Sacramento launches mass vaccination effort of homeless living under local freeways
A team of Sacramento city paramedics will fan out early Thursday morning downtown for one of the most unusual COVID-19 vaccination efforts so far.
The crew will walk block by block under the W-X freeway, accompanied by homeless advocates, asking the hundreds of unhoused people living in tent encampments if they are willing to take a shot.
The effort, organized by Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela’s office and the city fire department, represents the largest effort in the region so far to inoculate the first of thousands of people currently living on the streets.
The Sacramento County Health Department has made 100 doses of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine available for tomorrow’s effort. That may not prove to be enough for the several hundred living in the shadows of the freeway, but it is all the county has available this week.
Valenzuela said community advocates have been laying the groundwork in recent days, visiting with people living under the freeway to explain the vaccination program - at the same time attempting to sign some up for services that could ultimately get them off the streets.
Valenzuela said it is particularly important that vaccines be made available to people in the W-X encampments right now. Most of those people will be required to move in the next couple of weeks when Caltrans launches a major construction project on the freeway.
Valenzuela is negotiating with Caltrans to relocate many of them in temporary camps on parking lots under other sections of the freeway. But, to do it safely, she said, city and county officials decided they should try to inoculate as many of them as possible before they are clustered together in a larger encampment.
“Getting those folks vaccinated was a major concern,” she said. “I think we are going to be able to do it. We are going to be able to get most folks vaccinated.”
The Thursday effort will be the largest so far among unhoused groups. Some 80 people at two homeless shelters also have been vaccinated in recent days. State health officials gave the green light on Monday for local health officials to begin vaccinating unhoused and unsheltered people.
There are an estimated 6,000 people who are experiencing homelessness in the city of Sacramento, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said.
Vaccinators will walk up to homeless encampments
Sacramento Fire Department paramedics and homeless advocates plan to approach people under and around the elevated freeway that carries Highway 50 through the southern part of downtown.
“We are pretty excited,” fire department spokesman Keith Wade said. “We’ll be literally walking up to them. We normally serve their emergency medical needs. So, there is a trusted relationship. We hope that translates to shots in arms.”
Sacramento County Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said the county intends to use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for inoculations of those who are living homeless and other harder-to-reach groups, such as home-bound people, because that vaccine requires only one shot, making it the simplest of the three available vaccines to administer.
Kasirye said the strategy is to provide the doses to non-profit groups, including WellSpace Health, UC Davis Health, local fire departments and others who will work with homeless advocates to reach out to unhoused residents.
“We will be going to encampments, to the shelters,” she said.
For the moment, the county is running out of Johnson & Johnson doses, which will slow the effort, but hopes to get new shipments in the next few weeks. “Once we get a steady supply, we can provide (more of) these services,” Kasirye said.
Councilwoman Valenzuela’s chief of staff, Michelle Pariset, said the city continues to work with Caltrans to formalize a humane way to move homeless people from their tent encampments on sidewalks under the freeway prior to freeway reconstruction.
The city hopes to bolster its hotel room voucher offerings, focusing on unhoused women, children and families. But most people living under the freeway will be offered temporary relocation sites in parking lots, starting with the lot formerly used by the Sunday Farmers Market at 6th and W streets.
Ultimately, Pariset said, the city would like to sign leases with Caltrans to set up more permanent sites to locate miniature, portable “homes” on parking lots under the W-X and Capital City freeways.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 10:44 AM.