Homeless outreach workers in quarantine after COVID-19 exposure, straining service
More than even police officers, homeless outreach workers have put themselves on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, says Miami-Dade Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book.
And that comes with its risks.
After they were “exposed” to the virus, the city of Miami Beach’s entire homeless outreach team went into quarantine Wednesday. A specialized group of mental health caseworkers with the Camillus House is also sidelined after one member tested positive and others were exposed to a positive case among the Miami Beach staff. Book said a supervisor working with the city of Miami also tested positive.
“As evidence of the struggles of providing services in the COVID area, we learned today that the entire Lazarus team from Camillus, which provides mental health outreach to the homeless in Miami and Miami Beach, has been quarantined due to a COVID exposure,” Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales said in a memo Tuesday. “As such, mental health outreach is suspended for two weeks.”
The Lazarus team is an eight-person group that specializes in diagnosing and providing medicine to residents experiencing homelessness. It is a joint effort of Camillus House, the City of Miami Homeless Outreach and the Miami Coalition for the Homeless. Recently, it expanded service to Miami Beach.
Miami Beach’s homeless outreach team also consists of eight staffers.
“Camillus House provides mental health outreach service in our city alongside the city’s Homeless Outreach Team,” a spokeswoman wrote in a statement. “The city was notified yesterday of the program’s two-week closure. Please note that the Camillus team is comprised of mental health personnel, and the city does not have a separate mental health team.”
Book, who leads the group coordinating homeless services across the county, said he spoke Wednesday with city officials in Miami Beach and Miami to discuss how the Homeless Trust would fill gaps in service caused by the quarantine.
“This is of great concern to us,” Book said. “They are as much first responders as the police and fire. I think our outreach team is more front line first responders than police are.”
The issue of municipal workers getting infected is growing fast in the city of Miami. The homeless outreach employee cited by Book was one of more than four dozen city employees who have tested positive recently.
On Wednesday, Miami administrators sent out an internal bulletin stating that 59 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in the last week — by far, the most in a one-week period since the city started regularly notifying staffers of positive infections. By comparison, when the city was under stay-at-home orders, these bulletins typically reported fewer than 10 employees infected at a time.
The majority of the people who have tested positive work in public safety: 29 in the police department and 20 in fire-rescue.
As of July 9, 55 city of Miami Beach employees were in quarantine after testing positive for the virus. The hardest hit departments in the city are fire rescue, ocean rescue and sanitation.
“The impact on delivery of services is unavoidable,” Morales said in a memo.
This story was updated after it was published online to correct the number of Camillus House workers who have tested positive for COVID-19.
This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 6:18 PM.
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