Shelter wins a battle against time to protect the homeless from the coronavirus
By: Rebecca Davis
Tags: Housing, Homelessness, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Saratoga Springs

Shelter wins a battle against time to protect the homeless from the coronavirus

By Andrew Meacham

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — In the first week of March, Karen Gregory knew she had a problem. Deaths in the United States from Covid-19 hovered in the low single digits, but the executive director of Shelters of Saratoga was sure that would change soon, putting her homeless residents at risk.

The shelter houses adults in multiple locations, most of which insist that guests be sober in order to get a bed, follow curfews and meet with a case worker twice a week to work on goals. Gregory, 53, was most worried about the residence that accepts anyone who needs a bed between October and April, including the actively addicted and those struggling severely with their mental health.

While the Shelters of Saratoga dates back to 1991, its Code Blue shelter opened in 2012, after a woman died sleeping on a loading dock in freezing temperatures.

The winter shelter on Adelphi Street offered open spaces for men and women totaling 61, beds a few feet apart, each half with a single restroom, shower and sink. If social distancing was the key to staying safe, something would have to change, and quickly.

“When the pandemic hit, both of our community shelters on Walworth Street were at full capacity, and our Code Blue location was maxed out,” Gregory said. “I’m starting to panic. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to get hit and it’s going to be bad.’”

Shelters of Saratoga Walworth Street

So began a race against the clock that would pit the needs of the Code Blue guests against government red tape and force its vulnerable guests to move twice in two weeks, the second time to a Holiday Inn. Her quick action put the Shelters of Saratoga on the front end of a strategy others have adopted nationwide of evacuating shelter residents to hotels.

So far, none of the 100 residents in three locations have tested positive for the coronavirus.

For tourists, this unhurried town in the foothills of the Adirondacks offers a perfect mix of spaciousness and culture, with most of its downtown built in the late 19th century. Its 28,000 residents enjoy plenty of breathing room, with spacious homes of Italianate or French Renaissance style nestled in rolling hills. There is the renowned Saratoga Performing Arts Center, museums, the country’s oldest thoroughbred racetrack, and rowing and sailing regattas on pristine lakes. In the winter holidays, Clydesdales pull sleighs through the Broadway Historic District, past ice sculptures and 19th century buildings. In bounteous parks, mineral water bubbles out of the ground for anyone to drink.

Some of the area’s homeless can be found in Congress Park, where Shelters of Saratoga staff distribute food and clothing and personal care items three times a week. With the coronavirus, their challenges have ratcheted up dramatically. Without a steady paycheck or healthcare, some of the homeless people can find it hard to avoid crowded conditions and are slow to trust authorities.

An unpublished paper by faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and the University of California argues that “homeless individuals infected by COVID-19 would be twice as likely to be hospitalized, two to four times as likely to require critical care, and two to three times as likely to die than the general population.”

Gregory saw those numbers bearing out in shelters across the country, some with as many as one-third of residents testing positive. Alarmed, she contacted county and state health authorities, asking for help relocating the Code Blue shelter to roomier quarters. Otherwise, she warned, the shelter could lose both residents and staff.

Both agencies told her that in order to dispense funds for a move, one of their residents needed to be symptomatic for the coronavirus.

“From the moment I saw that direction I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is not going to happen.’ There’s no way I am allowing this.”

Gregory felt that if she waited for a positive test, by then others would be infected too. At that point, “There is no way to stop the spread of this virus,” she said.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic. Gregory met with Saratoga Springs Mayor Meg Kelly to figure out a solution. She moved Code Blue to a city-owned senior center on Williams Street whose residents were also evacuating. The city designated the property an emergency shelter, which allowed the 45 to 50 Code Blue guests to be there.

Moving into someone else’s building meant abiding by more of a cooperative community standard than an overnight winter shelter. Staff held a “frank conversation” spelling out the new rules. A few asked for tents to strike out on their own, but most agreed.

They moved in March 18. The center provided larger rooms for the men and the women to sleep, as well as more bathrooms and kitchen space. For two weeks the problem looked solved.

Instead, coronavirus in New York state was rising like a rock climber’s ascent. At his noon briefings, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was talking about building overflow treatment sites, getting medical supplies from the National Guard and floating hospital space from the USNS Comfort. He was also warning viewers, “This is not the flu.”

Confirmed New York cases rose to 59,513 on March 29; 66,497 on March 30; and 75,795 on March 31.

“I called Meg again and said, ‘We’ve got to get out of congregate (housing),’” Gregory said. “Too many people are going to get sick. They are going to die.”

She knew customers were rapidly leaving hotels, which gave her a crazy idea. Would any of them work out a deal to house the homeless, she asked the mayor.

“She said, ‘I’ll pick you up in five minutes,” Gregory said.

***

Gregory took a circuitous path to running the Shelters of Saratoga. After graduating from Stony Brook University in Long Island, she directed a domestic violence shelter for 13 years. She left to become a police officer, following in her father’s footsteps, who was killed in the line of duty.

“Am I talking too fast?”

It’s a question she asks frequently. As the middle child of seven, she said, “I had to talk to be heard.”

She worked a beat in New York for 7 years, which broadened her experience with the homeless. A corporate job came next, as regional director of an education company.

A major life change arrived in 2018 when her son, Easton, was struck by a distracted driver. He spent 49 days in a coma and nearly died twice, eventually moving back home with Gregory and her husband, Jerry.

She decided to get a job that allowed her to remain closer to home and with nonprofits, which she now realized lay closest to her heart anyway. The opportunity to run the Shelters of Saratoga Springs position felt like stars lining up.

