July, 2000: We had a meeting this week about opening new
shelters; city officials, service providers,
churches, homeless women, all together. Two
churches have space; the city has funding; the
bottleneck is ... staff. "We have to have at
least four staff-people. Someone to go with the
women when they go out to smoke. Someone to watch
the restrooms. Sometimes the referral center
sends us women who fight with each
other." Claudia says later, "I've stayed at
Lakeview (self-managed shelter) for ten days.
When two of the women get in a fight we separate
them, talk to both of them, ask, 'What are you
really upset about? How can we handle this?' It
gets solved." The SHARE self-managed shelters
run at a third of the cost of staffed shelters.
They don't run perfectly. Neither do staffed
shelters. They run just as well. Restrooms in
hotels and motels get trashed. People smoke where
they shouldn't. It would be nice to have
sufficient staff to watch everybody all the time.
No one can afford it. Few customers would put up
with it. Sometimes you just have to treat
people like adults and take your chances. The
very idea of treating homeless women like adults.
The very idea.
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