All posts by Taylor S.

Shelter Staff or Prison Guards

Books and Films

After reading, Tell Them Who I Am, I got a new insight to the way homeless people feel about shelter life.  The book goes into detail about the different struggles within shelter life and explains different reasons why people may be homeless.  What really got to me was the section about the staff at shelters.  The book talks about how women are constantly afraid to be exited from the program because the staff makes sure they are on perfect behavior.  The residents can be exited for a variety of reasons, but the staff’s opinion of the person has a big influence.  It is hard to think that someone can live their life homeless, with no money and no place to go during the day when the shelter is closed, and being happy and chipper all the time.  It makes sense that someone may be grumpy when they get home from a long day in either the heat or the cold.  If a person is in a bad mood, however, they will risk the chance of being kicked onto the street with sometimes no remorse.  It makes sense that there are rules, but for the shelter to be “jail-like,” doesn’t seem right.  They have not committed a crime.  They are without a home and need a place to stay for the night.

http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Them-Who-Am-Homeless/dp/014024137X

No Way Out

Uncategorized

Calculating the basic needs of a single parent with two children and seeing how it matched up to a fulltime minimum wage job was very sad.  Looking at the areas of rent, utilities, transportation, clothing, child care, furniture, laundry, cleaning supplies, communication, medical, and entertainment was very eye opening because the two do not match up.  Living off of basic necessities for a parent and her two children costs more than the income of a full time minimum wage worker.  This explains the problem our people are having making it through the month.  It isn’t possible to have a comfortable life when working full-time at any location with minimum wage as the income.  So, these are full time workers, going in 5 days a week, yet they still have to go to food banks and shelters in order to provide their children a decent life.  The question is how do we fix this problem? How are we supposed to help people get out of poverty when even working full time jobs leaves them with basic needs unmet?  This doesn’t even begin to address the problem of people working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs.  A common response would be, well she or he should not have had children, but that is not a justifiable answer because there are too many single parents in this dilemma right now.  People have had children and they are now stuck, with no way to get out.