We indured looks of disgust by church tour groups 2 see the homeless people, our belongings were publically riffled through as we signed in. Constantly treated like we were ungrateful & chastized publically, phones unplugged & doors locked preventing one from getting police help if needed….
There was no protection for your belongings that were not allowed in. Those that left anything outside was stolen by morning & only if you were silent and compliant with all rules U get a referal to another shelter when your time at this 1 is up. Each time U R refered 2 another shelter it’s 1-5 towns away. Kids R uprooted from school at least 3 times a year….
I would stay awake @ night watching over my children, sleeping in parks at their school.
There isn’t a lot of documentation for this collection of sentences, excerpted from a letter in the comments section of a 2009 Change.org article about people who shun homeless shelters, an article that isn’t even online any more. We don’t know in what city the experiences of anonymous writer K K occurred, but the best thing to hope is that her description was of a very rare worst-case scenario, and that somehow things have changed enough in the past five years to bring improvement to such dismal shelters.
K K speaks of the difficulty of protecting her children from mentally ill inhabitants, and even from sexual advances. If one child had to use the restroom, the whole family went along for safety. The moldy shower stalls offered no privacy. At meals, adults would shove children aside to get at the food — which had roaches in it anyway.
Like most shelters, this one expelled everyone in the morning and they had to figure out some way to survive out in the open, regardless of rain, snow, or heat. Of course, all possessions had to be packed up and taken along. Even that much is hard to imagine — everything you and your children need, in bags that have to be carried around all day and guarded every minute.
A minimalist existence
With overnight shelters, this is just the way it has to be. Nobody gets to homestead a little corner for themselves. You take whatever space you’re given, if you’re lucky enough to get in. Why does anyone worry about the small percentage of people who refuse shelter when there aren’t enough beds anyway? Even in the best possible circumstances, in the most enlightened city on the continent, living in a shelter with children is traumatic for parents and kids alike.
Aside from shelters, or squeezing in with relatives, kids and their single parents live in cars, garages, tents, and squats. Pat Reavy and Marjorie Cortez reported on an incident in Salt Lake City in which police, fire authorities, and the Health Department converged on a self-storage company and found people living in at least five of the units. Storage cubicles of course have no plumbing and only minimal access to electricity, and it is strictly illegal to live in one.
‘They’re homeless’
A-1 Storage manager Christie Andrews told the journalists that in the previous two weeks she had turned away between 10 and 15 prospective renters of storage units whom she suspected were intending to take up residence inside. For at least six months she had tried to deal with the situation, kicking people out when she became aware that they were actually occupying the spaces. In one storage unit, a mother and father lived with their 3-month-old baby. Andrews said simply, “They’re homeless and they don’t have anywhere to go.”
That was in mid-2012, and as we know, Utah is a state that has made amazing strides in just the past couple of years. Around the same time, another story originated from Midvale, which counts as part of the greater Salt Lake City metro area. LifeStart Village is there, a place that, under the auspices of the Family Support Center, houses 54 single women and their children.
On that occasion, in honor of Mother’s Day, Vidal Sassoon-trained hair stylist Yoshi Shiraki offered free haircuts to all the mothers at LifeStart Village and got so many acceptances that he had to schedule appointments for the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of that week. LifeStart Village still thrives, providing a reliable and safe environment, with a multi-staged program that leads the residents to self-sufficiency.
Hotel 22
In the affluent Silicon Valley area of California, Mark Emmons wrote a story for Mercury News about a father raising his 10-year-old daughter at “Hotel 22.” This is the colloquial name for the Valley Transportation Authority’s #22 line that runs between Palo Alto and East San Jose, the only bus route open 24 hours a day. The unemployed father, who didn’t give his name, told the reporter that for five months, he and his daughter had spent every night the same way. From early evening until morning, they rode the bus, then got off and waited for the return bus to go the other way. He didn’t expect this way of life to go on forever, because they were on the waiting list for a family shelter.
According to 2012 statistics, this area had the third-highest number of chronically homeless people in America, along with the country’s highest percentage of people experiencing homelessness with no shelter at all. Emmons wrote:
A one-way fare costs $2, but monthly passes can be purchased for $70, and VTA also has a program offering some free, quarterly transit passes to homeless and those in risk of losing their housing…. VTA officials make clear that homeless have just as much right to ride as anyone as long as they obey the rules such as no smoking, eating or drinking.
The complex problem of homelessness is a hot-button issue in Silicon Valley at a time when the high-tech economy continues to fuel the expensive home and rental markets — widening the divide between the haves and have-nots.
Reactions?
Source: “Why I Choose Streets Over Shelter,” Change.org, 06/03/09
Source: “Tenants evicted from South Salt Lake storage units,” DeseretNews.com, 04/27/12
Source: “Homeless single mothers get special style,” ksl.com, 05/12/12
Source: “Homeless turn overnight bus route into Hotel 22,” MercuryNews.com, 10/31/13
Image by Scott Meyers
