It was horrible. I could get thrown out of the shelter for objecting to being sexually harassed and stalked for hours at a time. I could even get arrested, because a group of shelter staffpeople is emotionally abusing me with the goal of making me upset enough to "justify" my being thrown out or arrested. The goal of that group is to get me thrown out or arrested, and to make me as miserable as possible until one or both of those things happens. It is a life-threatening situation.
Every few days, another female guest of the shelter tells me that the male employee who has harassed me for most of a year, while he is supported and protected by a group of female staffpeople, has also harassed her or someone whom she knows.
Even homeless women who haven't observed this one male employee, who is obsessed with harassing me and who feels that he can harass other women because he's harassed me for such a long time despite all of my attempts to make him stop and all of the times that I have asked for help from the shelter management, have questioned why men are hired to work at a women's shelter. Many, if not most, homeless women were or are victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. Many, if not most, of those victims were also abused when they were children. Just being homeless probably qualifies all of us as having a traumatic stress disorder most of the time.
I agree that it's better to have all-female staff at women's homeless shelters. However, the only male employee who has persistently harassed me and who is abusing his power by harassing who knows how many other women is this one man whom I have written about almost every day for most of a year.
Even before the conglomerate made things worse for women everywhere, conditions in all homeless shelters were terrible. The Pine Street Inn is the cleanest and most organized shelter where I have ever been, but it, like all homeless shelter, is rife with verbal and emotional abuse of guests by staff. That is and always was considered normal; the answer to all objections is almost always "If you don't like it, you can leave," said by staff who know that the people whom they're threatening can't leave because they are HOMELESS. Staff who don't think that way or treat the guests that way are always outnumbered at every homeless shelter.
Society does not think that homeless people are human beings; it thinks that we are throwaways. Homeless women have gotten raped at shelters by male staff.
The conglomerate has spent all of these years that I've been homeless laughing at me for being homeless; the only accurate definition of homelessness is being too poor to rent or buy a place to live. I have refused all of the sleazy ways that I could have made money during all of the time that the conglomerate has ridiculed me for being homeless; can everyone in political office say the same?
I am permanently barred from the Woods Mullen shelter, which is a Boston Public Health Commission shelter, because a male staffperson at another BPHC shelter, the Long Island shelter, grabbed me a couple of years ago and I punched him in the face. That is a shelter where women had gotten raped by male staffpeople. Long Island shelter was closed a year ago. A new shelter was built for homeless men, and the Woods Mullen shelter was made all-female. However, women who have to stay at the Woods Mullen shelter on the nights when they don't get beds at the Pine Street Inn from the lottery have told me that Woods Mullen is as dirty and dangerous as ever. When the third floor was emptied of men, it took months for shower curtains to be placed in the group shower. Women either had to shower with no privacy or not shower. Women have also told me that there are a lot of male staffpeople at that shelter, that they stare at the women while they're sleeping and that they walk into the bathrooms whenever they feel like it.
You're not listening; that doesn't make me wrong.
Copyright L. Kochman, January 2, 2016 @ 5:10 p.m.