Gregory and Mayor Kelly met with two hotel representatives and pitched them to rent to the shelter residents during the worst of the pandemic. Both said no.

Then they chatted in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Saratoga Springs with Kevin Tuohy, a Saratoga Springs native who became general manager in July.

They had just started to talk costs when Tuohy stopped them.

“I’m in,” he said. “How can I help you?”

Holiday Inn Saratoga Springs

The Shelters of Saratoga group checked in April 4. They first month’s rent came from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant, administered by the city. The same day, 1,500 Americans died of the coronavirus.

The hotel is a franchise of Intercontinental Hotels Group, which owns Holiday Inn. The hotel has a few other guests, but not enough to keep a full-service restaurant or meeting rooms open. Tuohy, 43, has had to lay off staff. Renting to the Shelters of Saratoga has kept more employees on the payroll. Besides, he said, it felt right.

“They approached us with an opportunity to house the most vulnerable population that we have,” he said. “We saw that as a mutually beneficial relationship.”

While other cities have since moved homeless populations to hotels — including New York, which relocated 6,000 individuals in late April, three weeks after advocates for the homeless had requested — the Shelters of Saratoga was the first in the country to do so without waiting for a positive test.

“We were definitely the first,” she said. “Everyone waited at minimum for symptoms and/or COVID-19.”

Now the shelter takes up 34 rooms on an L-shaped first-floor wing, each guest with his or her own room. That includes Gregory, who had promised to stay there. Besides keeping order, she had another powerful incentive — her son, Easton, now 25 and back to working his sales and finance job.

He has come a long way toward recovery, but numerous broken ribs sustained in the crash damaged his lungs, placing him in a high-risk group for the coronavirus.

***

Rhonda Graham-Ramsey, a Shelters of Saratoga client at the Holiday Inn Saratoga Springs

It has been awhile since Rhonda Graham-Ramsey, 59, had her own room. She has been with Code Blue since 2019, including a stint on the porch of the New England Congregational Presbyterian Church last summer. That was a tumultuous period, as the church’s neighbors posted signs on the property objecting to the shelter on that site.

It was at least the second time the shelter has run into neighborhood opposition. In September 2018, a court sided with neighbors who opposed the Shelters of Saratoga’s efforts to locate a Code Blue winter shelter next to the organization’s main building on Walworth Street.

Her homelessness started two years ago when her husband of nine years left her and kicked her out of the house, Graham-Ramsey said. Past jobs include janitorial work at Kohl’s store and ringing a bell for Salvation Army collections last fall.

The shelter operates programs that help residents like Graham-Ramsey get closer to independence. “Typically, when people think of homelessness, they think of the 10 or 15 percent of the homeless that they see every single day who are panhandling, who are drinking, who are not taking medications, who are spinning out of control at times, who become problematic in the community or for business owners,” Gregory said.

The guests who have stuck it out and now stay at the Holiday Inn represent a kind of silent majority, she said, less conspicuous than others but far more common.

“Yes, they might have mental illness and addiction,” she said. “But they also might have just lost their job or been evicted. Or they couldn’t pay their rent because they had a medical issue. These people can be housed, and can be successful as long as they have support services around them.”

Graham-Ramsey is not working right now. Her therapist advised against it, recommending that she go slow and work to calm her suicidal thoughts.

Outside doors to the Holiday Inn remain locked, with the only keys going to hotel or shelter staff. Graham-Ramsey is glad that everyone is wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart. The pandemic can add to her stress, she said, “but I’m working through it one step at a time.”

“We haven’t had anybody come in with the COVID, which was great,” Graham-Ramsey said.

By May 4, the shelter was able to pay for another month’s stay at the Holiday Inn. In the meantime, Gregory sought support from Saratoga County for a FEMA application, and applied for a grant to buy a 9-unit motel.

Taking the pressure off day-to-day survival has yielded benefits, a core belief on which the shelter was founded.

“This is a perfect example of ‘housing first,’” Gregory said. “When individuals are off the streets, out of emergency shelters and given a place of their own, their symptoms diminish. Access to hygiene, privacy, your own bed, nutritious food and support services is the answer.”

The first couple of days, guests took long showers and slept in, Gregory said. With rest and solid meals, they started to look and feel better. A quest for housing and jobs continued. They stayed two months, returning to the community in early June.

By then 16 of the 34 homeless guests with the help of shelter staff had found permanent homes. Two have since been moved into age-appropriate facilities or rehab centers. The rest at last count were either staying in emergency shelters or had struck out on their own with a tent.

A Shelters of Saratoga client with keys to a permanent home furnished by the community.

Most promising, 22 of the group have found permanent employment, Gregory said. In retrospect, the Holiday Inn was glad to find a partnership during a pandemic.

“If there’s anything good that’s come out of this situation, it’s seeing the ingenuity of people,” Tuohy said. “Seeing how innovative and imaginative people can be, keeping businesses afloat while helping and serving the general population. It’s really incredible.”

Graham-Ramsey hopes sheltering for safety doesn’t last too much longer. In February, her daughter in Virginia gave birth to a girl. She’s anxious to see her first grandchild.

She’s also working toward housing assistance through a shelter program.

“I may have a place soon,” she said.

Mayor Kelly is looking ahead a couple of months, a period she hopes will begin a renewal for the city.

“The racetrack opens in August,” she said. “The Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Skidmore College in the fall — all of these are economic engines. And they are all stopped.”

It’s too early to say when or how the city will resume business.

“We’re taking the governor’s lead on this one, for sure.”

But she is feeling good about the present, and the proactive stance that has kept scores of homeless adults safe.

“We’re saving lives,” Kelly said. “That’s what it’s all about.”