Most everyone you ask across the Ohio Valley, or even the globe, will agree that 2020 was one of the worst years in history. Obviously, that is the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of us start our year off with renewed hope and a resolution or two. We were off to a good start until March, when the reality of what we had been hearing about in China and Europe hit the United States: a novel (new) deadly virus known as coronavirus or COVID-19. Life as we knew it came to an abrupt halt, resulting in a country wide lockdown. Parents had to learn how to be teachers at the same time they were working from home. We were discouraged from contact with family and friends. We learned how to disinfect everything that came into our homes. We ordered everything online and learned about contactless delivery. If you watched the news, you learned of the number of individuals dying at an alarming rate every single day. We saw the stories of the nurses and doctors who provided care to the dying who could not be with their loved ones in their last hours. We saw the healthcare providers who worked weeks on end in full PPE, not able to return home to their children and families. We watched the stories of those frontline heroes then contract and succumb to COVID-19 themselves. All of this in a short span of time.

Everywhere we looked we saw messages of despair and death. The country and the world felt the full effect of turmoil. Many of us lived in fear, afraid to go anywhere or touch anything, even fearful of wearing what we wore out back into our homes. We didn’t visit family or friends for fear of being asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus which could kill them. Everything was shut down: bars, restaurants, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, funeral homes….everything. Most were feeling the effects of social isolation.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs for humans is shown as a pyramid: At the base is seen “physiological needs”: our basic need for air, water, food, shelter, sleep, and clothing. Next up the pyramid is “safety needs”: personal security, health, employment. After safety, we see “love and belonging”, meaning our need for relationships with friends and family, for human connection and intimacy. “Esteem” comes up next, focusing on self-esteem, respect, personal status, strength, and freedom. Lastly is "self-actualization," or the ability to realize our potential and to become the best we can be.

The pyramid shows the basic human needs we all require, and it is easy to see how the pandemic interfered with each level of our needs. Some lost, or were at risk of losing, shelter. Many lost health and employment. Many felt the effect of the loss of relationship with family and friends. And I am confident we have all felt a lack of freedom in the last year. When it comes to self-esteem, how many of you feel esteemed? And looking at self-actualization, it’s hard to imagine any of us were able to make it to the top in this last year.

Homeless or not homeless, we have more in common with each other than we think. When I look at those who are experiencing homelessness, and by contrast, my housed friends in the last year, I see so many similarities. We all use coping mechanisms. During the pandemic many housed folks coped by using online therapy platforms, others journaled, and many turned to substances. Last year, national alcohol sales increased 54% by the third week of March. Online sales of alcohol increased 262% from 2019, per the JAMA Network.

This pandemic has placed a microscope on basic human needs. Our homeless community mourned 22 deaths during the year of 2020, and while addiction played a major part in those deaths, so did the absence of Maslow’s needs. For every human, in the absence of housing, security, health, love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization….we die.

We are all human, we all have the same fundamental needs. What begs a closer look is what happens when those needs are threatened or taken away and how we react to that. Having our basic needs met is a right and is what we at Project HOPE fight so hard for.

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