I was wondering what you folks thought about an issue concerning a homeless shelter in my town.
I live in a relatively small suburb of Chicago. Probably somewhat above average income level for the county but not terribly so.
A number of churches in the county have formed a group that offers shelter and meals for the homeless on each of the different nights of the week. 2 churches in our town participate, on Sundays and Thursdays. Essentially there is a group of homeless who goes from suburb to suburb, making the circuit of whoever is housing them that evening.
I don’t want to turn this into a novel, and I’m pretty sure I’ll sound like an asshole however I phrase this, but I must admit I’m not thrilled over the fact that these churches have seen fit to import a number of homeless folk into my community 2 nights a week.
I hope I would feel differently if I believed these shelters were helping people who lived in and near my community, but I saw statistics that show approximately 50% of the shelter residents come from outside the county. Also, on occasion the county directs parolees to that night’s shelter.
The groups sponsoring this effort are very outspoken, and aggressive in combating any efforts to enforce any vagrancy or loitering ordinances. Our police are - to say the least - ineffective. And if you are anything other than supportive, you are portrayed as an uncharitable NIMBYist.
Basically, I was wondering what you folks thought of this, and what, if anything, you would do about it.
I have been part of 2 similar groups. Most volunteers involved aren’t any kind of militant. The churches generally recruit several volunteers from their general membership to provide chaperones and a meal.
In the programs I’m familiar with, both through Interfaith Hospitality Network, the homeless people are transported to and from the church from wherever they spend their days (often at work, or looking for work). I’ve never been aware of any problematic criminal activity affecting the churches or neighbors from this program, although I’m sure it happens occasionally.
Are you concerned because your fairly well-off suburb is helping people from the inner city? If you want a different approach that allows you to be a charitable (as opposed to uncharitable) NIMBY-ist, you could work to improve shelter facilities in the city. Or is the situation that the relatively few homeless people from each suburb rotate among the suburbs? That doesn’t seem particularly unfair, just more efficient for the people who are hosting.
They don’t “live in or near” anybody’s community, because as homeless people, by definition, they don’t live anywhere.
I live downtown and there are lots of homeless people around. Why should they be in my community and not in yours? Because that is the implication of what you are saying.
Homelessness is only an “inner city” problem because that’s where the services are. A lot of homeless people come from places (perhaps your neighbourhood, even) which don’t have any services, and they migrate to cities where services are available.
Where would you suggest they go, instead of your community?
I don’t know that I can phrase my concerns without sounding like a jerk - heck, maybe I AM a jerk.
My opinion is that these churches are creating a public nuisance by bringing large numbers of homeless folk to town twice a week where they adversely impact the quality of life for residents before and after shelter hours.
On Thursday afternoons before the shelter opens our central business district hosts numbers of homeless, nursing a cup of coffee, sleeping in the library or on public benches, panhandling on the sidewalks, pissing and shitting in the alleys… Not only is this - lacking a better word - unattractive, but I cannot imagine it is tremendous for the economic health of our town. Although the vast majority of these folks are undoubtedly harmless, but at least some of them appear intoxicated and mentally ill. I do not believe bringing them into our town enhances the safety of our inhabitants - especially small kids.
This morning across from the train station a large woman in flipflops was standing in the middle of the intersection, flagging down cars, begging change. I recognize her as a regular client. While this wouldn’t cause me to raise an eyebrow on the end of my commute in downtown Chi, it did give me pause starting my workweek in my relatively quiet town.
My aunt and my boss both volunteer for PADS, one of the better known homeless shelter operations in the Chicago area. Like Cowgirl said, they need to stay somewhere. The cities don’t want them sleeping on the streets. Some of these homeless families have small children. No one wants to be the guy that lives in the shelter until they toss them back to the street at 7am, but when you’re homeless, your options are pretty slim. You sleep where they let you sleep.
