going on holiday and against his own government's advice ontario's finance minister rod phillips posted videos appearing to show him at home on social media while spending christmas in the caribbean the province's had admitted he knew about the travel and should have told him to come home now he's been blaming travelers for bringing the coronavirus to ontario which began a province wide lockdown last week. you're watching officer of me still run a reminder of our top stories a covert 1000 vaccine made by the chinese pharmaceutical company sunnah farm has been given conditional approval 12 months after the virus was 1st detected in wu han the company says the vaccine is around 79 percent effective china is aiming to inoculate 50000000 people by mid february u.s. president donald trump has blamed individual states for the slower than promised rollout of covert 1000 vaccines around 2000000 shots have been administered so far

falling far short of the 20000000 promised by the end of the year. the united states' top infectious disease expert says it could gain some control over the pandemic by late next year dr anthony found she told an online discussion panel that some semblance of normality would return if enough americans are vaccinated ellen fisher has more from washington d.c. . the united states yesterday saw a record number of hospitalisations highest number since the previous record was set on december 17th the experts say this is this spike it's coming from thanksgiving we warned about it and it's arriving and it's going to continue for a number of weeks here is the added problem there's going to be a spike from christmas as well we're hearing from the transport administration here in the united states that more than 1000000 people traveled by air over the last 4 days highest number in months and they think that added to the new year spike this is going to be

a problem that's going to continue all the way in to 2021 and of course the day that job by takes over a deal has been reached to secure freedom of movement on the border between spain and gibraltar avoiding a so-called hard to break set for its residents the british territory wasn't included in the new u.k. e.u. trade deal but its government and spain have reached a last minute interim agreement. hong kong's top quarter's revoke bail for media time jimmy lai the high profile pro-democracy activists distancing charges under a new security laws imposed by beijing and he was released on bail last week but prosecutors argue that he was a flight risk who should stay behind bars those were the headlines that clark's here with the news hour in half an hour here on ars is there a next it's the stream from me to take care. talk to al jazeera scott realistically how can you deal with institutionalized corruption and in this country we listen if there's breaks up

a conflict between pakistan and india this has implications for the rest of the world we meet with global newsmakers and talk about the stories that matter on al-jazeera. every ok you are watching the stream on today show coverage 19 pandemic and homelessness in america one of the richest countries in the world now i am sure that wherever you're watching in the world you have your own stories and your own experiences about homelessness and covert 19 you know what to do if you want you to jump into the chat and you too can be part of the conversation. i'm going to say hello to this and maison panel and they're going to introduce themselves to your doctor because shell great savvy tell everybody who. nice to be

here my name is marcus shallow and i'm a physician and researcher at university of california san francisco where i have devoted my career to try to recognize that housing is the best medicine and i u.c.s.f. direct the c.s.f. center for all of our populations my great to have you mark with an h. we have team up today doubly lucky luck with an h. tell everybody who you are what the h. stands for. i mark or bath and i'm the founder of invisible people 25 years ago i lived homeless on the streets of los angeles and now i run a nonprofit called invisible people were we focus on education journalism and advocacy to help end homelessness we're going to see some of the incredible work they do today oh i forgot the there and this is my last coleridge here are lies and i'm getting. me feel so lucky thank you for saving the lone hand for us. how do you know. ok this show's going to be trouble we also have mark with a team up with

a detail of what he what he stands for welcome to the street. thanks for having me my name is mark there are a psychiatric apologist and i've spent the last 2 years really focused on the intersection of policy and anti-racism trying to get the united states to finally not be racist so i sleep real well. great great to have you everybody all right let me start with something that i remember seeing 3 months ago so this is a headline here in the guardian newspaper so many newspapers picked it up last week as parking lot turned into a homeless shelter with social distancing marcuse you can see that this is an old headline but this was the this was the image that truly truly shocked me look at this is this the way to treat people joining a global pandemic oh i was stunned margot what are you seeing is or was this is you shin for social distancing it's crazy. i mean i think it's

a really. damning statement of where the united states is with homelessness right now that have a pandemic hasn't changed anything but it is a really shallow nason exploited the fault lines in our community the way that racism shows up in everything that we do you think you know it has really been a crisis upon a crisis that created this massive health crisis that that place people who are homeless at extremely high risk because they are living in crowded places they don't have access to to hygiene we've seen terrible outbreaks in shelters and i think that that non-response response of placing people outside and painting a line 6 feet apart just shows how far we have to go as so many people have suffered from this pandemic. i see you nodding articulate the not going. to barracks that. we have

