Following Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement on Thursday of 11,000 free hotel rooms to help curb the spread of coronavirus, the city’s defender organizations warn that bureaucracy and lack of resources continue to present major challenges to controlling the spread of COVID-19, as reported by THE CITY.

For weeks now, the inability for at-risk New Yorkers to access available isolation spaces has driven untold numbers of people to hospitals and ER units, likely helping to spread the virus even further and putting tremendous strain on medical staff.

“We have to have a user-friendly, efficient and very rapid way for people to get access to isolation space and the care that they need, whether they’re in the streets, in the shelter, couch-surfing, doubled up in somebody’s house, or coming in from Rikers Island,” said Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project.