Lisa Levy is a housing case manager at Columbus House in New Haven, Connecticut, where she oversees residents in a complex of 25 apartments. Each of her clients has a dual diagnosis of severe mental illness and a substance use disorder, and all have been homeless. “They’re among the most vulnerable people,” Levy says, “and my job is to keep them housed.”
Levy has struggled to get covid tests for her clients, particularly as the omicron variant spread rapidly across the US and many of them fell sick. When the White House launched its website COVIDtests.gov last week offering four free tests per household, she says, she thought each client would get four free tests—a godsend for a group of people who desperately needed tests but couldn’t afford them and were often too unhealthy to stand in line for them.
She immediately went to the website and entered information for the first apartment, 101. When she tried to order tests for the next apartment, she was told she had already ordered the maximum number for her address. Over the next few days, Levy tried to fix the problem: She called the hotline and the US Postal Service, which is responsible for delivering the tests, scoured Facebook for tips, and tried switching the information in the address and apartment lines on the online form, all to no avail.
