happy saturday --> this is a thread about why I'm concerned for shelter guests and staff in Chicago's homeless shelters, and what you can do about it.

The safety of unhoused folks in Chicago has been a concern and, rightly, a focus of much attention since the beginning of the pandemic.

To its credit, the city has provided a significant amount of funding for isolation housing, but this is a thread about #PPE.

During the Spring and Summer, the city accepted large donations of #PPE to a central location and distributed these to facilities in need including homeless shelters and long-term care facilities like nursing homes.

That's not a sustainable solution. There was never a plan made to PURCHASE #PPE, likely because there was no success in identifying reliable methods to obtain it.

Therefore, the budget for #PPE for homeless shelters in the city right now is $0.

Not only are face masks necessary for shelter guests to wear, many of these facilities conduct their own #COVID19 testing, which means they need reliable access to items such as N95s, gloves, face shields, and hand sanitizer.

As of about a month ago, @GetMePPEchi learned that the city's donations had by and large dried up, and that shelters were being told when they requested #PPE that there was none on its way.

So here we are, staring down #FluVid season, and @GetMePPEchi is one of the only reliable sources of #PPE for shelters in Chicago, despite unhoused people being an a priori identified vulnerable population to the virus.

I really doubt this is an isolated situation, it's just unique because we ( @GetMePPEchi) conduct proactive needs assessments with community stakeholders so we know what's going on in the city.

So, what can you do?

1. Find the shelter nearest to you. Whenever you buy a box of masks, gloves, or some hand sanitizer for your family, drop the same off at a shelter close by.

2. Call your elected representatives AT THE CITY LEVEL and ask them...

...how they plan to supply shelters with the items needed to get our unhoused community members safely through the pandemic. Remember that homelessness is a crisis that will INCREASE due to COVID, so this issue is not going away.

3. Share our crowdfund with your friends and family. We desperately need to purchase more disinfectant and hand sanitizer for these facilities.
https://gf.me/u/yj7sja 

4. Amplify this thread

THANK YOU

We’ll be in this for as long as we can be, bringing #PPE to shelters in the city because @GetMePPEchi believes safety and housing are RIGHTS, not privileges.