Well, you as Catholics could open your own shelter. Do you expect someone else to do it for you according to your specifications?
I guess I don’t understand what you’re saying here
Catholic organizations are one of the largest providers of homeless shelters in the US, and, yes, there are rules at these shelters.
I have worked for a long time for the capuchin soup in Detroit, run by catholic friars.
Here’s a bit of what they do:
2,000 hot meals are frequently served each day at our
two locations
About 300,000 pounds of food distributed per month to families
About 30,000 articles of clothing given to clients per month
More than 500 pieces of furniture and appliances given to families each month
Showers and a change of clothing for up to 30 homeless and poorly housed persons per day
Jefferson House, a substance abuse treatment program servicing up to 12 indigent men
A children’s library and art therapy studio serving up to 800 children per month
A 25,000 square foot urban farm project
(i’d like to note that the urban farm project is probably the one of the largest organic urban farms in the midwest, if not the country. We even make our own honey!)
Regarding shelter rules:
Groups of strange men should NEVER EVER EVER be bunked with groups of strange women. Would you want your daughter to be sleeping in a room with twenty men she doesn’t know? I don’t think so.
You say you’ve worked with the homeless, and I don’t doubt that, but I wonder how after working with people living in these situations that you would question the wisdom of separating the sexes? I often wish we had more ‘family’ accommodations available (there are some) so that yes, we could keep families together, but the place simply was not built for that. We try to maximize the number of people we can get in there safely and with a fair degree of comfort. I admit the solution is not perfect, but we work with what we’ve got.
As for why they are asked to leave during the day - you have to PAY people to work at the shelter during the day, not to mention the additional cost of utilities. (Many family shelters are 24 hours though). If a shelter wants to make sure it has enough money to stay open 365 NIGHTS of the year, it often needs to be closed during the day. Besides, there are other options available during the day, such as the soup kitchens which are often adjacent or at least nearby. Also, some of these people DO have jobs (not enough to make rent from their pay on them, but that’s another thread) so they have someplace they need to be during the day anyway, and again, if a shelter is going to help as many people it can with their limited dollars, cutting back on daytime hours makes alot of sense, since you are servicing fewer people during that time.
Also, it’s not healthy in my experience for people to stay at the shelter all day. During extreme cold and extreme heat these shetlers often stay open 24 hours a day, but have you ever hung around with the same 20 people, never leaving their presence for three consecutive days? Oh yeah, and the showers aren’t necessarily in the same building. It’s not pleasant, for anybody.
I would agree that the poor, and particularly the homeless, are treated shabbily, if not downright inhumanely. (Jsut recently there was an article in the paper about how a couple of homeless men were beaten to death by kids - literally, 13 year olds with baseball bats. It’s disgusting!) I would argue, however, that the people who treat them in such a way are generally not the same ones who are working at the homeless shelters. Some people are, yes. Some volunteers and employees are crabby, nasty and downright mean. I do not think that is what is most often the case though.
having said all that, I wish my city (Detroit) would pass stricter laws to keep people from begging on the streets. It makes people not want to come downtown, which means instead of patronizing businesses, and keeping those people who are brave enough to open anything in the city in business, their potential customers go somewhere else - some other restaurant in the suburbs because they don’t want to get bothered by six different men on their walk from their restaurant to the parking structure.
It’s so very sad.
