Thank you, Mr. Julian. I appreciate the questions.
As to your first question on the immediate need, Lookout and other service providers across the country, like my peers on the call today, are looking for a myriad of ways to help people socially isolate, whether they're symptomatic or COVID-positive, in places that get them off the streets. There is co-operation with municipal governments and provincial governments to identify places, and then COVID Reaching Home dollars help operate places like the Roundhouse, the local gymnasium here in New Westminster and the church in Abbotsford. These are places where folks can come, and as we're going to inevitably see folks get diagnosed, they will have a spectrum of places where they can self-isolate and have their own bathrooms.
We've escalated a few different ideas to the province, and we're hopeful that we'll get some federal support for RVs, hotels and university dorms to have an inventory of places that would be suitable for that spectrum and relieve our health friends in their emergency response in emergency rooms so they can reserve their hospital interventions for folks who are COVID-positive and require ventilation and hospital expertise. The ones who can socially isolate and get well on their own could move into other places, and we can be kind of creative around that. That's an immediate need outside of the stuff in my presentation, such as PPE, best practices and cleaning, those types of things.
As for the CERB, we're seeing different folks accessing our shelter continually, and now there seems to be more seniors and students—folks who won't be able to access the CERB. Opening that up could be a massive prevention tool for individuals. It's a huge cost to government, I realize, but I think that it's putting the shingles on the roof rather than trying to mop the rainwater off the floor. This prevention tool would have an incredible long-term impact and would keep people out of the cycle of homelessness. We know that every additional day that somebody is homeless, it's more and more difficult to make the journey back to wellness. We want to prevent folks from becoming homeless or facing barriers, and I think that's a really smart approach to this crisis.
As for not going back, we're putting investments in and we're going to see a healthier community as a result of this pandemic. Hopefully the virus is not going to go through the shelters like wildfire and we're not going to see a huge loss of folks. That's the risk at this point. For the ones who are not in that situation, I think the nutritional value, the connection to health care, the relationship with non-profits and the fact that they're not being exposed on the streets right now are going to have a profound impact on their access to health care in the future and their ability to be well.
We absolutely have to put mechanisms in place like pharmacare and a national dental program, make a true investment in social and affordable housing, as our peers have said, and invest in getting current housing out of the hands of for-profit entities and into the hands of non-profits. The speakers today have articulated a lot of that stuff, and I think it's very necessary to have a plan coming out of this.