The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the deep health, economic and racial disparities in our nation. Nowhere have these disparities been more apparent than with homelessness. It has never been clearer that housing is healthcare. Those who are homeless lack the most fundamental health protections a home provides. | From: The Philadelphia Inquirer (Read more.)
City officials began clearing out about 50 homeless individuals from Philadelphia International Airport Tuesday morning, offering COVID-19 tests to anyone who asked to be transported to a shelter. | From: The Philadelphia Inquirer (Read more.)
Capitulating to pressure from advocates for the homeless, the Kenney administration agreed Thursday to test people living in an encampment at Philadelphia International Airport for the coronavirus before placing them in shelters. City officials had planned to break up the group of 50 to 100 individuals on Friday morning without testing. But after advocates and those who provide housing and services for the homeless threatened a lawsuit, the city decided to hold off on dispersing the encampment until Tuesday, after what it described as “rapid testing” is completed. | From: The Philadelphia Inquirer (Read more.)
Last fall, the city funded a two-month pilot of the pre-filing mediation program, which was carried out by the Good Shepherd Mediation Program, a 35-year-old nonprofit focused on neighborhood conflict resolution. Since the pandemic began, the group has begun offering virtual mediation through Zoom. | From: Next City (Read more.)
Officials at Philadelphia International Airport had initially planned Friday to remove the between 50 and 100 homeless people who have been sleeping at a baggage claim area underutilized during stay-at-home orders. But airport and city officials agreed to wait until Tuesday after homeless advocates threatened to file a lawsuit if the people were moved to shelters without being tested. | From: NBC 10 Philadelphia (Read more.)
Now that the pandemic has sparked a sharp economic downturn, advocates predict an “avalanche of evictions” that will hit after Gov. Tom Wolf’s moratorium on evictions ends in July. Mediation could prove a tool to help prevent those evictions. | From: PlanPhilly (Read more.)
Homeless service providers and advocates are contemplating suing the City of Philadelphia to prevent it from moving homeless people living at Philadelphia International Airport into shelters on Friday without first testing them for the coronavirus. | From: The Inquirer (Read more.)
The Housing Trust Fund serves the Philadelphia residents who are already being hit hardest by Covid-19—people with disabilities and families of color with the lowest incomes in our city. If City Council doesn’t stop these budget cuts to the Housing Trust Fund, more people will die. | From: The Philadelphia Citizen (Read more.)
Mayor Jim Kenney’s new budget proposes only $500,000 – gutting legal representation of and support for tenants facing eviction in the midst of a pandemic. | From: Plan Philly (Read more.)
City officials along with homeless providers and advocates were left to confront yet another troublesome incident in the predicament of Philadelphia’s homeless — a population estimated at 5,500 in shelters and 1,000 on the streets — during the pandemic. | From: The Inquirer (Read more.)
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