The day I finally got all the ever-changing paperwork for transitional housing, I was "sent down" to a brand new shiny shelter, where I am enduring a replay of my intake at the assessment shelter. Rather than a few weeks, it's going to take at least three months to get my ass out of there. Why? They're slow? There is no one heading the Housing "force"?
And, for a secular shelter, there's an awful lot of Jesus being brought in by outside groups. In fact, I was told to be very quiet about my not being Christian.
I’ve been in the “new” shelter for about a month now, and things here work very slowly here. Like they’re in no rush to get you into housing (Week 3 of Social Worker will be to photocopy my passport and SS#, last week, my PyschoSocial, week before, GETTING TO KNOW YOU, GETTING TO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT YOU…). To add to the insult, I was actually punished for I don’t know what, by being transferred here instead of to the transitional housing. Even the evening case manger was shocked I was being “sent down” She asked if I had ‘broken curfew’ (I had not.) So here I am, I have a lovely Park Avenue address, starting the whole fucking process over again, and 64 roommates with varying degrees of mental illness from none to “holy shit! take your meds”.
There is a down side to being in a shelter: You get comfortable. No rent, no board, no worries about money for laundry, the beds are comfortable. No pressure to get even a part-time job if you aren’t already working, like a few of us there. It’s a trap for truly lazy people. I realized the “trap” when I first referred to the shelter as “home”.
So, here it is, August 22, 2011 and in the intervening weeks, there have been several verbal altercations and one actual physical confrontation between two women, one who was baiting the other who is a belligerent drunk. fist flew, they hit the ground, and the caseworker just stood there observing as we pulled the women apart and held them back.
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Part 2
Part 3