Mapping the riskscape of using privately-owned short-term lets for specialist family violence crisis accommodation

COVID-19 has generated many problems and some opportunities in the housing market. The potential role of privately-owned short-term lets meeting specialist family violence crisis accommodation demand is one such opportunity. This paper engages with an important and increasing practice in the Australian context, of the utilisation of private housing stock as a component part of a public housing crisis response system, in this case explored in relation to domestic and family violence. In seeking to gain insights into the feasibility of this practice, this article will first frame mixed public/private accommodation provision as potentially overlapping relations between a thin territory of insufficient crisis infrastructure and a thick territory of commodified short-term let infrastructure. Second, this paper situates the potential of this intersection of mixed private/public responses in terms of riskscapes by unpacking how risk is perceived within these contested territories. The findings highlight tensions between both real and perceived understandings of safety, housing, wellbeing, economic and political risks. While there was some support for utilising short-term lets for crisis accommodation, barriers were revealed to adding thickness to the crisis accommodation space. Given increasing homelessness in Australia, diversifying crisis models could offer increased violence-prevention infrastructure to support women.

The "epidemic within the pandemic”: meeting the needs of racially minoritised women experiencing domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic

PurposeIn March 2020, the UK entered its first lockdown responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same month, the Domestic Abuse Bill had its first reading in Parliament. Charities and non-governmental organisations critiqued the Bill for failing to protect migrants from domestic abuse, and not complying with the Istanbul Convention. Drawing on interviews with staff from Southall Black Sisters, this paper aims to foreground the experiences of practitioners within the women's sector to explore the unique experiences and challenges migrant and racially minoritised women encountered when seeking support from domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic. It highlights how the pandemic-related lockdowns created barriers to accessing support services and housing, creating an epidemic within the pandemic, and how minoritised women and the organisations that supported them had to overcome structural barriers and racism.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff from a leading women's organisation that supports migrant and racially minoritised women. Four participants were asked questions within four themes: domestic abuse before and during the pandemic;accessing support from and reporting domestic abuse;accessibility of resources;and post-pandemic challenges. A phenomenological approach was used to analyse the transcribed interviews.FindingsParticipants consistently highlighted the unique threats and barriers migrant and racially minoritised women faced when seeking support. Barriers included racism, language barriers, cultural constraints, the triple threat of destitution, detention, deportation, and political resistance to protect migrant women from destitution/homelessness.Originality/valueThis paper provides a unique insight into the experiences of staff members within a specialist by and for women's support organisation in England and their perspectives on the barriers racially minoritised and migrant women experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers rare insights into how service users' needs changed during the lockdowns and how the pandemic affected their ability to operate.

Taking Class Seriously

This article critically analyzes the human rights perspective upon what has emerged as one of the most significant socioeconomic and political challenges confronting many millions of people residing within high-income, liberal-democratic societies: rising poverty and socioeconomic inequality. This article argues that international and domestic human rights law and the social and political imaginaries of the wider human rights community largely fail to adequately diagnose and effectively respond to poverty and inequality within high-income, liberal-democratic societies. As a political and ethical doctrine founded upon a normative commitment to social justice, human rights should be taking the lead in efforts to condemn, understand, and develop responses to the poverty and inequality which blight the lives of many millions of people within many of the world's most affluent and, allegedly, most "liberal” societies. Human rights law has historically not done so. We, as a community, have not done so. This article offers a specific explanation for this continuing failure, by focusing upon the absence of any concerted recognition of or engagement with social class as it contributes to and compounds our exposure to poverty and inequality. Human rights remain largely blind to the many ways in which social class is intricately connected to poverty and inequality. The human rights community within high-income, liberal-democratic societies characteristically fails to take class seriously. Building upon previous writing in this area, this article explains why class is rarely recognized or engaged with by the human rights community. This article also sets out the basis for how we might begin the task of overcoming this highly damaging class blindness, to set the stage for what the author asserts as an urgent need if human rights is to provide the kind of political and ethical leadership required to effectively engage with poverty and inequality in affluent societies: the degentrification of human rights.

