I'm Dr. Saline Gounder and I'm Ron Clayner and this is epidemic.

Today is Tuesday May 12th.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about what it means to be homeless in America in the

time of COVID.

Cities across the nation are struggling with how to provide people shelter from the storm and

how to keep the homeless safe.

In New York City, the subways are closing for four hours every night for disinfection. But for many homeless the subways are a refuge.

Now police officers are sending them to shelters where more than 700 have tested positive

for coronavirus in recent weeks and if they refuse they end up

on the streets.

Meanwhile cities like Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle and others have seen large

clusters of COVID outbreaks in crowd in And they had the homeless people sleep in squares, painted on the ground in a parking lot.

At the same time that Las Vegas is a city with more than 147,000 hotel rooms, most of which were vacant.

In this episode, we'll hear from three advocates,

who were already working before COVID to end homelessness.

They'll explain how their jobs have gotten a whole lot harder.

For many of us, the COVID pandemic has meant staying at home and social distancing.

But how are people supposed to shelter in place when they don't even have a roof over their heads?

Roseanne Hagridi is the founder of Community Solutions in New York.

She says the coronavirus is laying bare some of the hard truths about homelessness in this

country.

One of the things that makes this moment so perilous for the homeless in particular is the degree

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