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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.

During her internal medicine residency at San Francisco General Hospital, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, saw many patients who were experiencing homelessness and realized no matter how much the health care system improved, she could only help patients so much if they were unable to find safe, permanent housing.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, sees some cause for optimism in the state and federal approach to homelessness, even amid the pandemic: “If we can move thousands of people indoors at a time when the government is under financial constraints, then we can certainly do this in better times."

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, spoke about how homelessness is incompatible with health. The conditions of homelessness would leave a healthy person vulnerable to catching a disease like Covid-19. Unhoused people are already among the most sick in society, and they’re physically incapable of following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most basic virus-fighting directive: stay home. “It’s an enormous crisis superimposed on an existing crisis,” Dr. Kushel said.

As the coronavirus alters daily life for many Californians, state leaders are facing the confluence of two public health challenges: the virus and homelessness. “What you are seeing is two crises—homelessness and the virus—collide,” says Margot Kushel, MD, director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations at UCSF.

Without proper precautions and actions, the virus "could spread like wildfire," warned Margot Kushel, MD, director of the University of California, San Francisco Center for Vulnerable Populations.

Margot Kushel, MD, spoke with ABC7News about how the novel coronavirus is especially dangers for people experiencing homelessness. People in close proximity on sidewalks and in tents, inside shelters, or even living in shared spaces, like SROs, are extremely vulnerable to communicable diseases. "We know that people who experience homelessness experience death rates that are extraordinarily higher than they otherwise would be if they were housed,” explained Dr. Kushel, “and our fear is that it could come to bear in this [crisis] as well." 

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the University of California, San Francisco Center for Vulnerable Populations, shared her concern that the coronavirus outbreak will be dangerous in other ways for the homeless even if they don’t get sick. “My fear,” she said, “is that this will be used as another way to further stigmatize an already stigmatized and challenged population.”

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed the economic forces driving homelessness along with how increasing the supply of extremely low-income housing could prevent it. “The vast majority of people who become homeless could be easily housed if there were housing that they could afford on their income."

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was interviewed about Project Home and how more people than ever before are “aging into homelessness.” Right now, more than half of the Bay Area homeless population is over age 50.