A health care worker chose to quarantine with a disabled man who has covid-19. For that, he gets $4 more an hour and has to reuse masks and gowns.

Right now, in the nation’s capital, a man with intellectual disabilities is in a house, fighting covid-19, with the help of a person who chose to quarantine with him.

That person is not a relative or a longtime friend or even a neighbor.

He works for one of the city’s many disability service providers, and he is now spending his days separated from his family, sleeping in a home where two roommates with intellectual and developmental disabilities have tested positive for the virus. One of the roommates is in the hospital, and the other needs help in ways that require more than a casual touch.