Reply #578: May I rebut your points from first-hand experience, please?

[AngryOldDem]

1) and 2) The shelter where I work is extremely easy to enter. All we ask is that people call between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. They may do this from just up the street from us, where the day shelter is. The day shelter allows use of their phone for this need; also, people also pass around their cell phones for others to use. We stay on the phones until we have spoken to EVERYONE at the day shelter. In addition, the day shelter staff sends us a fax with additional names of people who will be coming in that night.

It is rare that we turn people away. RARE. We do so mainly because of past behavioral or safety issues (we will not allow one person to threaten a room full of people, for instance). In the winter, no one is turned away. We have a registration list and people come in whose names are on that list. If people keep coming back night after night, we don't even take their names off the list, which means they don't have to call us everyday. The process really cannot be easier if a person needs overnight shelter. We take those that are discharged from the hospital wearing nothing but their gowns; intoxicated people who the cops pick up off the street; a family who someone noticed was sleeping in their car. You name it, I have probably seen it in my time at the shelter as a volunteer and an employee.

Our numbers? Consistently we have close to 200 men, 50 women, and anywhere from 14 to 20 families of various sizes staying with us any given night. (Some families, for their comfort, are sheltered at a nearby motel.)

We allow guests to use our number as a contact, and employers and potential employers have no problem reaching their workers. If it's day labor guests do, they know where the day labor offices are and go to them personally, and day labor also arranges transportation. (NOTE WELL: I think day labor is a scourge and does most of the homeless population NO GOOD. So don't ride me on that issue because I have been against it for YEARS. Thank you.)

Many of our guests do job searches during the day anyway, and most have cell phones, so out of maybe 200 people staying with us, perhaps less than a third actually use us as a conduit for work.

2) I don't deny that what is needed is more housing. But you seem to think that it can just happen overnight. It can't. Many people are working to obtain it for those who need it. In any given city there has to be adequate housing stock in relatively secure areas. With the decay that has infected most major cities, this is a huge impediment to quickly turning around buildings that are possible homes for those in need. Public housing projects, built in the idealistic 1960s, are woefully inadequate and have since become havens for drug and other illegal activity. The solution in most cities has been to raze those structures altogether and/or locate new public housing complexes out of the cities and into the suburbs. That creates its own set of issues (namely the NIMBY minsdet) and puts us back even more firmly on Square One.

But we hear you loud and clear: WE NEED MORE HOUSING.

I realize you are homeless. Are you working with any kind of agency that can help your housing search? Are you working with anyone? A lot of the housing-search process also depends on the motivation of the person seeking it. Merely demanding it won't get it for you.

We place a lot of our guests in housing, some public, some private. I hate to break this to you, but some cannot keep the places they get. Some have burned EVERY SINGLE BRIDGE there is in my city for housing, because they cannot keep a lease, or abide by the terms of residence that agencies set (like Red Cross) for their tenants, or through criminal activity. Who do you blame for that? What do you suggest we do when a person has a steady record of noncompliance, or rent violations, or criminal violations on that property (which is a strike against you no matter what your economic status is)? What do you suggest we do for a family we once sheltered, whom we repeatedly placed in housing, but could not keep it, even with a rent of $50 a month? Doesn't that indicate to you that more help is needed for some people than just a key to a place?

There are so many nuances to this issue that you are choosing to ignore in your HOUSINGFIRST demand. I'm just glad that as I read along this absolutely MASSIVE thread that some do get it, and understand what social- service agencies are up against as they work with the homeless. Maybe someday you will, too. Homelessness is too widespread and complex for simple logical progression from Point A (shelter) to Point B (housing) to Point C (jobs). But please, I beg of you Bobbolink, if you have ANY suggestions for us, please share. A lot of guest attendants, case managers, and social workers are in need of your guidance.

(Most of homeless I know, by the way, do NOT fit your apparent impressions of that population. They are fully capable, intelligent people who can take care of themselves very well. They are working within the system to better their lives, and they fully realize that and accept that it will take time. They don't have time to keep playing the victimization card, which, in the end is a huge waste of time and will NOT win any allies to the cause. Indeed, I find such a characterization outrageous and downright insulting. Such militancy is good for maybe 10 seconds of attention from us in real world; then we all get back to work doing what needs to be done to assist those whom you think you speak so eloquently for.)