Domestic violence victim tested positive for Monkeypox and got kicked out of her temporary shelter

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – “So you think you’re getting kicked out of here because you tested positive for Monkey pox?” I asked the woman.

“Correct, that’s what the note said,” she answered.

Thursday morning a woman whose identity we are not revealing says she was kicked out of her temporary shelter for domestic violence because she tested positive for monkey pox. She said a Gates Police officer was at her door and she had 15 minutes to grab everything she and her two children owned and leave.

On her door was a notice from the hotel where the Monroe County Department of Human Services put her up. The notice gave the women until 11 a.m. Thursday to leave her shelter. The handwritten part of the notice said “Due to your medical condition.”

“Hi ya’ll. This is my room and my kids’ room,” the woman said in a cell phone video she recorded Thursday morning.

She lived in a hotel room with her two children for about a week. She says the county department of human services put them here while she was on the Willow Domestic Violence Center’s waiting list for a long term shelter.

“How long do I have sir?” she asked a hotel employee in the hallway.
  
In the video, the hotel employee pushed her deadline to just after noon. When she got her car packed with everything she owned she met me at the property next door. She told me when she tested positive for monkey pox Thursday morning she alerted the county DHS staff at the hotel.

Brean: “Sometime after that the notice was on your door.”

Woman: “As soon as I told the DHS workers downstairs they told me to go upstairs and go to your room and we will figure it out from there. Fifteen minutes after that there was a notice on my door to vacate immediately due to illness.”
 
I called the hotel and spoke to a manager. She told me the county removed the woman. The county “closed her out” the manager said on the phone.

County spokesman Gary Walker told me “DHS would never end a placement for medical reasons. We don’t do that,” he said. “Under no circumstances would we remove someone for medical reasons.”

I’m not revealing the hotel because it’s a temporary shelter for domestic violence victims, but I can tell you the notice on the door said the motel “has ended your stay.”

“I called DHS and told them I was calling you, Channel 10 news because you can’t put two kids out, you can’t put us out like that. It’s not right,” she said. “Once I mentioned channel 10 news they found me a new place.”

When the woman was removed she was already under a 14 day quarantine order. The county says as soon as they were notified she was ordered to leave, they found her a new shelter. The woman told me she is in her new place and feels safe.

The county is still looking into why this woman was ordered to leave.