Yep, but they impact the quality of life where ever they are. Even the working poor struggling to keep their apartments don’t really want beggars in their neighborhood. They are no more pleasant when you are catching the bus from change scrounged from the couch.
Brainiac4 used to work next to one of the Dorothy Day Centers. It wasn’t exactly pleasant for him to step over passed out drunks on the porch in the morning.
On the plus side, distributing the problem into multiple neighborhoods - and nicer neighborhoods - raises awareness of the problem. Not sure if there is a solution to homelessness, but awareness isn’t bad.
Well, I do agree with you to the extent that the churches need to step up to the plate to the extent of providing public restrooms. This is really the same requirement for any organization hosting an event that brings people to the area. Your law enforcement should enforce public intoxication and panhandling ordinances. Note that this is different from vagrancy and loitering. Because if you are homeless and have no money, you really don’t have a choice but to be somewhere.
Right on. The homeless are also downtown because
[ul]
[li]there’s more foot traffic, i.e., better panhandling opportunities[/li][li]there are more places to get lost and be invisible[/li][li]there are places downtown that aren’t anybody’s back yard[/li][/ul]
And you should know that in Philadelphia the shelters are in the worst neighborhoods. None in the middle of the commercial districts or restaurant-y neighborhoods.
I volunteered at one of those rotating church shelters, in Oak Park, on a few occasions (isn’t the organization PADS?) (oh, I see Kalhoun mentioned them).
Our co-op art gallery wanted to do a service project for the community, so we brought supplies and offered to help their clients make some art. We figured they probably get bored, being stuck in a shelter.
Some of the homeless were too ill or dysfunctional or depressed to participate, so I didn’t interact with them at all.
The ones I did meet were interesting people, and very kind. I wound up drawing their portraits one night. They were so effusive in their praise of my work that I discovered a new outlet for my skills.
PADS ran a tight ship with very specific rules. I didn’t see any behavior that frightened me or even made me uneasy. I just saw other human beings.
If you’re concerned about this group that’s running the shelter, go volunteer to help them. Better yet, take your teenagers with you.
Well, to be blunt, you ARE being an uncharitable NIMBYist. The question is: is that a bad or unnatural thing to be? No one really wants to see suffering and want. No one really wants to walk around urine soaked people who talk to themselves. No one really enjoys the greater crime (both perpetrated by and against) the homeless in their neighborhood. The desire to keep that out of your backyard is totally understandable. I’d like to keep that out of my backyard, too.
But it won’t go AWAY. You can make the people go away, by not helping them out, but they’re still going to be suffering and smelly somewhere else. As **cowgirl **says, it’s not fair and equitable, nor is it even logistically feasible, that they should all be the responsibility of the city, either.
We could push through national health care, so those bankrupted by illness didn’t end up homeless. Increase cash allowances and housing assistance so the ones on the borderline could remain in apartments instead of on the streets. You want to try to be the one to push through the massive tax increases needed to fund that?
The other option, of course, is to increase funding of residential mental health facilities, where many (but not all) of these people could get care they really need and you wouldn’t have to look at them. That’s where many of them used to be, and we (society) didn’t like that option, either.
I volunteer at homeless shelters, probably, 4x’s a year. Most of these people have some type of job, and a lot of them don’t really seem homeless, not like what I’ve seen in San Fran, Chicago, New York, or London, but definitely better than Mexico or The Philippines. My involvement is pretty minimal. My role is more like a pack mule: I drive food around, serve it, and then eat with them if there is any food left over. It’s always with a church, usually catholic, and we converse with them while they eat. Except for not having a permanent roof over their heads, it’s not too terrible an existence, c.f. Shantytown Third world country. They’re all screened, but I don’t know anything about the screening process. I think they need a referral to get in. Most of the ones I volunteer at are usually all-males. There is a woman with children one also, but never have I seen the two mixed.
