What do stay-at-home orders mean when there’s nowhere to stay?
Sylvester Miller, a 50-year-old with expressive brown eyes, is an auto technician at a manufacturing plant in Illinois. He was hired at 40 hours a week as a temporary service worker. Now, though, under the COVID-19 shutdown, Miller has been told to shelter in place at home — without pay — until further notice.
Problem is, Miller doesn’t have a home in which to seek refuge from the life-threatening virus. He lives in a transitional shelter for homeless men, called the Breakthrough, in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood, in a dormitory that sleeps an average of 30 other “testosterone-filled men prone to fighting,” he said, in beds uncomfortably close to each other.
Don’t get him wrong, Miller says. He’s supremely grateful for his rent-free bed and for the dining hall where he eats his complimentary meals with the others. But in this pandemic, it’s far from the luxury of having his own place. For one thing, he can’t ever self-isolate — the very thing so many Americans are complaining about having to do. And even though he has his own face mask that he got at work, he is vulnerable to the hygiene standards of the people with whom he must cohabitate…
To read the entire article from Slate, click https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/homeless-workers-coronavirus-crisis.html
