Sheltering in Place

In the wake of COVID-19, state and local officials urge Virginians to stay home — but what about those without a home? | Photos courtesy The Salvation Army Central Virginia

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A volunteer serves a client lunch at the Boys and Girls Club on R Street, which is being used by The Salvation Army Central Virginia to house the homeless during the pandemic.

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A volunteer checks in a client at the front desk at the Boys and Girls Club on R Street.

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Cots laid out in the gymnasium where female clients are staying at the Boys and Girls Club on R Street

As state and local officials urged Virginians to stay home and practice social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Dohmann saw a problem. 

Dohmann, area commander for The Salvation Army of Central Virginia, oversees the nonprofit’s downtown West Grace Street homeless shelter, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to implement social distancing in the shelter space, which accommodates 55 beds across nearly 10,000 square feet. 

“Right now, we’ve got to look at ways to protect them and to really try the best we can to create some distancing, and what does it look like for them to self-isolate?” he told his staff. “We began to look into how we can do that, and at the end of the conversation, we looked, and we said, ‘There’s really no way we can. We have no additional space where we’re at.’ ” 

Dohmann is among the area’s nonprofit and community leaders who are scrambling to care for the homeless during the pandemic. 

Thanks to some quick thinking, Dohmann says The Salvation Army converted its Boys and Girls Club on R Street — which ceased operations following public school closures — into a temporary housing center for people experiencing homelessness who are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their age or underlying medical conditions. 

There, Dohmann’s staff has spaced cots 6 feet apart and is limiting the number of shelter residents allowed in recreation and dining areas at any one time. The center also offers temperature screenings, individually packaged meals, showers and an on-site laundry service. Dohmann says 26 people moved in after one day in operation, with room for 75 residents across nearly 36,000 square feet.

The residents are not allowed to leave the shelter except for medical and housing appointments and occasional strolls or smoke breaks in a designated area. The adjustment has been difficult for some. “Really, we’re saying, ‘Guys, listen, we know this is hard, but we really want you to stay here as much as you can,’ ” Dohmann says.

The Salvation Army’s West Grace Street shelter remains open and is at capacity, but while residents have also been allowed to stay there all day, his staff’s ability to spread beds out has been limited by space constraints. 

Other city shelters are also allowing daylong stays while COVID-19 continues to pose a threat, according to Kelly King Horne, executive director for Homeward, the nonprofit that coordinates the region’s homeless services. She’s also a member of the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care, a network of homeless service providers, government agencies and community partners dedicated to ending homelessness in the region. 

“We really jumped in as the Continuum of Care … on March 12, and honestly, we’ve been working every single day since then, morning until night.” she says. “It’s pretty hectic, and things are really dynamic and fast-changing.” 

Shelters in the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care, which account for about 330 shelter beds on any given night, have spaced out beds and implemented health screenings for residents and staff members, Horne says. In its January point-in-time count, Homeward estimated there are 549 people in the region experiencing homelessness.

Though the Continuum of Care works to connect people to shelter beds, the organization is also offering temporary hotel stays for those who show symptoms of COVID-19. 

Through a combination of city funding and $172,287 in emergency state funds, it paid about $36,000 per week to house approximately 80 high-risk individuals in hotel rooms as of early April, she says. The amount is also funding transportation and some meal costs for those staying in hotels. 

But amid the outbreak, not everyone experiencing homelessness in the region has a safe place to stay. Rhonda Sneed, who leads the local nonprofit Blessing Warriors RVA, says she’s working with a limited group of volunteers to safely distribute food and homemade face masks to small campsites throughout greater Richmond. 

“As citizens, as people, we have to look out for each other, especially at this time in our lives with the pandemic,” she says. 

Sneed was the driving force behind Camp Cathy, a tent encampment erected in January next to the city’s cold weather overflow shelter along Oliver Hill Way. The camp housed about 137 homeless people at its peak, and she says it fostered a tight-knit community that scattered when the camp was shut down and fenced off in mid-March. 

Horne and Reggie Gordon, the city’s deputy chief administrator for human services, say the open-air camp posed health risks that were compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak. Temporary housing at hotels and shelters was offered to camp residents before it was taken down, and between 90 and 100 were housed during the camp’s final week. 

Going forward, Horne says, case managers with the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care will continue working with those staying in shelters and hotels, with the goal of connecting them to permanent housing. 

“Homelessness was a crisis before the pandemic,” she says, “and homelessness and poverty and the lack of affordable housing will be a crisis on the other side.”

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