The Legal Aid Society says homeless people can’t socially distance in shelters and in shared hotel rooms so the group is demanding that the city provide separate hotel rooms for each person during the pandemic, new court papers show.
The legal group filed suit on behalf of five homeless people — who have risk factors that make them particularly vulnerable if they contract COVID-19 — claiming their clients have been forced to live variously in shelters or rooms with others or even on the streets during the pandemic.
While the city has already begun to move some homeless people into hotel rooms during the coronavirus crisis, those people have been forced to share the rooms with other non-family members — which doesn’t allow them to safely socially distance, the Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.
“As a result, people living in congregate shelters and double occupancy hotel rooms continue to test positive for the virus and carry it, in their daily activities, throughout the City,” the court papers allege.
And still others who don’t want to risk contracting the virus in shelters or in shared rooms have even been forced to live on the streets, the court documents say.
“This once-in-a-century pandemic requires the City to shift from housing our clients in congregate shelters to providing shelter where clients can safely social distance in order to comply with public health guidance,” Legal Aid’s Josh Goldfein, said in a statement. “It is cruel and unacceptable to place the health and lives of thousands of homeless individuals at needless risk when the City has the resources and space to appropriately house our clients in single-occupancy hotel rooms for the remainder of the pandemic.”
Legal Aid wants a judge to allow them to file suit as a class action and it wants the judge to force the city to provide separate hotel rooms for plaintiffs throughout the pandemic.
The city and the Department of Homeless services did not immediately return requests for comment.
