Where have all the homeless people gone? If they’re lucky, they’re in hotel rooms and re-purposed buildings or facilities set up to test, treat, or protect them. In Memphis, where I’ve lived and worked in homelessness for a quarter of a century, I know where most of those that I’m familiar with have gone.

In late March 2020, Dennis Culhane, Ph.D., who is one of, if not the nation’s most trusted researcher into homelessness of individuals unaccompanied by children, issued a terrifying, and for many of us, a heartbreaking report. According to his research, homeless individuals who are unaccompanied by children are 2 to 2.5 times more likely to be infected with the COVID-19 virus than non-homeless people.