Philadelphia’s COVID-19 quarantine site for people with nowhere else to go is moving out of Center City

After nearly two years, Philadelphia’s “COVID hotel” — rooms at a Holiday Inn in Center City, reserved for people with the virus who have nowhere else to quarantine — is closing, health officials say.

Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services will assume responsibility for running the city’s quarantine facility from the health department, and move services to a city-owned care home in Holmesburg. With case counts lowering, health officials said, the department can spend the federal funding it used for the COVID-19 hotel elsewhere, while homeless services folds the quarantine site into its own funding model.

“It’s bittersweet to go from having our doors open through all the pandemic to now closing our doors. We are looking forward to better days,” said Nichole Dantzler, who ran the health department’s isolation and quarantine program. “I want to thank Philadelphia for trusting us to safely house them during the pandemic, and this time of uncertainty.”

The city’s tenancy at the Holiday Inn was not without pitfalls, especially in the panicked early days of the pandemic. Meals for residents were meager, medications often weren’t delivered on time, cleaning supplies were scarce, and staff weren’t checking on residents often enough, residents told The Inquirer in May 2020. The city worked to fix those issues, speaking to residents and improving food, mental health services, and social opportunities for guests.

“In the beginning of the pandemic it was all about housing everyone. As we continued to move on, there was more to it,” Dantzler said. “We wanted it to be a home away from home.”

» READ MORE: Inside Philly’s coronavirus quarantine hotel for those with nowhere else to go

Dantlzer said staff at the hotel learned to adapt to guests’ needs, starting an Amazon wish list for residents without many belongings; bringing in pack-and-plays for families with infants; and learning to accommodate language barriers and cultural needs for a number of Afghan families who sheltered at the hotel — refugees who tested positive upon their arrival in Philadelphia and needed a place to stay.

During the omicron surge last year, homeless shelter directors raised concerns about the sheer number of their residents testing positive for COVID — and about the difficulties of getting them into quarantine at the Holiday Inn. Staffing issues meant the site couldn’t accept new guests around the clock, and the intensity of the surge itself meant beds there were often full.

But despite those issues, the Holiday Inn became a refuge for many of the people who stayed — some 2,400 — over the past few years, many of whom came from shelters where privacy and space were out of the question. For city officials, housing advocates, and former residents alike, the quarantine site was a mark of how valuable non-congregate housing is amid a pandemic — and how inadequate the city’s largely congregate shelter system can be in such situations.

As City Council prepares to approve a new budget, advocates and shelter providers say they’re hoping to push for more non-congregate shelter spaces — and more permanent housing.

“One of the takeaways from [the Holiday Inn experience] is how inaccessible the current shelter system is,” said Max Ray-Riek, a member of ACT-UP and a housing advocate who’s worked with quarantine site residents for most of the pandemic.

People with serious chronic medical conditions, he said, are often unable to enter shelters because those sites aren’t able to care for them — or even to provide private space where those residents could care for themselves.

But at the Holiday Inn, he said, guests had enough space, for example, to use an oxygen tank without a shelter worrying it would become a fire risk — or simply to get adequate sleep after months sleeping in rooms with six or seven other adults.

Stacie Miller lived at the Holiday Inn for several months in 2020 as part of a separate program for high-risk shelter residents who didn’t have the virus, but who risked serious complications if they contracted it. The city drew heated opposition from housing advocates when, in December 2020, they announced the hotel would only be used to house people who tested positive for the virus.

A number of medically vulnerable residents, including Miller, who has a chronic lung condition, were moved to two older buildings in North Philadelphia, where some had to share rooms, bathrooms, and dining spaces. Shortly afterward, Miller caught COVID and was moved back to the Holiday Inn.

“When I was there, they treated me like I was a real person — that was the first place I got treated normal, in all my two years of being homeless,” Miller said. “And when they sent me back to the COVID hotel to stay for my remaining quarantine, I was so grateful that they were there. The shelter system is just not equipped for people with illness. It felt really good to be living a normal life.”

Miller has since been able to get permanent housing, but said the city’s shelters need to better accommodate medically vulnerable people. Ray-Riek said he wished Philadelphia would consider purchasing a hotel — like several other cities around the country — to create more permanent non-congregate shelter space.

Michael Hinson, the president and COO of SELF, Inc., the city’s largest emergency housing provider, was one of the shelter directors who raised concerns about the Holiday Inn’s capacity and staffing during the omicron surge. He and other directors found themselves scrambling to get COVID-positive residents into the quarantine site, or to try to isolate their residents on-site.

“We’re always going to need emergency shelters,” he said. “The physical setup of shelters — it would be helpful to be able to convert some spaces into single or double rooms, so we don’t have to have seven or eight or 10 people in one room. But that requires resources, and those resources are very short right now.”

It’s also crucial the city continues to plan for another COVID surge — or other outbreaks of contagious disease, Hinson said, adding that the city must improve its reaction time for setting up COVID services for homeless residents.

“It’s a serious health equity issue,” he said, noting that most individual shelter residents and nearly all families in emergency shelter are Black. “The people harmed are repeatedly Black and brown people. There’s planning that really needs to be done, and that planning has to include folks who are on the ground working in the field directly with people who are experiencing homelessness.”

Dantzler said that the city’s emergency management staff is preparing plans for another surge, “or another type of pandemic.” And, said health department spokesperson Jim Garrow, the city now has the option of operating a quarantine hotel.

“Probably the biggest thing the health department has learned is this is something that’s doable. It’s not a decision you’d make at the drop of the hat, but now exists on the menu,” he said.