NEW SEASON FOR SAFE HARBOR The stakes are high for a homeless shelter determined to make it through the season amid the pandemic.
By Patrick Sullivan At the end of March, as the pandemic descended and uncertainty raged, residents of Safe Harbor spent their last night of the season in Traverse City’s homeless shelter, which closed early out of concern that the new virus could gain a foothold and spread among the guests. That left dozens of people on the street, without a place to stay, just as Michigan’s governor ordered the state’s residents to shelter at home. The nights were still freezing, and although the again-homeless Traverse Cityians had been issued tents and blankets, to be on the street at that time, for some, was sheer terror. “April first — April Fool’s Day — was the day that we were shown the door,” said George Golubovskis, a fixture of and advocate for Traverse City’s homeless community. “It ended up that I got a place. A lot of people ended up down on the Men’s Trail. It was pretty demoralizing because they had just told us, ‘No problem, we’ll stay open; we’ll do social distancing.’” Now, seven months later, Safe Harbor is open once again, this time with measures in place that its administrators hope will stop the virus from getting inside and enable the nonprofit to provide shelter for those who need it into the spring. A DIFFICULT CALCULATION Mike McDonald, board chair of Safe Harbor, said the decision to close the shelter early last spring — a decision made after earlier pronouncements to keep the shelter open despite the pandemic — was an extremely difficult call to make. McDonald said the board voted to close the facility only after a lot of deliberation and information-seeking. Board members consulted with experts, including the county health department. They weighed the risks
of clients catching and spreading the virus among themselves in the shelter versus their risk of exposure outside during the still cold nights of early spring. “It was a very difficult decision,” McDonald said. “We decided it was lower risk for the guests [if we closed and kept them] out of the shelter, rather to keep them in.” At that point, McDonald noted, the shelter didn’t have COVID tests available to make sure everyone was healthy, and the best precautions to stop the spread of the virus hadn’t yet been agreed upon. The availability of tests, data, and guidance from health officials and clinicians nationally and regionally has substantially increased since last March. That has enabled Safe Harbor to implement best
keeping Safe Harbor open amid COVID was its reliance on volunteer staffing, especially older volunteers, a population that's proving to be at the highest risk for death and debilitating conditions should they catch the virus. This season, things have been switched around so that Safe Harbor relies less on volunteers and more on paid staff hired through Goodwill. BUNK BUBBLES AND MEAL WAVES On a recent morning, Ryan Hannon, Goodwill’s street outreach coordinator, was overseeing Safe Harbor and its new heated day tent, which will offer a warm place for guests to spend mornings; usually, Safe Harbor asks guests to leave the shelter at 8am.
“They’re not going into the community the same way other people are,” Halladay-Schmandt said. “They are very focused — as they have to be — on survival. That takes up most of their time.” practice precautions — and engender hope: McDonald said he believes Safe Harbor will not have to close early this season. “We were very concerned about an infection getting started in that community, and I think rightfully so, at the time,” McDonald said. McDonald especially hopes the precautions work through January and February, the time of year when the shelter is most needed and likely the period when the virus is most likely to spread in the region; the colder the weather, the more likely that increased numbers of people, homeless or not — will spend more time together inside. One of the challenges last spring in
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Hannon gave Northern Express a tour of the overnight facility, highlighting the safety measures that have been put in place. The first measure begins at the front door, where a quarantine room has been placed near the entrance to divert anyone who arrives with symptoms. Right next to that is an alcove where rapid COVID tests can be performed through the Traverse Health Clinic; they will be conducted by Munson Family Practice staff. Every two weeks, a voluntary rolling testing effort will be offered available for the entire Safe Harbor population. Safe Harbor has long provided communal evening meals to its guests. Now
the cafeteria will be limited to 28 guests per seating, so small groups of guests will be served dinner in waves. Inside the sleeping area, the bunks have been covered in plastic sheeting to limit airflow between quests. All of the precautions are based on Center for Disease Control guidelines for shelters and follow consultation with health department staff. As for the day tent outside, it contains 17 large round tables, each spread out so that there at least six feet of space between them. The tables sit on a plywood floor, and on a recent morning, the air inside the tent was warm, despite the temperature outside hovering around 30F degrees outside. Hannon said the heat is provided by Crystal Flash propane company. The tent is open until noon each weekday. Although erecting a common area under a tent might seem counterintuitive during the pandemic, Hannon said that Safe Harbor felt a shelter for their guests during the coldest parts of the day was truly needed since some of the usual day-time safe places — options like community meals at local churches and the day shelter at the nearby Jubilee House — have opted to stay closed this year due to the pandemic. “The idea is at least to have coverage in the coldest periods of the day,” Hannon said. McDonald said the safety precautions were the result of a task force that worked through multiple challenges and potential problems to find a plan that would allow the shelter to remain open, come what may. In doing so, they worked through a number of solutions and often made compromises until they could settle on one that did the most good. A prime example: Upon first inspection, the task force determined that it would be unsafe to have guests sleeping above one another in bunk beds. Safe Harbor, they concluded, would have to remove the top
