“They forgot about us”: experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic among people deprived of housing in an urban centre in Ontario, Canada

OBJECTIVES: People deprived of housing have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health mitigation measures implemented in response. Emerging evidence has shown the adverse health outcomes experienced by these communities due to SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, the voices of community members themselves have not been widely amplified in the published literature. METHODS: We conducted an interpretive qualitative study. People deprived of housing were involved in study development, recruitment, and data analysis. People deprived of housing or precariously housed were recruited during street outreach from June to July 2020. Participants completed one-on-one semi-structured interviews that were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically. RESULTS: Twenty-one participants were interviewed. Central to participants’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic were descriptions of access to services, in terms of both changes in service availability and the reality of how accessible existing services were to the community, represented by the theme access. Four other themes were generated from our analysis and include feeling and being unheard, stripped of dignity, I’ve been broken, and strength and survival (with a subtheme, community care). CONCLUSION: Future emergency response efforts must meaningfully engage people deprived of housing in planning and decision-making in order to minimize adverse impacts of health emergencies and the associated public health responses. There needs to be more careful consideration of the unintended harmful impacts of public health measures implemented in response to pandemics.