KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For some in the Kansas City area, “sheltering in place is not an option,” according to one nurse practitioner.
“Many of our patients live on the streets, under a bridge, in a tent... they truly don't have a home to go to and the idea of sheltering in place is not an option,” said Jaynell Assmann, a nurse practitioner who founded Care Beyond the Boulevard.
Monday nights between 5:30 and 8 p.m., Care Beyond the Boulevard’s mobile clinic stops at Hope Faith ministries in Northeast Kansas City to serve one of the most at-risk populations for COVID-19.
"We want to make sure that they know that just because they're sheltered temporarily, they are not going to lose their blood pressure medicine or their insulin or whatever other medications they normally take,” Assmann said.
Services that patients like Michael Schwab depend on.
"It's not real bad before all this happened,” Schwab said, “but then when the COVID-19 started, it just... it just doubled on me.”
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Assmann said she is not seeing as many people out on the streets, which is both good and concerning as Missouri nears the peak of the virus’s spread.
"I think it's going to be a tough month, honestly,” Assmann said. “I think that our peak is going to come in a couple of weeks, so what we are doing is we are working with the other organizations to identify where a person can go if we do feel like they are presumptive."
They’re working with the Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness to find temporary housing for people without a place to live, who are either symptomatic or presumed positive for the virus.
Kansas City also approved the use of $80,000 to cover the use of motel rooms for one month.
"We have a place where they can experience a quarantine,” Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said. “We have a place where they can get food, where they can frankly just be treated like human beings while they deal with this issue that is all too human.”
People experiencing homelessness will be able to stay at the Roadway Inn motel while they await their coronavirus test results, according to Lucas.
"Our poor communities are the most negatively impacted, even in the actual testing and measurements done already and that's going to mean that they're impacted in deaths,” he said.