As a word to the wise, you might want to inquire more about their processes and procedures before you criticize. Much to my surprise, a lot of them are not too terribly well off, have some sort of job, and they do tend to commute from all over.
Just two nights a week? You’re complaining over two friggin’ nights a week? There are churches here in Richmond who serve the homeless daily. Guess you won’t be moving here any time soon.
I wonder how you would feel if the homeless were actually former residents of your community, rather than “outsiders”. Would you feel more sympathetic to them? Less afraid? You’re aren’t giving up any of your time and money to them, so why should you care who’s being helped?
Really, it seems like if the churches in your neighborhood WEREN’T hosting the homeless, they wouldn’t be very churchy. Especially if their congregants are well-to-do.
Last year, the city council decided that the small methadone clinic in my own pleasant neighborhood was to be greatly expanded, not just in the number of clients, but also in the severity of their problems. So, before we only had the working addicts, but now we also had the crazy bearded addicts. The neighborhood revolted against the latter group coming to our streets.
It helped that the city council didn’t have all it’s permits in order. That gave the neighborhood more power. We got the council to pay for a big fence, so that a little piece of waste land that lay behind the clinic, adjacent to the gardens of the people living on the street behind it, would be shut off to the addicts.
Also, the clinic does a lot to minimize the trouble to the community. They know that if they don’t, the community will harrass the clininc on the base of the less then perfect permit. So the clinic strictly enforces a scheme where all the addicts have appointments to come for their methadone, they have waiting rooms inside the building, and the addicts are forced to swallow the methadone on the premises. Both the addicts and the clinic know that complaints about homeless people urinating in doors etcetera will make it harder to keep the clinic open, and they will make that clear to the offending homeless people (there are camera’s on the main walking routes to the clinic. “Keep that up, and you will lose methadone rights”.
So, in Dinsdale’s case, I’d say the city council and the two churches could do more to minimize the trouble for the neighborhood community.
My sister run a “soup kitchen” in a small city here in Alberta. mazinger_z is correct about many of them having jobs. A lot of the people my sister serves are the working poor. Her kitchen runs 7 days a week, for breakfast and dinner. She opens up at 6:00 am, and if they are working, she makes them a bagged lunch too. A lot of these people just cannot afford to eat and pay rent on the $8 to $15 an hour they make. For those of you not familiar with the job/housing situation in Alberta, it is red hot right now. I know of people living in tents in Fort McMurray that make upwards of $80,000 a year. Technically, they are homeless, but there is no “homes” to be had.
I guess my point is, consider volunteering and getting a real understanding of what the program is about before you try to get it shut down. Only then will your VALID objections carry some weight in your community. You don’t have to put up with people using your alleyways as a toilet, but they do have to go somewhere.
The college that I work at is one of the groups that hosts Room at the Inn, a moving shelter for homeless women. I’ve never heard of any problems created by it–maybe because it’s women-only. Many of the women are fleeing abusive homes.
The problem seems to be with your police department, if they’re not willing to enfore ordinances against public nuisances, panhandling, etc. I’d encourage the police department, through way of City Council, to step up those efforts before I’d try to run the shelters out of town.
Which means that 50% of the residents come from your county, if not your particular well-off community.
Another thing you could do re: understanding the addicted homeless population (which isn’t ALL of them by any stretch) is watch A&E’s Intervention. About half the people they profile DO get better, but the rest continue their destructive behavior, often winding up on the streets or in jail. Some of the addicts on that show are stupid and mean, and a few are truly sick, but most of them are just people in a lot of pain who don’t know how to do better with their lives. And they’re ALL somebody’s son, daughter, sister, brother.
The question is: is that a bad or unnatural thing to be? No one really wants to see suffering and want. No one really wants to walk around urine soaked people who talk to themselves. No one really enjoys the greater crime (both perpetrated by and against) the homeless in their neighborhood. The desire to keep that out of your backyard is totally understandable. I’d like to keep that out of my backyard, too.