A Small Hand for Miami
By Alizee Chaudey
Take a walk in downtown Miami. There’s not a day you won’t see a man sleeping on the street, or a woman looking through a trashcan; People that need help. But who’s actually doing some thing about this? How has the covid19 pandemic impacted the homeless situation in Miami? To find an answer to these questions, I met with two women involved with helping the homeless situation in Miami; Hilda Fernandez, the CEO of Camillus House, a homeless shelter located near midtown, and, Daniela Hernandez, a young activist behind the A Small Hand (ASH) foundation, an organization that feeds the homeless.
The pandemic has impacted the functioning of homeless shelters like Camillus House.“Right now, there is a big demand for shelter people who are living on the streets realize it's very dangerous to be out there right now.” Hilda Fernandez explains. “But at the same time, we want to make sure that we are not exposing the residents who are already here on our campus to infection.” What this means is that the process to get assistance right now takes even longer than it usually would. Individuals have to be placed in quarantine and isolation hotels until they can get tested. And then if they test negative, they're able to come into the shelter - in theory. “I gotta tell you, shelter capacities always maxed out.” Says Hilda Fernandez. With social distancing guidelines imposed by the CDC, already maxed out shelters have seen their housing capacity reduced as preventing the spread of COVID-19 became a priority for homeless shelters. But if the shelters are maxed out, what about the people who have been refused government housing?
Daniela Hernandez decided to take the matter into her own hands and opened the ‘ASH’ Foundation last may. ASH means ‘A Small Hand’, and, with the help of other volunteers and donations acquired on social media, she prepares meals, purchases first necessity items and distributes kits to homeless in multiple neighborhoods in downtown Miami. ASH started handing food out down the bridge outside of Camillus house, “If you just go right outside of the shelter, you see hundreds and hundreds [of homeless people]. They are sitting next to each other, side by side, for miles outside of a shelter where they're supposed to be getting taken care of. So we took the matter into our own hands. These people need help.”