COVID-19 VACCINATION AND HOMELESSNESS: THE NEED FOR A PERSON-CENTERED INTEGRATED APPROACH

Introduction: As homeless people in general suffer from poor health and are at elevated risk for COVID-19 infections they have an indication for receiving COVID-19 vaccination. However, several barriers in accessing vaccination can be identified. There is no information on the willingness of homeless people to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, nor on the experiences with the vaccination process of homeless people and professionals involved. Therefore, this qualitative study aims to provide insight into vaccination willingness among homeless people in the Netherlands, in the barriers and facilitators in accessing vaccination, and in the experiences of professionals involved in the vaccination process. Methods: We performed semi-structured interviews with 53 homeless persons, 16 professionals involved in health care or shelter for homeless people as well as 7 public health professionals who were involved in the vaccination process for homeless people. Interviews were thematically analyzed. Results: Homeless people experienced a lack of understandable and consistent information, which resulted in distrust and vaccination hesitancy. Mistrust in the government was common. However, approximately half of them were vaccinated at the end of the first vaccination campaign, sometimes because not being vaccinated would restrict their possibilities to access public places. Barriers to access vaccination included the complicated process and forms and difficulties accessing the vaccination venue. Especially difficult turned out to be the bureaucratic process of acquiring the Corona virus entry pass. Identified key-elements for a successful vaccination campaign for homeless people: a strong collaboration between all stakeholders, easy to understand information by trusted professionals, the possibility of vaccination at out-reach sites like homeless shelters. Conclusion: Although the vaccination rate among homeless people in the Netherlands is estimated to be lower than among the general public, successful vaccination campaigns are possible if trusted people provide easy to understand information, all stakeholders work together and vaccination takes place at easy to reach locations.

Working Across the Aisle: Connecting Enrollment Management to Financial Aid to Re-Enroll College Students with Satisfactory Academic Progress Concerns

Students who leave higher education before earning a credential ("stop outs") often do so for failing to maintain satisfactory academic progress, or SAP. This article details why enrollment managers must work with their financial aid counterparts to smooth students' re-entry to higher education, focusing on SAP alleviation strategies.

Heat vs. Health: Home Office under a Changing Climate

Stressors are especially widespread in urban agglomerations. Common themes of built environment interventions that support health and well-being are blue and green infrastructure, indoor and outdoor air quality, thermal comfort, access to natural lighting, and acoustics. Given the current megatrends of increasing summer temperatures and the high popularity of home offices, we aimed at modeling thermal comfort changes of people working at home in three Austrian cities (Vienna, Innsbruck, and Graz) during the next decades until 2090. We present findings based on (I) an inter-disciplinary literature search and (II) indoor and outdoor climate simulations for actual and future climate scenarios. Based on the results, we discuss the potential impacts for work and human health and well-being, and we suggest a framework for the home office in "post-COVID-19 Austria” that integrates social, ecological, and economic aspects. The results of our study indicate that, in future climate scenarios, overheating of the interior can no longer be prevented without active cooling measures and nature-based solutions. Recommendations on the adjustment of behavior under climate change, including greening, adequate ventilation, and cooling techniques, are thus urgently needed for employees who are working from home in order to maintain physical and mental health and wellbeing.

INSIGHT OF PANDEMIC COVID-19: DEVELOPMENTS AND CHALLENGES

This review focuses on the characteristics of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) including virus structure, ecoepidemiology and pathophysiology, signs and symptoms in infected people, and data on virus pathogenicity, severity, and survivability in COVID-19 infected patients. The emphasis is on immunological reactions, diagnosis, prophylactic methods, and the zoonotic significance of COVID-19. The authors feel that the review's contents will be valuable to epidemiologists, virologists, public health officials, diagnosticians, laboratory workers, environmentalists, and socioeconomic experts. It has information on the many types of coronavirus variants, the disease situation in Pakistan and the WHO criteria for COVID-19 prevention is given. Moreover, lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are also outlined.

It's Not Always Just a Rash

[...]it may have been difficult to get him admitted since it is not our current practice to admit patients with mild COVID-19 infections. [...]our financial incentives are to see many patients each shift, which does not always leave time to care for more socially challenging cases. Burnout is rising in the field of emergency medicine, and I think a part of that burnout can be attributed to the uphill battle that providers are fighting daily to care for patients that our health system leaves behind.

