated half-million people without housing in the Untied States. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed how obtaining good data on the homeless population is difficult because hospitals and death certificates don’t track housing status. While she was hesitant to draw conclusions about how the pandemic has affected homeless people overall, she said, “This may be an example where being outside and unsheltered, just in terms of COVID, maybe let people be at lower risk. But again, we just don’t really know.”

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, realized early in her career that the most important thing for her patients’ health was housing. Now a preeminent expert on homelessness and director of BHHI, she delves into what the COVID-19 crisis reveals about housing and health.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted in an article about how unhoused people in San Francisco and nationwide are contracting the coronavirus at about the same rate as housed people. Isolating people in hotels and thinning out shelters helped—and for those left outside, the fresh open air was a greater protector than experts anticipated. "There’s no question that the hotel rooms and downsizing the shelters helped a lot," said Dr. Kushel.

As shelters in San Francisco face increased rates of infection, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed what’s needed in response, and why the approach can’t be exactly the same as for the housed population: “There is no way to shelter in place when you don't have housing.”

In an effort to understand the spread of the coronavirus among the large population of homeless people in San Francisco’s District 10, UCSF joined with the United Council of Human Services and other community organizations to put together the weekend event.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was interviewed about the COVID-19 testing event in San Francisco. UCSF partnered with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and several community-based organizations to bring testing and information to people in District 10. Unhoused people are high risk for COVID-19, so increasing awareness around the disease is extremely important.

Through ‘United in Health D10 Unhoused,’ UCSF offered free COVID-19 testing for anyone experiencing homelessness in District 10. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, led the effort in partnership with the United Council of Human Services (Mother Brown’s Kitchen), Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, and Southeast Community Council, as well as SFDPH.