Around 7 p.m. on April 29, 51-year-old Eric Sheptock learned that a person he’d slept near at the city’s largest homeless shelter, located a couple of blocks west of Union Station, had tested positive for COVID-19. “Then, they told me I’d have to go into quarantine,” Sheptock says of the shelter’s officials.

As a longtime homeless advocate who’s experienced homelessness in D.C. since about 2005, he’s familiar with having to move around. Still, the process of relocating to a city-provided quarantine facility didn’t go smoothly, says Sheptock, who hasn’t exhibited coronavirus symptoms.

At first, he was told he’d be picked up from the shelter—the Community for Creative Non-Violence—within an hour; then, that changed to the next morning. In the meantime, Sheptock was instructed to remain in the area of his bed and isolate himself from other people. He says most of those staying at CCNV weren’t wearing masks at the time, though he has one and sometimes wears it.

The following day, Sheptock was told to visit the shelter’s health clinic, downstairs from where he sleeps. “They didn’t seem to be expecting me,” he says. He waited around but was never tested. For the next several hours, he sat in a tent outside CCNV before he was asked to wait in an exam room.

Finally, nearly 18 hours after first being told that he needed to go into quarantine, Sheptock was picked up by an ambulance and taken to the Hotel Arboretum on New York Avenue NE, one of five hotels the city has contracted to provide quarantine space. The other four are in Northeast, Northwest, and Southwest, with one being used for medically vulnerable homeless residents who aren’t believed to have come into contact with the virus.

Sheptock says the ambulance dropped him off behind the hotel, where two workers from D.C.’s Department of Human Services met him to bring him to his room. While the workers opened the door for him, they didn’t give him a key card. “That’s their way of making sure I don’t actually leave the room,” says Sheptock.

He’s stayed in that room ever since. In a phone interview, Sheptock says he’s supposed to get out of quarantine May 14. Over the past couple of weeks, he’s received calls every morning from a nurse checking on him, eaten frozen meals, watched TV, phoned friends, and scrolled on Facebook. But he’s barely been outside. “I open the window sometimes,” says Sheptock. “Not real exciting, but not uncomfortable.”

For those experiencing homelessness, the pandemic has caused additional uncertainty and fear, turning shelters and streets into potential contagion zones and forcing people to uproot their usual living situations. It’s also had an extensive impact on their health and wellbeing, city data show. As of May 13, 269 people in D.C. shelters had tested positive for COVID-19. That’s nearly 6 percent of the roughly 4,700 people who were staying in a shelter as of January 2019, the last annual census date for which statistics are available. Meanwhile, around 1 percent of Washingtonians overall have tested positive for the disease.

The current death rates from the coronavirus show similar disparities between the District’s homeless population and its general population. Fifteen people in D.C.’s homeless system have died because of COVID-19. This is 4 percent of the city’s 358 total coronavirus fatalities so far, which is multiples greater than the 1 percent of D.C.’s population that homeless residents make up. (According to the January 2019 census, 6,521 people in the District were experiencing homelessness.) In pre-pandemic years, on an annual basis, dozens of D.C. residents have died while experiencing homelessness.

Gerard Skerrett, the director of street outreach at local nonprofit Miriam’s Kitchen, says homeless residents are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because social distancing and other recommended practices are extremely difficult to maintain in congregate settings like shelters. “It’s almost like this virus was kind of custom-made to target people who are experiencing homelessness,” says Skerrett. “Without a home, you can’t socially isolate, you can’t distance yourself from people, you can’t wash your hands. … Housing is healthcare in this situation.”

The health risks also go beyond those that come with living in close quarters or outdoors, he adds. “People experiencing homelessness have higher rates of chronic health conditions, tend to be older than the average population, and [have] higher rates of … heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses,” explains Skerrett. These kinds of chronic conditions can exacerbate complications from COVID-19.

Eric Sheptock says he’s been working with his case manager since late November to obtain a housing voucher—a process he’s heard takes about five months on average to complete. He has yet to learn what will come of it. “I was hoping that they would come through with the housing before I leave quarantine,” he points out. “I wouldn’t have to go back to the same environment that landed me here in the first place.”

Asked about the procedures District officials are following for the quarantine hotels, including the one where Sheptock stayed, D.C. Department of Public Works head Chris Geldart says those in quarantine were “highly discouraged” from leaving the sites, to help stop the virus from spreading. But “we don’t lock people in their rooms, and need to have access,” notes Geldart, who’s directing the city’s operational response to COVID-19.

The five hotels are providing more than 600 rooms and were housing 330 people as of May 13, according to the city. People who’ve tested positive for COVID-19, are awaiting test results, or are thought to have been exposed to the virus are eligible to stay there. Officials have stated the rooms cost between $125 and $181 each per night, meaning that the final cost to the District will likely be in the millions of dollars.

The city has taken other steps to assist residents experiencing homelessness as well. The Department of Human Services installed 17 handwashing stations, mostly near tent encampments and city service sites, in early April. Outreach to those living on the streets, including education about the novel coronavirus, continues.

Sheptock says that while he appreciates this assistance, he questions the financial logic behind it all, calculating that his 14-day hotel quarantine cost roughly $2,000 for the room alone. “So they’ll pay [thousands] for a room,” he adds, “but not give me a $100 test. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Geldart confirms that the District currently isn’t testing everyone who’s potentially been exposed to COVID-19. “The process right now is not to test them unless they start to become symptomatic,” he says. Official guidelines, though, do call for screening every client and staffer who accesses a city shelter, so people are being asked about any symptoms of fever, cough, or aches they’re having. In terms of masks, Geldart says the city is requiring face coverings at shelters, with masks being given to people who don’t have them.

The coronavirus is also straining homeless residents’ mental health, according to advocates. “[We] are seeing a higher level of mental-health needs across the board,” says Berinna Doggett, the clinical director at So Others Might Eat, a D.C. nonprofit focused on poverty and homelessness. “More and more people [are] experiencing depression, anxiety, and isolation,” Doggett points out. “For clients who are now dealing with kind of a whole upside-down turn of events for them, this can be extremely traumatic … and triggering.”

Doggett adds that many community kitchens and service providers that are normally avaialable have had to modify how they’re helping homeless residents, such as by offering to-go meals instead of communal dining. Transportation services, including Metro, are no longer running at their regular levels, thus preventing people from accessing resources. “[Those] are the ways that a lot of these clients get from service provider to service provider, [or] how they get to medical appointments,” the clinical director says. “It’s how they get to various places to pay their bills or just even to socialize.”

So Others Might Eat has worked with people who need to self-quarantine and so far have had mixed experiences. Once, the process went smoothly, says Doggett: Their client was picked up at the correct time and easily settled into a hotel. In another case, a client was ill-informed by the people handling the client’s transition to quarantine.

“They were given a test and put into a hotel room,” Doggett recounts. “[For] at least four or five days, at no point were they given any information regarding testing or what was going on. When we had reached out to the client to find out, they were like, ‘I have no idea.'” There’s also been some confusion about discharge, but Geldart says clients are typically released to shelter after their quarantine ends.

As for Sheptock, not much will change after he’s released from quarantine Thursday. He says he’ll wear a mask more often and continue to exercise caution amid the COVID-19 crisis, maintaining social distance. But he still lacks permanent housing.

“I’m going to go back to the shelter,” he says.