a nation should be embarrassed by how we have historically interacted with folks experiencing homelessness this should be. frankly the finally on the coffin with regard to see clearly that what we do is unconscionable and tomorrow when about racism right i think that maybe it's really important to note that the majority of people experiencing moments in this nation are black and brown and frankly the reason why we have been able to get away with the treatment that we have is because of that right like it is but it is this huge and of america's classism and racism that simultaneously allows us to say to people you don't exist and what you need doesn't matter. let's talk practicalities not a you have a point it could invisible people he spent a lot of time with people on the streets he talked to them they tell me a story what happened. i 1st want to address the las vegas photo

because yes that one is that article in those photos came out it was shocking and there was a lot of uproar about it and there should be but that's how las vegas is treated almost as a mist far before kovac 19 the city uses what a courtyard model where people are sleeping on a sidewalk in a courtyard before for. 19 came about so yeah everybody's screaming about this but we've been treating homelessness like that for decades yeah that's exactly right but we've always been in the bad right place we have no better we've never actually had an actual humanitarian dignity centered approach to the homeless and so i think that what you know is is remarkable is how we don't have mark's point right like we see the sort of you know sort of before and after

but it's it's just the same before. i guess as you're speaking i just want to pull back up this picture because as you're speaking it becomes so clear to every single one of those bundles these are human beings these are people going to say god. you know i think as mark and mark were saying that you know the pandemic really hasn't has just amplified the problems that we've had with homelessness it hasn't actually changed things it's increasing danger dramatically but the underlying problems have been there for a long time i think a lot of people with the enormous racial disparities that we're seeing in who lives and who dies with kind of it have suddenly become awakened to what we've always known and has always been true in this country i mean maybe what's different here is the painted lines but unfortunately the overall reality isn't that different from what we've lived with in the united states for far too often. this is that this is some news to some people who live in communities where there are homeless

people but they to your point mark h. invisible people i want to show a page from your website of invisible people the stories of. people from around the world not just from the u.s. and he spoke to brant not too long ago. he is living on the streets right now he's looking for work right now and he explained to you how can you us not to be homeless and also the impact of traffic 19 it's millicent right. really like a place to lock up my stuff take a shower and just a little piece of the world to close close the door on so that people can go through your stuff and. earlier the coronavirus it closed on the master. that no place to get into i don't hard to go to go to the bathroom it is but everybody has now shut the bathrooms down all the fast food restaurants is really where you go or the supermarket or service station and they're always always close

even before they're always there under repair or not working or whatever it's very difficult to go to the restroom you always have to go into a construction site and one of those. it's real practical difficulties right now i will improve member about a month or 2 months ago we had a toilet paper shortage snow imagined you're homeless and you can't get toilet paper nor can you get access to a bathroom and where it is a real crisis is water. and hygiene i mean with code you have to wash your hands but also you you know homeless people use drinking water. that they get from public bathrooms and you need water to live i think there's something interesting also about brant story that in los angeles a city you know right now the c.d.c.

has come out with guidelines that are against homeless. so in los angeles advocates and thank god for that they were able to push this have really slowed down the sweeps so now brant in that story if you watch the whole video brant can stay in one place they don't have to move every day they don't have the threat of police every day but to be perfectly clear los angeles denver and many cities even though it's against c.d.c. guidelines are still being homeless camps. yes ma'am. why was it was there. you know i think why folks in the housing and home of the fact there actually do have to have a who's decision on polling thing and we sent

a raft right again if cone the fact that the majority of folks experiencing homelessness in the us are folks of color like police interactions are not a. neutral thing right like the police violence in the brutality that has been documented in the demonstrations has been you know sort of really lifted so the 4 of the conversation last week is stuff that we have seen folks experiencing almost undergo for years there are tons of headlines right who least interacting almost that and the brutality that comes out of that and so i think that like we actually again have to have to really clear racism as a core of that and right like i just i want to say really really candidly clearly the police budgets right that comprise like 30 to 50 percent of us the whole budget that's the money that could have people i'm sick of having conversations with mayor of my own mayor right mayor get there and i'm sick of these conversations we don't

have the money to provide that they would have the money to do the right thing when it's 50 percent of your budget i mean we have 6 helicopters in columbus ohio columbus ohio why do we need to put in los angeles last year 30000000 dollars was spent on homeless leaves 40 sleeps a day now they're stuck i get an e-mail every day from los angeles advocates trying to predict other advocates and people that care or know about the sweet sweets or still happened $30000000.00 a year they're building bridge shelters and $2000000.00 those sweeps if you took the budget away for sweeps you could build 15 shelters and. that money that they're spending it makes no sense to me but that's the response to homelessness and you want to grow. yes conversation happening on you tube i want to share with he

