Modesto Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle reopens. What it’s doing to protect users’ health
After suspending service in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Modesto Church in the Park’s Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle reopened Tuesday, with the Laundry Shuttle to follow suit on Thursday.
Dean Dodd, president and pastor of Church in the Park, said service initially will be at the Modesto Gospel Mission only. The Shower Shuttle will operate there on Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and the Laundry Shuttle on Thursdays during those same hours. Once he and his staff get used to how protective measures affect workflow, they will begin reopening at their other partner locations, he said.
Dodd said cones and plastic chain are being used to enforce social distancing, and between each shower, a spray wand applicator is used to disinfect the facilities. Cleaning will be “much more thorough than we used to do before this pandemic,” he said in a recent video on Facebook. “Now we’re going to be much, much more cautious because we don’t want to be a catalyst for this thing spreading.”
Staff members are wearing gloves, monitoring the temperatures of themselves and clients, and handing out socks and underwear to clients, rather than letting people look through bins, as previously was done.
The population the shuttle serves is not accustomed to social distancing, Dodd said. “They drink after one another, they share cigarettes, and six-foot social distancing is totally foreign. So by us setting the bar high, setting the example, they’ll follow our lead, ideally. We’ll have some push back, but this is the protocol, this is how we have to operate, these are the CDC guidelines, the county’s requirements.”
A couple of hours into operation Tuesday, about 15 people had showered, Dodd said. He called it a nice, steady start, with no crowd getting backed up. “The good thing is we didn’t advertise (our reopening) and we have a good turnout.”
As word spreads that the shuttles are back in service, he knows the demand is out there, and perhaps higher now as more people have been economically impacted by the business closures and job loss during the pandemic.
“So if you’re out there, and you’re waiting for us to come to a location near you, it may be a couple more weeks still yet, but we are at it,” he said in his Facebook video.
For more on Church in the Park and its Cleansing Hope shuttles, go to www.showershuttle.org, www.facebook.com/showershuttle and www.facebook.com/laundryshuttle.
