Homeless Face Death by Freezing as Cruel COVID Restrictions Keep Many Out of Shelters
Some of Houston’s homeless residents were turned away from shelters this week because of COVID-19 restrictions, which forced people out onto the streets even as the city and region faced the prospect of single-digit wind chills.
KTRK-TV reported that on Sunday, as the city and all of Texas prepared for left-threatening winter weather, common sense failed to prevail as people who previously could have counted on a warm place for shelter during freezing temperatures were given no quarter.
In the absence of shelter for many of these people due to restrictions on capacity because of Houston’s coronavirus restrictions, they were forced outside or told to go to the city’s downtown George R. Brown Convention Center, which had been designated as a warming spot.
“They gave out a list, a resource list, I called them and it’s the same thing — everybody is not opening due to the COVID-19 restrictions,” one Houston man told KTRK.
Another man, Irvin Smith, told the outlet he had lost everything because of the economic impact of the pandemic shutdowns and was sleeping in his car. Smith sought out the convention center Sunday, saying it was “too cold” for him to sleep in the vehicle.
It’s not clear how many others fared.
Many people are put off by those in our society who are chronically homeless and unemployed. But the sad reality is that some of these people cannot hold a job, keep a home or even remain lucid long enough to hold down a conversation.
Certainly, every urban center has its voluntary homeless. Those are people who for one reason or another — or perhaps for a multitude of reasons — choose substance abuse and free board over gainful employment.
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But most of those whose presence is felt, and can be a nuisance, on the streets and sidewalks in every major city in America are people who are very unwell.
Mental illness is rampant in homeless communities.
If you’ve ever worked around some of the chronically homeless, offered them your time or resources or simply recognized them as the human beings they are, you are well aware many simply cannot function in society. Thanks to what so often is Christian charity, they are able to eat and bathe and can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
But the coronavirus restrictions have defied logic all year, so it’s no surprise they would demonstrate peak callousness during a deadly cold snap.
In southern Texas on Sunday before the frost set in, some of those with nowhere to go reportedly were shut out of the few places that routinely offered them some semblance of home — providing them food and what they really needed this week, which was the warmth of a heater.
Many, many people ended up finding that refuge in the city’s convention center and other places, while it’s starting to look like not everyone was so fortunate.
Very sad about the death of a male subject in our city. Please seek shelter tonight. Temperature is already down to 20 degrees with windchill of 6 degrees. pic.twitter.com/5NSu8Wa155
— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) February 16, 2021
Two people reported to be homeless were found dead Monday morning in Houston after presumably freezing to death. One of them, a man reported to be 60 years old, had turned down an opportunity to be taken to a shelter, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter.
2/2 Members of our Homeless Outreach Team had previously offered to take the man to a warming center, but he unfortunately declined. #hounews pic.twitter.com/kUlh4PnsDm
— HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) February 15, 2021
Some chronically homeless people, whose few earthy possessions include blankets and tents, avoid help from others, which in many cases is a result of the paranoia brought on by severe mental illness that plague the population. Did they and others really need another reason to feel unwelcome with single-digit wind chills in the forecast?
Per the Houston Chronicle, roughly 1,500 people were living on the streets of the city in 2019 — and that was before the pandemic’s economic crisis sent more into unsustainable poverty.
Nobody knows how many of them slept under bridges and survived this week.
But this story is yet another one that highlights the lunacy of the leftist urbanite’s beloved COVID restrictions, which have been put into place by people who have convinced themselves that the coronavirus is the most deadly single thing they’ve ever faced.
The virus, for most, is much less likely to kill than prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures. Limiting the number of people allowed to seek refuge from a historic winter storm, so as to protect them from an infection they are much more likely to survive than not, demonstrates the true inhumane cruelty born from this pubic health nightmare.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