said i am in kumar 946 and it says we can't depend on the government for or is this we should help the homeless at an individual level mark. i mean look i think that that is speaking for the united states to say the government hasn't had a role in this on sort of the dispossession for black and brown people of their ability to buy housing by into quote unquote american dream has been a major contributor to them by the way that was sanctioned by the government for many years major contributor to the enormous wealth gaps that we see and that is an enormous cause of homelessness the lack of the lack of affordable housing affordable housing doesn't just support itself affordable housing needs to be supported by the government if we if we get you know come to things and think that magically the market is going to fix this you wind up seeing what we see in the

united states that numbers don't have so out we have a minimum wage that hasn't kept up with the cost of living we have have a dramatic disinvestment in in housing supports in most parts of the world housing is something that is supported by governments and we don't really have that to the extent that we need that so i guess i would add that that the market has failed here that you know the living wage in the bay area where i live right now is that what we call the housing range where people could actually afford very modest housing would be $40.00 to $50.00 an hour we're fighting like heck to get the minimum wage up to $15.00 an hour something has to give and that i think i'm afraid to say is gonna need to federal investment or investment in housing investment in increase in our minimum wage that we pay people the job that they do and the recognition that some people will always and have always needed

support you know it's just that we have different you know we just are in a country where people take this individual view and don't actually believe they sort of have the sense that everything is everyone's individual fault when it just really isn't. i guess i will have and think about this if i may because when we are all talking about an issue that has been an issue in the united states for a very long time also an issue around the world for israel i am wondering if covert 19 could change that i want to have a look at this this is analysts. on twitter doubling has outperformed even best scenarios for 1000 mortality among the homeless and drug using populations and a leaf is a group that looks after people who use drugs helps them to get out of their drug he's totally deaf in says 63 homeless people were diagnosed because 1000 and there was one death a fraction of what was predicted in dublin we feel that we would like to meet we

need to talk this is what he told us a little bit. more in government we have and are very poor as. decisive leadership from the state partnership approach from n.g.o.s are working together. we have. increased housing provision and improved access to drugs like methadone. benzodiazepine and. many other supports in place so combined joint working meant that we were able to reduce frederick over 19 and to. ok. i think if what we've seen is that this is doable right this is not rocket science there are in fact some parts of the country i think of the state of connecticut

that very quickly moved a large proportion of the people experiencing homelessness into hotels which it suddenly become abandoned because of the loss of the tourism industry and then moved many of those folks into permanent housing we see in california not as many but i large number of people moved into hotels and we are doing things like i am showing that you can move people into housing this idea that people don't want to be housed has never been true i do fear though that we're facing an on coming train we have been successful in living some people into hotels we need to get them into permanent housing but but you know i just read this morning in the washington post said an estimated 44 percent of right next folks in renters in the country and 41 percent of black renters country are at high risk of have a chat and if we don't act quickly all of our efforts to move people out of homelessness into housing are going to be overwhelmed by all of the new people who are going to fall into homelessness because of the economic collapse but this is not rocket science we know how to keep people safe we've always known how to house

people we just need to do it. about moving people into how that was a promise that. we have a story that's all you invisible people cite. here people cite basically m.s. misted we've got to tell means we're going to give hotel rooms and. homeless people and a phone to keep up on his and he me is. talking to devote about what he did. now when. the most famous musician and i'm in town for probably benefit concert. body god there for me i have a stylist had a group you know and we had a woman caught in the asian woman caught in a police. as i get in the wrong sees on a actually i'm not home. oh i've come home as well actually i'm not famous i'm

homeless and i live in the car and i'm not leaving this hotel and america said come visit every room is hotel for homeless people in a state of emergency. yeah and i want to and i'm glad you transition this because one thing kovac showed that we can take action as a government and have impact prior to go cold they had there was not a lot of inner engine see all of a sudden you know governor newsome is buying hotels townspeople that's amazing so we can't we can't they should have done it before but we have to keep going and if you look at advocates in l.a. had something if you go to project ruki tractor they list daily and inserting 3 days there has been no change meaning right now there's 3601 rooms operational there's 50000 homeless people they've only housed put you

