COUNTDOWN TO SCOTUS

“Homeless people want to be homeless.” “Why don’t they just go to a shelter?” “If they really wanted to be off the streets, they could.”

We hear these comments every day, from people who have no experience with unhoused folks and from people who should know better. There is a common perception that there are plenty of shelters out there and if homeless people wanted to be inside they could be, so they must like living in tents in the park or sleeping in boxes under the bridge.

Common sense would indicate that perhaps there is some reason other than wanting to sleep outside that would force these tens of thousands of people to be sleeping outside, but common sense isn’t common when dealing with human beings we have been socialized not to care for.

The biggest myth is that there are enough shelter beds for everyone. That's simply not true. In Grants Pass, the villain in our story, at the same time that they were working to make life as difficult as possible for the unhoused members of their community, they were also doing everything they could to stop the construction of shelters and affordable housing. This is true pretty much everywhere in the country. Everyone wants unhoused people off the streets, but no one wants them living in their neighborhoods.

Last year I attended a big gala for a prominent homeless services organization in Los Angeles. Hundreds of people attended. Food trucks provided free food. The silent auction included some extremely expensive prizes. The host was a super A list celebrity. As everyone wined and dined and congratulated themselves, the director of the organization went on stage and celebrated that this gala would help fund 250 beds that would be open in 5-7 years. There are over 40,000 people sleeping on the streets of LA right now. The audience applauded. I got nauseous and had to go home. But the reality is, that is actually a lofty goal in most parts of the country. It is very expensive and very difficult to get affordable housing built anywhere, much less to fight the NIMBYS who will burn down their own houses before they allow a shelter to be built within ten square miles.

So, no, there are not enough shelter beds to go around.

However, even in the shelters that do exist, there are a lot of reasons that they just do not work for everyone. So lets talk about shelters and the barriers that exist within them.

Homeless shelters generally fit one of three categories: no barrier, low barrier, and high barrier.

No barrier shelters sound like their name. Usually emergency shelters in the case of inclement weather or for extremely short term use, no barrier shelters have no expectations or requirements of their guests. Need a bed? Great, come in. These shelters are often congregate or semi-congregate shelters. They don’t get a private room or a lock on the door, but either a bunch of cots in a large space or maybe a few partitions or a room that a few families share. These shelters are usually only open during a period of inclement weather, a pandemic, or some other situation in which there is an immediate need to get people indoors.

Low barrier shelters have minimum expectations or requirements for their guests. There is usually no sobriety or abstinence requirement. The shelters are centered on harm reduction and survival. They may or may not require ID, or may allow someone in with an ID but require that they provide one within a certain deadline. If there are rules, the guest is usually not kicked out for breaking the less serious ones. The guests are also allowed to come and go as they please without the requirement of a pass or the threat of being locked out after curfew.

High barrier shelters are the exact opposite of the first two. They require tenants to be sober or abstaining when they check in and to remain that way during their stay. They almost always require ID. They have work requirements and usually a religious requirement like attending weekly services and, sometimes, professing to be of the faith of the shelter. They usually need day passes to be allowed to leave and come back, they can only leave during the day, and they have a strict curfew. Their rooms are often inspected. They have case managers and must follow case plans and meet their goals to stay in the shelter. As soon as they break a rule, they are kicked out. A good percentage of shelters are high barrier, and, as you can imagine, they are not popular with adults who want some autonomy and control over their lives.

I once drove a man to the DMV to get his ID. As we were heading back, I asked him where he wanted me to drop him off. He said the local McDonald’s, he didn’t want to waste his day pass and go back to the shelter early, he didn’t know when he would be able to get back out again.

So when someone looks at you and says “Homeless people want to live on the streets, or else they’d just go to a shelter”, maybe this little primer will help you educate them.

Help us fight back with IDs for all

Hoping SCOTUS knows about high barrier shelters,

Kat