Shelters - good or bad??

Dear all,

I have posted on the website before and got some absolutely excellent advice and answers to my questions so I am hoping for some more help! :D

I am writing my university dissertation about societies that homeless people form, focussing on the situation in Japan. However, I am also interested in shelters that the government provides and if you think these are a positive or a negative thing? :confused:

I volunteered in a shelter in Japan and the men were not happy to be there. They did not like living with strangers and the shelter was far away from town, making it difficult and expensive to visit friends and go for job interviews.:mad:

Also, I hear that in the UK shelters are often in bad areas and risking violence on the way to a shelter is often more dangerous than sleeping on the streets. :mad:

I have heard many negative things about shelters in the UK, including there being too few of them and also the problem of it being only temporary and difficult to get into a shelter for a night.:mad:

Does anyone have any ideas?:)

I would be very grateful for some ideas!

Thank you for reading,

Vanessa

your best bet is to go to your local shelter and interview people, or go online to shelter.org and other such sites and send emails to the staff there.
they r mostly alwaz happy 2 talk. also first hand research on a dissertation is good 4 grades. its alwaz good to hear from both rough sleeper and staff!

Hello Vanessa,:)

Please note tera; :)

Go to a hostel and talk to the staff ... and they will tell you how difficult the clients are.

Go to a hostel and talk to the clients ... and they will tell you how difficult the staff are.

Talk to the streeties about hostels ... and they will tell you about how difficult the staff and clients are.

Please note: I refer here to hostels .. ( As in institutions.)

Go and talk with outreach workers ... and they will tell you how difficult the streeties can be.

Go and talk (again) with the streeties ... and they will tell you how difficult the outreach workers can be.

Talk to those within the homeless industry ... and they will tell you how difficult it all is.

To answer your question:

Night shelters are nearly always run by churches and staffed by volunteer's, I do not think you will find much valid reason for complaint against these places..... :confused: ? ... Simple really ...:)

....yeah tom, i know ex what u mean! it is like that, however in dis is good for grades to look like youve reasched it from every pos angle.

vanessa.....tom just gav u an amazing essay plan there, +u just need 2 get +way all opinions and draw your own. quotes well unless there in govermnet stuff u probly wont get alot of good ones in books for this. so find out about streets mags ask tom for link on londons 1. im sure he wont mind his a good person.
cambridges 1 is willowwalker.org.uk, ....good luck i know what a pain in the behind these papers are...lol......hope your disertation tutor's good, juans (my bf) tutor turned up drunk for most of his sessions and mine, she went on a 3 week hol 3 weeks b4 the deadline....lol...........!!!

ooooooooooooooooooooo ask domnic 4 ref material im sure he'l know loads stuff you could read .................................................. .........!

Shelters are the cheap and wrong option imo.

If the end game for homeless people is that one day they will be living in a unit or a house, why do they need to learn how to / go through living in an institution amongst sometimes 100's of other homeless people? It's just another ordeal. Shelter life prepares you for prison (a similar environment), it doesn't prepare you for regular life imo.

Even when you aren't in a bad way, but live in a community, say with several or more people. That isn't real, it's not real life, it's something else that takes an entirely different set of skills to survive and make the best of.

Instead of just warehousing houseless people in the cheap option of shelters, we should be more about what they actually need and want. A warm bed for the night and thats it is not what they need and given the shelter environment often not what they want either.

Small group homes (5 residents max) for those who need real help with the transition would be the maximum I'd agree to (we run them) but ideally share accommodation or independant living in a unit straight up, depending on the person's needs and wants.

The only way you could get me to agree on shelters is places where there is extreme weather and that country couldn't afford to provide proper services.

The reason why places like the UK and US opt to provide shelters is that it's the cheap ass we don't get it option. That is all they really know to do. Same in Australia. So long as people have a roof over their head the service providers think problem solvered. Beyond that they can only blame the client and say any other problems they have are focused on the individual.

I agree with Tom, both workers and clients piss eachother off alot. Both sides let themselves down in many ways and because it's real life consequences kind of stuff involved it will always be a disfunctional relationship. I just wish the good workers would stay in the game longer.

My only P.S. on this post is that I know a lot of people who work in shelters, they are great people and I respect the work they do. They aren't in a position like me to decide what services an organisation provides and how, they are just in there doing their best. I've also met plenty of crap workers in shelters also, so don't think this is a blanket defense of workers. As for volunteers, they are only as good as they are trained, lead and supported. If you are homeless and interact with volunteers, please go ahead and add to their training.

Thanks Tera, Tom and Dominic for your replies!

