Last weekend, Juneau’s convention center, Centennial Hall, was opened as a shelter for people experiencing homelessness to isolate after testing positive for COVID-19.
It’s the third time the facility has been used for sheltering people with the virus who do not have another place to isolate. Housing officials have also used hotels to put people up.
“The primary mechanism is referral to hotels for isolation, and then, you know, Centennial Hall is kind of there in case there’s a huge spike or overflow in the future,” said Scott Ciambor, Chief Housing Officer for the City and Borough of Juneau.
Since there was an uptick in cases in the unhoused population, the city’s quarantine and isolation task force did some surveillance testing in the Glory Hall.
But, with the tourist season still in full swing, there was no vacancy in the hotels.
If a bunch of people staying in the Glory Hall tested positive, there would be no place for them to isolate. So they opened up Centennial Hall as a backup shelter.
Just one person needed to stay the night at Centennial Hall last Friday. A hotel room opened up the next day so they were able to spend the rest of their isolation period there.
Ciambor is not expecting the same problem to happen this week.
“There’s some loosening of the vacancy rates at hotels so we’re hoping that future testing and need for isolation can be covered by hotels,” he said.
Ciambor said that Centennial Hall shouldn’t need to be used again as a shelter. But the building will still remain an option.
