Posted on June 17, 2020 by Valeria Ricciulli in Curbed NY Curbed NY, By Valeria Ricciulli Helena Hill, a 56-year-old New Yorker, was living in a College Point, Queens, homeless shelter when the pandemic hit. She had been staying there since December, in a room with 12 other women — and sharing a bathroom, a cafeteria, and common areas — where it was nearly impossible to practice social distancing. Hill began exhibiting some coronavirus symptoms in late March; she remembers feeling achy, her back hurting, and having a fever (though she wasn’t tested at that time, it was recently determined that she has antibodies). Around the same time, there was a fire drill in the shelter, during which it was even more difficult to practice any kind of social distancing. Afterward, many of the shelter’s residents headed over to a crowded cafeteria. “It was just chaos,” she says.
