Homelessness and the Pandemic. Emergency measures during Covid-19: what worked in global cities?

Homelessness presented a unique challenge to governments as they designed public health measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many governments at national and regional levels introduced lockdowns, requiring citizens to stay at home other than for defined purposes. For people experiencing homelessness this was much more of a crisis than for others, with street-based services closing down and with many people around the world living in shelters with a very high risk of infection transmission. This inability to self isolate was feared by many to likely result in high incidence of infection, hospitalisation and death, with people experiencing homelessness also becoming a vector for transmission of the disease. In practice, governments and cities around the world acted decisively to prevent this, with the result that many lives were saved and thousands of people experiencing homelessness were accommodated overnight, in empty hotels and other emergency accommodation and then in many cases with support to move to more settled accommodation. This paper explores how this was achieved in practice, what lessons can be learned and what can be taken forward in the future. The strongest focus is on the UK nations, but we present case studies and analysis from North America, Europe and Asia. These show fascinating differences and similarities between systems for addressing homelessness around the world and how they were able to respond in the context of a global crisis.