4000 of them and it's road blocked and i understand they're still in line eating people what am. i to do i usually have to pass the cd you would have the city in the county has to push those to make it happen and we know they can because this actually started but let's grow it let's get it so all the rooms are used and then the people are placed in a housing. i want to dip back into chipmunk and i want you to take this one this is to see take a known addict to mali and if people and government signal homelessness doing the best of times to think they do something about it ging a pandemic is delusional. i have often been called the illusion of that's that's fine with me i mean i think the bottom line is that we particularly in this country in the us but i think frankly globally

are at a crossroads with regard to what is our focus and bring a fact of what. we talked about a little bit earlier right like the u.s. has operated for a long time out of the individual a stick in particular a stick notion right that mike you know it's just i gotta do it for me and everyone has to do it for themselves but that's not the only way to live and i think that one of the things that i think we're starting to see is that. point right. in this country in this moment we have to begin to pivot toward the housing justice agenda and then the gender that says like everyone gets how it's full stop and i think that actually means right that you're doing more than in the home if that's when we say that we're about to have that because right like we would be talking about a livable wage you're talking about like not having the ada diet be that month to month anxiety of like i can't afford it and if one thing goes wrong that's it for

me and like we have that as a society i think globally have to begin to say it's unacceptable to continue to architect policy in a way that puts by some estimates 60 percent right of the population in a state of precarity almost every month that that's that that actually is what we're talking about right we're not necessarily talking about like oh we have to end homelessness we're talking about we have to end economic repair or for people who shouldn't have to live with that anxiety and that actually in congress is every . this is one more person i want to add their voice to this conversation that's peggy bailey peggy bass a vice president house and policy to the center on budget and policy priorities this is what she told us earlier whether acting at the federal state or local level policymakers have to prioritize people with the fewest resources because whether they're directly impacted by the virus or not this is the group that will feel the effects of the health and economic crisis for the longest. and we know that for

people with low incomes housing is their biggest bill so targeting rental them for rental assistance whether medium short or longer term assistance through housing voucher makes per makes all the sense in the world it will help stabilize these families and ensure that they don't fall into homelessness or other bad outcomes. this sounds like good advice to any time not just given 1000 you know the global pandemic. i mean absolutely in the united states right now it's very hard to qualify for housing assistance but even amongst those who meet that difficult sort of barrier only one in 4 households who qualify get it it's like a lottery system that you can't even get entered into the lottery and actually the true cost of fully funding those vouchers is not extend astronomical i think it's estimated to be about $41000000000.00 a year to fully fund those vouchers we spend nearly that on homeless shelters and

frankly if you go up and down the west coast most people experiencing homelessness can even get a bed and a shelter this is doable but we just haven't had the policy energy around we know that if you give people housing vouchers they are no longer homeless and yes we would need to work on the housing production side and some other things but this is a this is a doable thing we just haven't had the energy to do it and i think you know web site is exactly right i mean the fact that that homelessness so disproportionately affects black and brown folks i mean the black community is that $3.00 to $4.00 fold. of homelessness across the united states this speaks a lot to people who has political power who gets to make the decisions and why we have a rare type. in the last 30 seconds of this program. through a t.v. know how well that means i'm going to show you. this it will people t.v.

because i want to see people who do not have people do not have the resources these are the faces of the people that markets to talk to you always the people who are on the streets that's 3 wishes what do you spend in mind the context of a conversation. i'm just going to go with one right now into it to wrap up. is have to start influencing. change the black lives matter to defund the police to mean that's the american dream. i had given up that politicians listen to us but black lives matter and defun police has shown that we can speak up and change policy so when it comes to housing when it comes to providing support and solutions to end homelessness we have to speak up and if you're in the united states right now i mean there's

a lot of advocacy you have to get involved you have to get involved at the local level and at the national at right now the emergency rental assistance and rent legalization act. contact your senators we have to do something change policy get house. using it's got full by half the chance not muck of the 3 ends thank you say much for bringing your way 7 to the string today. and thank you chief for think hard to compensation to see an extent. discovered kazakstan that as a new strategic location at the crossroads of europe and asia. develop and grow your business. in the leading logistics trade and business harbor in 1st

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a different perspective on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. at about this is news hour live from coming up in the next 60 minutes china approves its 1st corona virus vaccine with plans to inoculate 50000000 people within the next month. and i'm putting you in ruhani one year on from the outbreak that booked this city's health care system to a breaking point and went on to infect a 1000000 as a people around the world. the cases in europe it's really going back into lockdown .