Rome’s Homeless Don’t Have the Luxury of Staying Home

inside the outbreak How do you wash your hands without a sink? Stock up on food without money? Or shelter in place when you live on the streets? Charities in the Italian capital are struggling to respond.

ROME — For more than two weeks, the Italian government has trumpeted a central message for containing the spread of the coronavirus: Stay home. But for the thousands who are homeless or living in extreme poverty in Rome, keeping off the streets is nearly impossible. “The message given to stay home is a message that they can’t respond to because they don’t have anywhere to go,” Francesca Zuccari, coordinator of services for people in extreme poverty for the Community of St. Egidio charity, said of the 8,000 people who typically live on Rome’s now empty streets.

“The problem is that these are the most fragile members of the population, and those who are most exposed,” she said. Italy has recorded nearly 64,000 infections, the most in Europe, and more than 6,000 deaths, the most in the world. As the country struggles to contain the outbreak, the government has enacted strenuous new rules. The essentials of staying safe and complying with the government’s orders, however, are a luxury to the country’s poorest.

How do you wash your hands without a sink? Stock up on food without money? Or shelter in place without a home? Though soup kitchens and shelters in Rome remain open, the informal systems of support — spare change dropped in a cup, or a paid-for breakfast pastry — no longer exist.

The closing of bars and restaurants has inadvertently cut off access to washrooms. “Citizens keep being told to wash their hands,” Ms. Zuccari said. “The homeless don’t know where to go.

” More than anything, the seismic disruption to street life in the city has meant many are going hungry. Three days a week, people can receive a hot meal at the soup kitchen that St. Egidio runs from a palazzo in Rome’s central Trastevere neighborhood. On other days, the charity’s volunteers deliver box dinners in areas where the homeless usually congregate, including the city’s main train stations.