Homeless essential workers face greater risk of COVID-19

At the beginning of the pandemic, Tiffany Cordaway’s biggest struggle was finding a place to shower. She worked two jobs in northern California, disinfecting medical equipment during the day and caring for an elderly couple overnight. When she finally clocked out, she just wanted to clean off.

But she had nowhere to do that. Cordaway, 47, was homeless, sleeping in a friend’s car between her two eight-hour shifts. Unlike her co-workers who talked about showering when they got home, she worried about finding hot water and a place to clean up where no one could see her. Some nights, she just washed from a two-liter bottle of water.

“I was hearing them talk about how, ‘Oh, I’m going to go home and the first thing I do is walk in the house and, you know, go straight to the shower,’” she said. “And here in the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘God, I wish I could do that.’”

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This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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It’s a common misconception that homeless people are unemployed, but experts say between 25% to 50% of this population works. In the era of COVID-19, that means many homeless employees are working low-wage essential jobs under conditions that put them at risk of catching or spreading the virus.

“Many people wake up in their tent every day, wake up in their vehicle every day, or wake up in their shelter every day and go off to work,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the director of its Center for Vulnerable Populations. “The type of work that (homeless) people do is the type of work that we have seen to...