Let's say you have been invited to stay in one of the aforementioned shelters, havens, harbours or ministries.
You have either submitted to a battery of tests asking, among other things if you have ever had homicidal tendencies; been taken there by the policeman who found you slumped over a red ant hill by the bus stop you slipped off because you were drunk or high enough to care less about being bitten alive by critters; you were caught sleeping outside under somebody's porch, and the policeman gave you the alternative of jail or the nice shelter down the road....or you just wandered into an office one day which was staffed by scrubby clean True Believers in matching t-shirts emblazoned with a rings of fire motif, and they talked you into joining their new spiritual awakening movement after you surrendered power of attorney, and all of your dough including the loose change.
You've made the leap. You are now a 'sheltered' streetpuppy.
However, Uncle Sam still views you as homeless because you are not yet at a 'fixed' address, so don't throw away that sleeping bag just yet.
Being a sheltered streetpuppy has advantages. And disadvantages. Let's go over some of those advantages and disadvantages.
You have a place to sleep at night that is not moving around under you. You most likely have a sheet or a blanket to cover you. You can take a shower...in fact, you are forced to take a shower.
You can go to the bathroom without squatting under a tree. You are assured of a meal...if it is a longer term shelter, you are assured of up to three meals a day. You might be able to watch TV for a couple of hours a day. You will probably be given clean clothes to wear, and some hygiene materials.
You may, if it is a longer term situation shelter be assigned a 'case manager' who will help you get an ID, or maybe a job or help you solve a legal problem, like that warrant for failure to appear, or open container charge.
The kind of things that happen when you are on the street and looking the wrong way when Mr. Policeman slides up.
There is a sizable staff of underlings to the counselors, usually called associates. The associates are there to tell you what is where, and when to go to bed, what chore you will be expected to do, and when to change your underwear and so on.
You have companionship and understanding from your shelter mates/street puppies, and a lot of nods of the head when you tell your 'story.' After all, you are all in the same raggedy ole' boat.
The above fall into the category of advantages.
Let's look more closely at those advantages.
Depending upon the kind of shelter you have landed in, you will be sleeping either in a large'dorm in a bunkbed on loan from a jail; a large room filled with either mats or single beds on loan from a jail; a smaller dorm with fewer bunkbeds from you know where, or simply sprawled on a large sofa filled with Gawd knows what kind of vermin, and it will be in front of a large TV which is never turned off.
You can take a shower, but be mindful of the fact that most shelters have very little hot water to spare, and the showers are old and moldy and often open to the dorm area ditto the bathrooms which are old and moldy and very often broken down and downright aromatic.
If there is food at all, other than donated sandwiches, you will be eating the chef-cook's idea of whatever it is that he happened to put together from the food left from the large pile of donations which went to his and his helpers homes, or sold to local stores. Thus, you should take a supply of vitamins with you, as the nutritional value of most shelter food is far less than even the most meager food served at 'feeds'.
Don't bother with the TV thing. Vicious fights break out over control of the remote control in these places, and you don't want to be around when the cops are called to arrest the guy who lodged the remote into the nose of the guy who wanted to watch something other than "Billy The Exterminator."
Generous people very often drop mounds of clothing at shelters. Those clothes are picked over by the staff of the shelter so you will be getting the dregs of the mounds, but if you are patient, you will come up with something decent to wear at the job interview which your case manager will help you to arrange.
Ooops. Case Manager. Job Interview. Help with an ID.
Good luck with that.
Your Case Manager probably knows as much about job interviews as she knows about changing a tire on an 18-wheeler. She/He doesn't belong in that job because they have no training for that position in the shelter other than something they have lied about on their own application. And if they are responsible for giving you vouchers for outside supplies and/or bus passes...there will likely be a kick back situation, and if you refuse, you may find yourself back squatting under that tree real fast.
Ditto if you refuse any sexual advances.
Ditto if you report any of this to a 'higher up person.'
The staff of underlings who man the front desk and hand you stuff like the hygiene kits. Now, we are out of Klingon territory,and are into Darth Vader territory. Many of these people have been homeless. And that experience has twisted their minds so badly that they now take out their previous suffering on street puppies who are under their, if not guidance, well, at least the key to the bathroom.
They will taunt you with trivial matters, implying that your IQ is no higher than your blood pressure reading, demanding to know where you are hiding the corn crinkles they know you are hiding in your bag..as they are the enforcers of the 'no contraband' rule in every shelter, that rule being the rule that says 'hand over everything you buy at the family dollar store on the corner, because I need it.
They will send you packing out into the cold or heat with everything you have on your back or your bags or suitcases, and if you don't make the exit curfew, which is usually around dawn, and lug that stuff around with you all day, well, they will just help themselves to your belongings and claim they threw it out and the police took it away. And you have absolutely no legal recourse at all to prevent this from happening.
The underlings are also in charge of bus passes. Good luck with that one, even if one has been approved for you, they will take it for themselves, deny they got the memo approving the pass, then accuse you of lying about getting the bus pass. Force you to change your clothes if they think your pants are too tight, and to most of these people, everybody's pants are too tight because the underlings sit around all day confiscating and eating all of those treats from the family dollar.
Don't ever talk back to them. They will call the police and say you have battered them. Then they will go into your room while you are being carted off to jail, and take all of your contraband.
Do what they say, never mind the foam at the mouth as they break into uncontrollable screaming about the banana somebody managed to slide by them last night, you will find yourself right back squatting under that tree.
Ditto if you refuse any sexual advances.
Ditto if you report any of this to a...'higher-up' person.
Companionship, Understanding ears and nods of the head from other street puppies are important, but you need to know, that you will be in the company of people who seem to have been suckled by wolves.
You may be an anomoly. A blip on on the Homeless Nation screen just sailing through on your way home.
Most of your companions in the shelter will be die-hard, seasoned street people who are looking at you with such understanding eyes and ears because they want to know when you will fall asleep and it will be prudent to take everything you have brought with you.
These are not comrades at arms. They will twist your head, twist your arm, and twist your soul if you are weak enough to dumb yourself down enough to be able to communicate with them in any meaningful way.
And they don't care about your story. They are interested in you for one thing. Their motto is, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine." And they are so skilled and charming, they can get away with giving you the shirt off your own back.
Now that we've gone through many of the advantages, let's see about the disadvantages of shelter living.
The main disadvantage of shelter living is that you may be off the street just long enough enough to lose your edge if you are foolish to stick around any of these places for too long.
And you need that edge to survive on the street.
If we sound too distrustful, too harsh, way too negative. It is. But in order to survive on the street, you need to be distrustful, and harsh and negative when dealing with the likes of many of the people you will encounter, be they streetpuppies, counselors and underlings at shelters or the big shots who thunk it all up and will probably serve time some day for mismanaging millions of dollars which was headed for Homeless Nation, but somehow ended up in the Cayman Islands. Or Vegas.
If you stay at any one of these shelters, it is about 80 percent likely that one early morning, you will load all of your belongings onto your back, on the way out the door, sock the underling you hate most right in the nose, and never go back. You'll get a new sleeping bag, and go back to squatting under that tree...and breathing free.
It happens.
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