I have never heard of an overnight shelter that allowed homeless people to be at the overnight shelter during the day, unless the weather is bad or someone is really sick or really elderly. To provide for the physical needs of homeless people who have nowhere to be during the day, there are several day shelters in the Boston area.
Particularly at The Women's Lunch Place and On The Rise, there's a lot of eating, and there's a lot of talking, but the staff do nothing, and I mean nothing, to direct the clients to plan for their futures or to take such steps as they can toward ending their homelessness.
Day shelters serve many crucial functions, not the least of which are keeping homeless people off the streets during the day and giving them places to be so they're not as apt to do things that cause problems to themselves and other people. However, it is enabling, not supportive, to provide food, shelter and clothing for decades to clients who spend their "cuckoo checks" on drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and motels by the end of the first week of every month. It is degrading, not respectful, to assume that those clients are too stupid or too screwed up to do anything else, even if you're smiling at those clients every day of every year that you make those assumptions.
I won't argue about the healthy, gourmet meals that I had at The Women's Lunch Place before I was permanently barred a few years ago. However, the failure of On The Rise to consistently and accurately support me during the first situation of my being harassed at school that happened last year, the willingness of On The Rise for me to lose my housing rather than to really fight to help me not have to be homeless again, and the ascribing by On The Rise to mental illness of all of my desperate and heartbroken anger about those failures, made me realize that On The Rise doesn't know how to interact with or support clients who have higher expectations for their lives than living in whatever slum takes Section 8 and who are willing to make every effort to fulfill those expectations as independently as possible.
I couldn't have worked harder at school. I couldn't have worked harder not to lose my apartment. I couldn't have worked harder to fairly resolve every conflict that I have had from being abused. I couldn't be more sick of being treated as if everything is my fault.
Copyright L. Kochman, July 8, 2017 @ 3:32 p.m.
