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Homelessness and the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on Apr. 6, 2020
Roxanne Bland
Roxanne Bland

Roxanne Bland is Tax Notes State’s contributing editor. Before joining Tax Analysts, Bland spent 17 years with the Multistate Tax Commission, where she worked with state revenue agency representatives to draft model legislation pertaining to sales and use taxation and corporate income, analyzed and reported on proposed federal legislative initiatives affecting state taxation, worked with legislative consultants and representatives from other state organizations on international issues affecting states, and assisted member state representatives in federal lobbying efforts. Before that, she was an attorney with the Federation of Tax Administrators for over seven years.

In this installment of The SALT Box, Bland discusses the people most at risk of getting the COVID-19 disease — the homeless. She explains that although state and local governments have acted to reduce the spread of the coronavirus by enacting guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which include restricting people’s movements, the homeless appear to be overlooked — despite their mobility, which threatens to spread the virus.

It is well discussed that the people most vulnerable to falling dangerously ill or dying from a COVID-19 infection include those over the age of 65, those with compromised immune systems, those with chronic respiratory ailments, and those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. Yet there is one high-risk segment of the population that seems to have been forgotten — the homeless. According to a 2019 report released by The Council of Economic Advisers, there were more than 500,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night between 2007 and 2019,1 most in the larger metropolitan areas. In 2019 the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated more than 151,000 homeless in California alone.2 At night, some find housing in homeless shelters or halfway houses, but too many must find nighttime shelter anywhere they can, such as deeply recessed doorways, abandoned buildings, covered entrances to subway stations, and maybe in the subway system itself — in unused stations, or other nooks away from the train tracks. Others congregate in camps, perhaps under a bridge. Those who cannot find shelter of any kind have no choice but to sleep in the open, such as on sidewalks. Years ago, when I lived in Washington, D.C., during winter it was not uncommon to see the homeless sleeping on the exhaust grates of a federal office building’s heating system for warmth.

There are many reasons why people become homeless. It may be because of alcohol and drug addiction, chronic mental and health issues, or even through sheer bad luck — the loss of a job or a home destroyed by a natural disaster. But what most homeless people have in common is little or no access to healthcare, hygiene supplies, and showering facilities. The lack of access makes the homeless vulnerable to outbreaks of contagious diseases, such as typhus, bacterial infections, tuberculosis, hepatitis A, and trench fever (caused by body lice infestations).3 For the homeless, the health risk from COVID-19 is more acute because without adequate healthcare they cannot be screened, quarantined, or treated. Moreover, the homeless population tends to be more mobile than the general population, which will make it difficult to track those who may be infected with the novel coronavirus, reduce transmission, and treat those who need care. Moreover, a homeless person potentially exposed to the coronavirus may be unable to secure housing. In general, homeless people aged less than 65 years have a mortality rate from all causes that is five to 10 times greater than the general population.4 Deaths resulting from COVID-19 have the potential to widen the disparity.

The predicament of homeless persons faced with the COVID-19 pandemic makes it imperative that testing kits and training on how to recognize the disease be given to homeless service providers and used in shelters, encampments, and street outreach. Space to quarantine and treat the homeless suffering from COVID-19 is also necessary. Yet there is more to the problem than the availability of coronavirus testing kits and training. Cities on lockdown may block major transportation arteries, close public spaces, and restrict movement outside the home. As social distancing becomes the new normal, it could lead to the closure of shelters and other high-density communal settings, such as soup kitchens, leaving the homeless with even less access to needed services. Lockdowns can also have a deleterious effect on the homeless population’s mental health, as many often have fears of involuntary hospitalization, as well as incarceration.5

Paying for Treating the Homeless

Of course, efforts to protect and treat the homeless will not come without cost. The money for nonprofit organizations that engage in outreach to the homeless often comes from donations by individuals and corporations, or fundraisers. They may receive government grants, but even if fully funded, there is only so much most nonprofits can do. Most organizations are not large, and the thousands of homeless who need help can overwhelm a small organization that has limited resources. Thus, it is incumbent on the government to step into the breach and provide the means for the homeless to access adequate healthcare and shelter. This is especially true given the current crisis.