I have to admit that I was surprised to read positive aspects on shelters, but really the only positive idea that came up was the staff. I also can only come up with negatives for the idea of shelters. In particular, although shelters eliminate the problem of finding somewhere to sleep for the night, it does not help homeless people with much else. If shelters are a good idea, then why are homeless people still on the streets?

First of all, there are not sufficient numbers of shelters and in particular, single homeless males find it difficult to get into sheltered accommodation. Usually they can only stay for a relatively short period of time, approximately three months. If they have not found suitable alternative arrangements by that time they are thrown back onto the streets. These homeless people are vulnerable and need long-term solutions, not just a roof over their heads for a couple of weeks. Some of these people have been homeless for many years and do not know how to go about looking for a job and sometimes lack the necessary skills needed for employment purposes. It is not enough to just give them a room, they need help to sort out the rest of their lives too.

Shelters for the homeless are often in dangerous areas, and so the risk of violence on the way to a shelter is often more hazardous than actually sleeping on the streets. Also, if you are not sure whether there will be a space for you that evening, it is often advisable to stay where you are and not risk going to unknown areas. The shelters are also often far out of town, making it difficult and expensive for the people to go into town to visit friends or to go for job interviews. However, we have to bear in mind the lack of housing available and the property expense. Also, the further away from civilisation homeless people are placed, the less they can be seen, so this is another way of pushing the homeless problem out of the public eye, after all ‘out of sight is out of mind’. In a shelter where I worked, there were volunteers who would visit everyday and the residents would have weekly meetings in which they would have to discuss what efforts they had made for finding jobs and re-entering society. The residents disliked this intrusion into their lives immensely, as they had to answer to people they did not know, including telling these people all sorts of details regarding their private lives. Of course, the volunteers are only trying to help, but homeless people are entitled to a private life.

This research is all part of my dissertation that argues for homeless people forming their own societies, or living in groups, instead of answering to the government, who really do not seem to know how to go about addressing the problem. I find it interesting that Dominic is also very anti-shelters. It feels like shelters actually worsen the problem and do not help in any way to combat the situation.

I am really interested to hear what you all think, so do reply if you have any views, and thanks very much for reading,

Vanessa :)

I once read an article on what I would call social dispersion. The earth was peopled according to the willfullness of aggression. The less aggressive would go into less friendly climes to avoid the aggressive. Many homeless will avoid homeless services due to interaction with more aggressive individuals. Something to think about.

Hi Vanessa,
Hmmm Shelters...... Well I like Dominic's description "human warehouses". I've stayed in 2 Homeless shelters here in Brisbane and whilst I believe they have their place and serve the purpose of providing a bed, they do not address the issues of why that person is there needing a bed. Shelters tend to provide a bed, maybe a meal and little else. The support network just isn't there, it's too difficult given resident numbers and turnovers. Even the most caring workers will get frustrated with attempting to steer people in the right direction only to find the person dissappear or fall back to old habits etc.

I have also participated in a SAAP program which I believe is the model organisations should be looking to for ideas. It was a house which provided accomodation for 4 men at a time. The house basically operated like a share house with residents responsible for cooking and cleaning etc. There was a weekly food delivery that provided for 7 nights meals all included in a weekly rent. There was a case worker who visited the house every morning delivering fresh bread and checking on the welfare of the occupants. There was a no tolerance policy to alcohol and drugs and a nightly curfew that some residents found to hard to follow but the rules were the same for everyone and at least you knew where you stood.

The program was linked to the uniting church who together with the dept of housing ran 2 single men houses, a single womens house and around 15 family homes. Basically the best part of the program was the support offered. The case worker was your link to help for anything be it help with addictions, family problems, marital issues or even finding employment. This program provided more than a bed, more than a meal, it provided the opportunity to deal with your issues and move on. The only down side to this was that not everyone is in the right place in their life to accept the help. You can be offered all the help, guidance etc in the world but if you're not ready to accept the help it will be of no use. It's not as easy as gee this is my opportunity to get out of this hole, if you are dealing with addictions, trauma etc it can take a lot to get you to a place where you can benefit from the help on offer.

Many homeless will avoid homeless services due to interaction with more aggressive individuals. Something to think about.


This one hits the nail on the head in many instances gyrovagi ... Violence and bullying in these places is common.
Also, being pressurised by dealers to buy drugs is another common complaint.( I refer here to state funded shelters.)

The number of street people that echo this comment. This may not be the prime reason, or indeed the only reason that people will not go into shelters but it is certainly an issue with many streeties.

Also Vanessa, you are partially correct in stating that some shelters or hostels are located to far out of reach of the street homeless .. Hostels do not (in most cases) provide full board, that means the residents need to be central to be near the soup runs, and as travel on public transport is expensive ..' going in '.. for many is not an option.