COVID-19 and women's mental health during a pandemic – A scoping review

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected more than 10 million people globally, and it caused more than 500 thousand deaths. Researchers have highlighted the need for early detection and intervention for psychological ill effect of the pandemic on various population subgroups. Women may be more vulnerable in such a crisis phase. This review addresses the mental health needs of women and the kind of interventions needed to cater to their various psychological issues. All existing literature was searched using PubMed, Google Scholar, and Medline databases for articles published on mental health aspects of women during COVID-19 pandemic. Only English language articles published till June 15, 2020, were considered for the review. Data were extracted by the authors from the selected articles, and the findings were synthesized in a narrative format. From the available literature, following themes were identified for further discussion: sexual health and contraception, pregnancy, lactation, domestic abuse, female healthcare workers, women with pre-existing mental illness, women with substance use disorders, homeless women, refugees, and professional sex workers. Studies have reported a higher burden of mental health issues in females than male counterparts and an increase in domestic violence and crises for those at-risk (such as refugees and women with pre-existing illnesses). Women mental health is compromised in many aspects due to COVID-19 pandemic. Findings stress upon the increased need for early detection and prompt intervention for women in the community to alleviate the long-term psychological consequences of this pandemic.

Emerging from disruptions and ambiguities: Understanding local government innovative responses during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic

This article investigates the utility of an integrated approach which combines the Incident Command System (ICS) model and the Disruption-Ambiguity-Innovation-Challenge model, for understanding local government homeless service responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A case study in the City of Dallas, Texas is used to understand how three functional areas of the ICS (authority, operations, and finances), were influential in creating disruptions, ambiguities, innovations, and challenges for local government and its nonprofit partners. By using an integrated approach, we identify challenges, learning outcomes, and action strategies useful for consideration for local governments' strategies for crisis management.

Philadelphia Housing Action: Covid-19 Pandemic and Negotiating our Survival

Philadelphia Housing Action is a group of experienced housing organizers formed at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the U.S. government made funds available for emergency housing, the city government refused to use it all while continuing to sweep homeless encampments from place to place. In response, Philadelphia Housing Action embarked on a housing takeover campaign to help homeless mothers on the streets using unused vacant public property. To keep the houses, they held space, with a massive encampment in the middle of the city demanding that the houses be delivered to them and for the city to secure safe housing for these vulnerable Black and Latino families.

Guest editorial

[...]most individuals who are under correctional control serve time in the community on probation or parole. Because health care for older adults is exceedingly complex and costly when compared to younger adults, this large and growing older adult population under correctional control (prisons, jails, parole or probation) ought to sound an alarm through the public health and carceral fields. Service providers in community-based settings such as area agencies on aging, senior centers and leaders in long-term care are encouraged to prepare for an influx of elders with a criminal legal history and to examine current strengths and potential barriers in rising to the challenge of compassion in the wake of custody.

"Housing Is a Human Right”: Moms for Housing's Black Feminist Politics of Shelter

In the midst of the global SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological crisis unfolds another contagion: the eviction epidemic. This essay attends to the work of Moms for Housing, an organization of formerly homeless and marginally housed Black mothers in Oakland, California who have organized to confront dispossession, real-estate speculation, and the privatization of housing. Using Black feminist and queer of color intellectual frameworks as ciphers through which to interpret and properly attribute weight to the organization's activism, the essay argues that Moms for Housing not only offers potential flightlines toward a post-property future—one in which housing is positioned as a basic human right—but also a generative critique of the home as a site of racialized and gendered subject formation. Indeed, through their work, the reconception of kinship formation and territorial formation are understood to be mutually constitutive, abolitionist projects.

Homelessness during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Exploratory Study in Switzerland

The coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected people of all social strata, and continues to do so, but its effect has been the most severe on members of the most precarious populations. In this exploratory study conducted in Switzerland, the specific situation of homeless people, a particularly vulnerable population, is examined from a criminological perspective. In total, we surveyed 32 homeless individuals: 14 during the first wave of the pandemic (March-September 2020) and 18 during the second wave (December 2020-March 2021). Results corroborate that the pandemic has had adverse effects on the respondents – both socioeconomic and psychological. Most of the participants do not use drugs and, overall, those who reported drug use did not report an increase during the epidemic. The occurrence of both victimization and offending is low among the participants. Ethical and methodological considerations such as the minimization of social desirability bias, satisficing, as well as the recruitment of difficult-to-reach participants and data collection more broadly during a pandemic are discussed.

