Protecting the Houseless in the Age of COVID-19
A conversation with Cleveland-based journalist Ginger Christ
A portrait of Ginger Christ from her Twitter account, @gchristBBJ.
Ginger Christ and her co-worker Rachel Dissell may have been laid off from their positions at The Plain Dealer, but that did not stop them from seeking out and covering solutions stories. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, their urge to see what action was being taken in their community became more pressing than ever. In the summer of 2020 Ginger and Rachel teamed up to cover the story of the Westside Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio, where houseless populations were being shielded from the pandemic that was ravaging community-based living facilities and houseless populations.
In this story, they spoke with those who were staying at the hotel, as well as individuals aiding the effort to keep the houseless in Cleveland safe and healthy. I spoke with Ginger a year after this story was published to understand her reporting process and looking back, what she would have done to enhance the story.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Danielle Howe: I understand this story was taken on by both you and Rachel Dissell. Did you two have different roles in covering the story, or did you work together collaboratively the whole time?
Ginger Christ: We both worked at The Plain Dealer together and were laid off at the same time. When this happened we were both covering unhoused populations in Cleveland, so although we were laid off we knew there were still stories that needed to be told. We split most of the interviews at the hotel, one of us interviewing residents and the other interviewing workers. Some were conducted together, but for the most part, I worked with the county and she worked with the North East Ohio Coalition on Homelessness (NEOCH). We did a lot of work separately, but we would always come together, whether that be chatting on the phone or meeting in person.
DH: I see that much of your journalism is centered around the topics of healthcare and medicine, and although this story does touch on it, as far as I can tell, it is not its main focus. How did you two come across the opportunity to write this story and what was your motivation for reporting on it?
GC: I have been a healthcare reporter for a few years now and I was covering healthcare at The Plain Dealer. I had extended that to cover unhoused populations and so I was already attuned to what was going on in that community. As the pandemic was hitting, Rachel and I both were working on stories covering what was happening to people who didn’t have homes or who were not in shelters. With the pandemic, they were losing access to so many of their public spaces, and so it really was just a continuation of that work. I had also previously included that aspect in my healthcare reporting as a population health issue.
Access to housing, transportation, food, all of those things are social determinants of health, so I think those are important to include in the healthcare space.
DH: In this story, you both spoke with many people, from residents to those working on the ground. How did you go about choosing who to speak with and did you have any difficulties securing interviews with people?
GC: Most of the interviews at the hotel were coordinated through NEOCH- so when they gave us permission to come into the hotel and interview residents, we had free reign to walk around. The staff spoke with residents ahead of time to make sure that they would be okay with talking to us and then they just directed us towards some of those people. We specifically said we want to talk to residents and we want to talk to people who are in charge. When it came to outside sources, from the county, it was obvious who to speak to. It was really just about working alongside the organization that was doing the work and seeing how they could connect us.
DH: Did you and Rachel find yourself facing any ethical problems in reporting this story? It can be challenging when speaking with someone who is experiencing hardships firsthand, as you can run the risk of exploitation. Did you have to grapple with that at all?
GC: The way that we handled that was by working with the organization to make sure that the people we spoke to felt comfortable and didn’t feel like they were being put on the spot. If anyone felt uncomfortable we certainly didn’t have them speak to us. Bill was more than happy to share his story and we actually offered to have him help us write the piece because he had been working for the local homeless newspaper at the time. He did ultimately decline that offer.
What is important is being upfront and transparent with your intentions for the story. There is one level of wanting to protect people but there is another level of wanting to let them have agency in making those choices for themselves.
DH: Did you find that this story had any effect on the community in terms of any direct action or response? Additionally, how far of an audience did this story reach?
GC: It definitely brought awareness to what was going on, but it is hard to say exactly what came out of it. I know us questioning the county regarding their role in taking care of these people pressured them to acknowledge those who aren't in shelters. I don’t know the page views since we did this as a freelance story, but it was distributed through ION Ohio, which distributes stories to different news outlets. I also did see some traction on social media.
DH: Did you and Rachel face any obstacles in reporting this story and if so, how did you overcome them? Lastly, looking back, is there anything that you would have altered about how you covered this story?
GC: We were reporting this story early in the pandemic, so there were a lot of things that we were nervous about. We didn’t have numbers on how COVID-19 was spreading in congregate living facilities, but we knew it was. So it was a little bit unnerving to be going into a space where we didn’t know what to expect. Otherwise, the hardest part was just getting responses from the county on what they were doing. They were being pretty unresponsive, which is typical for the government in this area. In terms of doing more, I would have loved to be able to do a follow-up to trace the story and see what happened afterward in terms of more permanent solutions. One thing we wanted to have done was to compare what was happening here to what was happening in other areas to see how the solutions compared and what their outcomes looked like. I would still love to do that.