Emergency Shelters are located in cities throughout the United States. The perception when emergency shelters are mentioned is that of sadness, hopelessness, alcohol and drug abuse culminating in a sense of overwhelming desperation. All these perceptions have validity; but the emergency shelter where I work every day, harbors some of the most unique individuals you'll ever meet.
Ordinary solutions don't work with these men. For instance, the landlord has just notified that you are to be evicted from your apartment/room in 30 days. Common sense would dictate that you need to start making some phone calls. You need to excercise your social network and start calling in some favors. You have to find out if there are any relatives who can put a roof over your head. You have to do SOMETHING! Not my guys. They wait until the 30th day, pack up some clothing and walk the streets looking for soup kitchens. Procrastination and denial are the enemies in the fight to end homelessness.
In our emergency shelter, new applicants sit and recount their tales of woe to an intake clerk through a 4" circle of thick safety glass. The stories that pass through that circle of glass are the basis of this blog.
Keep in mind that the overriding desire of each man that comes into the shelter is: "How many days do I get?" and “What do I have to do to stay here longer?” They've wasted months and sometimes years getting into the predicament they've found themselves and NOW they're going to worry about how many days they will receive. Their plans to extracate themselves from a homeless condition are a plethora of pie-in-the-sky hopes and aren't as rule, sound. “I'll get a job and find an apartment” is the usual response to an exit plan; never mind the facts that one needs one month's rent and a month's security deposit. All in two weeks!
Most men in a homeless sheltr have exhausted their social contacts. Grown children drop their fathers off at the Mission because of a lengthly bout of incontinance. They're tired of washing smelly sheets. So, let's get rid of the problem. The practice of “putting our parents somewhere” is a statement about our generaton and society as a whole, but's that's another blog.
My staff and I formulate treatment plans to provide an exit stategy from the shelter. I'm blessed with some of the best case managers on the planet. Men that can place broken, sometimes deranged and usually addicted clients rather than turning them back out on the street. The process of conjuring this “social services magic” follows in future episodes.
