Coronavirus: Canberra support services to tackle homelessness in a COVID-19 world

Homelessness services, which provide shelter in shared accommodation alongside other amenities such as showers and sit down meals are hard to do in a social distancing world.

Rough sleepers and those who support them are stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

Safe Shelter ACT is one of the homelessness services in Canberra affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

The shelter would normally open in late-April for homeless men during winter. It operates in different locations on different nights of the week.

This year Safe Shelter would not open.

"A shelter where everyone is sleeping in the one room and fairly close together is simply unsafe in a COVID-19 environment," Safe Shelter ACT co-ordinator Richard Griffiths said.

"If we were to operate we would be actually congregating both the homeless and our shelter volunteers in the one room so we said this was contrary to the national strategy and it was also unsafe."

To add to problem, in the last few weeks demand for homelessness services in Canberra has increased, providers have said.

It came as Minister for Housing Yvette Berry indicated to the ACT Legislative Assembly the scale of homelessness would likely increase in the territory.

Ms Berry told the assembly work had been done to develop an alternative model in the wake of Safe Shelter's closure.

The ACT government has set up a Rough Sleep Sector Working Group to identify additional assistance needed for support services during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Members of the group include Catholic Care, St Vincent de Paul, Uniting Care, Woden Community Service, the Red Cross and Safe Shelter.

"This work includes identifying and preparing for operational impacts, including on staff, supply of food [and] hygiene products and shelter," an ACT government spokeswoman said.

Perhaps the most crucial issue the group is faced with is what would happen if a rough sleeper needed to quarantine if they were infected with COVID-19.

"A key focus of the [group] is to identify suitable alternative accommodation options for rough sleepers who are required to self-isolate or quarantine," the spokeswoman said.

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The working group has also considered motel and hotel accommodation for rough sleepers. It came as in Western Australia, a pilot program is being trialled where 20 people experiencing homelessness in Perth have been put in a hotel.

Mr Griffiths is part of the ACT government's working group. He said he would prefer Canberra's rough sleepers to be put in motels not hotels, which he called "landlocked cruise ships".

"I think hotels are a very bad option because the rooms are relatively small," he said.

"Hotels are generally multi-storey and therefore they involve people walking down corridors, the same, corridors as everyone else, catching the same lifts as everybody else and trying to use the same facilities as everybody else.

"I think they are more dangerous then say single-storey motels where you have a fewer number of people not sharing as much in the way of facilities."

The ACT government would also fast track its "housing first" pilot program with partners Catholic Care and St Vincent de Paul.

The Axial Housing pilot would see rough sleepers moved into independent, long-term housing. The pilot intended to re-home 20 rough sleepers when it was announced late last year.

"Since the beginning of the health crisis, the increased focus on the program has resulted in at least three entrenched rough sleepers provided with permanent homes," the spokeswoman said.

In the meantime, Safe Shelter had found other ways to help.

Mr Griffiths and Safe Shelter volunteer Duncan Craig have provided hand sanitiser to other homelessness services in the ACT such as the Morning Centre and the Red Cross Roadhouse. They were able to get 18 litres of hand sanitiser from Canberra distillery, Underground Spirits.

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