A New Age for Religious Demand: Spiritual Care and Mental Well-Being

Faced with this new need for an enhanced spirituality, it is only natural that religions are called to play a vital role, but the target may be somewhat different from a more traditional emphasis on grand or Big Questions: creation, life and death, sin and atonement, recognition of the Absolute, heaven and hell, and so on. Since the last phase of the 20th century, an opposing philosophy has been advanced under the term "Postmodernism," which is characterized by pluralism and relativism, rejecting the universal validity of stable identity and hierarchy, emphasizing the rights of minor and weaker segments of the population, and calling for social participation of women, for example. Many problems caused by COVID-19 physically and mentally have been handled by medical doctors together with clerics, though of course the situation was unprecedented for all involved. [...]COVID-19 has intensified and highlighted the seriousness of these small and individual questions. Let us start with the development of new fields of academic research, followed by discussion of actual practices on the ground. a.Study of Death and Grief Care Study of Death (thanatology) entails the description or investigation of death and dying and people's psychological coping mechanisms, hence, it aims to contribute to alleviating sorrow and stress experienced by the dying and to the treatment of mental pain of all those who suffer in the last stage of life.

Tuberculosis incidence in time of COVID-19

Introduction: The detection rate of tuberculosis may have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the new reality and habits created to combat the pandemic. Background: To analyze the incidence of tuberculosis in Brazil during the years 2018 to 2020;comparing the detection rate during this period in general and vulnerable populations. Methods: Data on the incidence of tuberculosis in the years 2018, 2019, and 2020 were collected from the Registry of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, taking into account the distribution by age, sex, and affiliation to vulnerable groups such as homeless people, inmates, health professionals and immigrants. Results: The overall number of new tuberculosis cases in 2020 was lower than in 2018 and 2019. There was no difference in the percentage of men and women or between age groups. The incidence of tuberculosis among people belonging to vulnerable groups remained the same in 2020 as in 2018 and 2019. Conclusion: New cases of tuberculosis decreased equally in all segments of the population studied during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working together to contain and manage COVID-19: CMAJ

Canada's federal and provincial governments have taken unprecedented measures to promote social distancing in the wake of the World Health Organization's categorization of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a global pandemic. Closing schools, banning large public gatherings and team events, and advising against travel are all intended to help Canada "flatten the curve" of the outbreak. Here, Laupacis asserts that we must work hard to ensure good communication and continuity of care. Furthermore, certain groups of patients who do not have COVID-19 will also need continuing care, although their regular clinics may be working below usual capacity. Clinicians will need to conduct more virtual consultations than before while uncertain about how to do so effectively;others may have to provide care that is outside their usual practice.

Promoting Emergency Response for Homeless Service Agencies: Field-Based Recommendations from Two Municipalities in Nova Scotia, Canada

The fast unfolding of the global COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the homeless sector by triggering tremendous challenges for individuals experiencing homelessness (IEHs) and related service agencies. This quick-response research project qualitatively collected time-sensitive data from the IEHs and service stakeholders (SSs) experiences, challenges, efforts, and suggestions during the first wave of COVID-19 in the two most populated municipalities in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, namely, Halifax Regional Municipality and Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Through analyzing and synthesizing the standpoints from both IEHs and SSs, this technical note presents recommendations, addressing the practical challenges that IEHs have been confronting during COVID-19 and systemic issues in which homelessness is rooted. These recommendations will assist community-based agencies in improving their emergency response capacity, better serving IEHs in COVID-19 in particular, and supporting other vulnerable and marginalized populations in future extreme events in general.

Content Analysis on Homelessness Issues at Airports by News Media Mining

The number of homeless people at airports has increased in recent years. As airports are safe, transit-accessible, convenient, and climate-controlled facilities with food and amenities, these places are attractive to homeless people who need a safe and secure place to stay. The main struggle of airports in this regard is maintaining a balance between customers, who are mostly the traveling public, and dealing with homeless people delicately. Moreover, because of their poverty and insufficient or no access to healthcare, these people suffer from physical and mental issues. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this problem became more critical. Many news media outlets started to report on homelessness at airports. News-framing impacts have some contribution in the context of this issue. However, the impact of news coverage on ‘‘airport and homelessness'' has not yet been studied. News-framing effects have been identified in the context of tourist destinations. Although many studies have explored homelessness and transit, this issue at airports has not been well studied. This study provides a brief overview of the issue of homelessness in the transportation domain, including transit and aviation. Additionally, this study collected news articles related to ‘‘airport and homelessness'' (71 articles) both during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 1, 2020–July 21, 2021) and before the pandemic (before March 1, 2020). These news articles contain around 50,000 words. As the data is unsupervised in nature, a text network analysis was performed to determine the latent information from these textual contents. The findings of this study can shed some light on this scientifically unexplored but widely discussed issue. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2022.