This is not to say that government has not implemented programs that provide services to the homeless. State and local governments, especially those with large homeless populations, have in place various agencies whose sole mission is to support them. Many of the homeless have been helped by these government programs, but, like the nonprofits, there are only so many people the programs can serve. To help more people, government agencies must secure additional funding, either by raising existing taxes or enacting new taxes, thus creating a dedicated revenue stream. Some local governments have attempted to enact new taxes. In 2018 the Seattle City Council proposed a controversial head tax that called for a 26-cent “employee hours” tax businesses would pay on each full-time employee — measured by the number of hours worked during each quarter of a calendar year — that could not be passed through to purchasers. Exempt from the tax were businesses with less than $20 million in gross income and businesses the city was preempted from taxing under federal law, such as insurance companies. After a loud outcry from the business community, the proposal was amended to cut the tax rate to about 14 cents per hour and to require the council to review the tax in 2023 to determine whether it should be continued. The council enacted the proposal, but it repealed the tax a month later after continued objections from the business community. In 2020 the state Legislature took up the cause. H.B. 2948 would have authorized counties with populations of 2 million or more to enact a 0.25 percent payroll tax on businesses that have employees in the county. Businesses such as grocery stores, alongside federal and state governments, comprehensive cancer centers, and others, would be exempt. Although the bill had the support of businesses like Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks, the measure failed.

California has the highest homeless population in the United States, and the numbers keep growing — in 2019, the homeless population was 17 percent higher than in 2018. Seventy-one percent of the homeless are living on the streets, in the parks, and in other locations not meant for habitation. Moreover, the homeless demographic is changing. The senior homeless population is rising, including those on fixed incomes with no means to create additional income streams. It is estimated that 50 percent of the senior homeless population became homeless after age 50. Compounding the problem are the number of residents at risk of becoming homeless. Rising rents or a small financial setback could force many with extremely low incomes to fall into homelessness, and it has been estimated that over 1 million renters in the state face this risk.6

In his “State of the State” address, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) proposed a new California Access to Housing Fund. Rather than provide one-time funding, Newsom’s proposal would seed the fund with $750 million and in the future identify other revenue streams that would sustain it. As a first step toward funding, Assembly member David Chiu (D) introduced A.B. 1905, which establishes a new Housing and Homeless Response Fund, to be funded by amending the state’s tax code to lower the mortgage interest deduction from $1 million to $750,000, and limit the deduction to the taxpayer’s principal residence. The bill has been referred to the Housing and Community Development and Revenue and Taxation committees, but no hearing date has been set.7

Conclusion

Every person in this country today is at risk of infection by the novel coronavirus, and potentially developing the COVID-19 disease. Across the nation, state and local governments have acted to arrest the virus’s spread by informing citizens of the guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some states and localities have gone further, issuing “stay at home” or “shelter in place” orders, requiring residents to avoid all nonessential outings and stay inside as much as possible. As of March 24, 100 million Americans have been ordered to stay home.8 Given the shortage of testing kits and the number of people who may be asymptomatic, there are certainly many more people who have been infected than the numbers portend. Restricting people’s movements may slow the spread of the virus, but it will not stop it.

Yet there are some people who appear to have been overlooked during this health crisis. The homeless may not make up a large portion of the population, but they are the most at risk, and because of their mobility, they pose a tangible threat to spread the virus. Moreover, it is questionable how many of the homeless have been tested to date, and how many have contracted the disease. States and localities are working to combat the homelessness problem — and concomitantly, the current health crisis — by finding ways to generate new revenue streams. Some of these efforts have failed, while others are in the beginning stages. We can only hope political leaders will press on, because combating the novel coronavirus menace, for millions of people, is truly a matter of life or death.

FOOTNOTES

1 “The State of Homelessness in America,” The Council of Economic Advisers, Sept. 2019.

2 Steven Ross Johnson, “Kaiser Permanente Pledges $1M to Treat Homeless for COVID-19,” Modern Health, Mar. 16, 2020.

3 Jack Tsai, Michael Wilson, “Covid-19: A Potential Public Health Problem for Homeless People,” The Lancet, Mar. 11, 2020.

4 Id.

5 Incarceration is a greater concern, considering how prisoners are housed. Communal dining rooms are a significant problem. Despite inmates’ attempts to protect themselves by practicing social distancing, one inmate incarcerated at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York, said the novel coronavirus has “spread like wildfire” throughout the prison. Fishkill is not the only facility that has been affected; there are many more like it across the state. Daniel A. Gross, “It Spreads Like Wildfire: The Coronavirus Comes to New York’s Prisons,” The New Yorker, Mar. 24, 2020. 

6 A.B. 1905.

7 Id.

8 Grace Hauck and Lorenzo Reyes, “Coronavirus Lockdowns: These States are Ordering Residents to Stay Home or Shelter in Place,” USA Today, Mar. 24, 2020.

END FOOTNOTES

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