I remember when I was in sixth grade and I gave my shoes on a cold and snowy day to another child my size that really needed the shoes.  I walked home barefoot.  I’d like to say it wasn’t a long way home, but it kind of was.  Without shoes, six blocks is a long, long way.  My mother was livid.  I have to be honest; she had every right to be.  I, on the other hand, was just glad that there were shoes for another kid.  I had more shoes in my closet.  This girl didn’t.  Even in a small town, poverty and being from the “ wrong side of the tracks” back then was very apparent. Besides, I had on two pair of socks.  It could have been worse
     When I was in high school, I remember doing something similar.  A girl in my class came to school in a hoodie, no coat, and it was 20 degrees outside.  I racked my brain.  I was SURE I had another coat in my closet at home.  At that time, we didn’t even live three blocks from the school.  It wouldn’t kill me to RUN home and get that other coat.  I did just that.  I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, because I didn’t want to embarrass her.  The hallways after lunch were full of students headed for the first class for the afternoon. I met her at her locker as she was pulling her books out for that class and just kind of hung it on the hook in there.  She looked at me funny.  I said, “I found this.  It’s yours, isn’t it?”

     That spring, I was a huge contributor to a walkout at the high school.  A good half of the school walked out in protest over changes that were being made where we knew that the administrators were making that weren’t an advantage to the students in any way.  In fact, they put us all at a disadvantage as far as our ability to perform well was concerned.  In that day and age, that was a big deal.  Parents wanted students to perform.  Students like me, way beyond Gifted and Talented programs and desperate for time to study on our own with teachers who understood us, were given no chance with these changes.  I can’t say that we were able to advance much in the way of change at that time, hence my determination to stay out of the politically appropriate National Honor Society, but we made a statement.  I continued in that way well into college.
     The work I did overseas was not at all the same, but the point was similar.  This had nothing much to do with a decline in the economy itself, but it was devastating nonetheless, thanks to war and strife, which were things the Balkans, where I was, were well-noted for.  Any way you look at it, people all over the world needed each other more so than they need their respective governments.  This is an issue still today all over the globe, but more pointed, more covered, and still running rampant.

The problem we have today has a great deal to do with the advancement of technology, too.  In the 1930s, we helped each other.  In the 1950s, we helped each other maybe a little less.  In the 1970s, we helped each other a little less than that.  In the 1990s, “Katie, bar the door” – we were careening toward selfishness in hardcore ways.  In the 2010s First World countries find themselves, almost without an exception, living in a “Me First” world.  As society in these First World countries continue, they’ve gotten worse both in their so-called help for those who need that help and also in the generations of poor who have come, through generational habit to rely on the “haves”, so they can continue in their habits in their “have-not” behaviors.   

Until my retirement, I lived in the center of a large homeless and poverty-stricken area in eastern Iowa.  I ran a homeless shelter for single women and families within the auspices of an almost-perfect ministry here.  What made it so close to perfect?   The government did not have a finger in the pie, so to speak.  Unlike another local shelter who not only was run by a particular church but also government funds, they couldn’t tell us we had to take Christ out of the mix.  He and God are very much a part of the mix, as could be seen in a good chunk of the people we tried to help. 

These days, it’s a very noticeable contradiction to me that everyone is screaming “THE U.S. IS GOD’S COUNTRY!” when it clearly isn’t. The U.S. runs rampant with several religious ideologies, many of them as recent as last year, but that’s not Christ’s way, that’s man’s manipulation.  What happened to the Bible’s take on caring for the homeless and those at the poverty level?  Obviously the government doesn’t care anymore.  The funds dwindle in programs originally designed to help those in need.  They call that making themselves financially sound.  We won’t go into that, but it’s clear where the US government’s priorities lie.  As of this date, they’ve cut $5 billion to the food stamps program nationwide while they’ve added over $80 billion in defense funding, not for jobs, but for parts and equipment.  To me, that’s a problem.  Their concept is “Make war, not love (for their fellow man.)”

I used to be in that camp until the day I was struck down with homelessness, myself.  It’s true that we are, for the most part, one paycheck away from being homeless.  We have had many stock market crashes, and for people like me, they haven’t affected me, but when someone yanks any funds you’ve ever had, takes the bank account, and walks away leaving you holding the bag, you find yourself on a friend’s couch, and then in a homeless shelter.  From there, you put one foot in front of the other.  When a friend asks if you want a job that pays well or a job that will fulfill you in other ways, sometimes you can’t say, “Both,” because such a thing is uncommonly rare.  Besides that, for me to feel complete and whole, it needs to come from the inside.  At the time, what came from the inside was the work I was doing preparing to operate a homeless shelter for mothers and children.  Holy cow, did that take some mental preparation, as well as flying by the seat of one’s pants through the first year.

I was offered a job with a university that would have paid 10 times what I was making per month running this shelter.  It had no appeal.  Why?  I’d have to leave what I was doing, and in my soul, there would have been a massive hole.  Remarkably, I have learned a great deal outside of working with these moms and their kids.  I’ve learned how to budget, which especially comes with making very little; I’ve learned how government assistance works for the poor (because I am  considered poor by US standards); and I’ve learned that no matter how hard you try, you are considered the scum of the earth by those “up the hill”.  It doesn’t matter what your IQ has proven to be or how many actual college degrees you have.  There’s no way to combat this, so you carry on with a smile on your face, primarily because you are loved by others, as well as by God, and what you are doing fills you in ways you could never have been filled by other things in your past life, and in your life now.

They call that The Holy Spirit, I do believe.

This story revolves around a single fictional character, not just me, because I know many who have followed the same path.  It is comprised of the plethora of intelligence, street smarts, college degrees, and plain old chutzpa of so many.  It is an amalgamation of a group of us in one person.  We all have dealt with the issues and done our best to help.  Failures and successes abound.

I can’t help but be who I am.  I can’t help it if the group of us just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.  And I can’t help it if the local government wants us shut down so that they can ignore the obvious issue. 

I can help that people around me know, and this is the best way to set it out there.

While my family and friends have been tremendous, the reason I started this book in the first place was because of C. Jason Bilbrey, author of The Good Soldier, Berserker and Black Water so far.  He was one of the staff at Humility of Mary when I was there, and we’ve stayed as connected as possible since that time.

**********

This building is old. It has seen many lives in its 120 years. I had gone to the library and began looking up the district and the uses of this particular building over the decades.  This entire street was once part of the German immigrants’ manufacturing district, and this building started its journey as a German cigar manufacturing plant.  It has lived many lives and has been converted one way or another so many times over the past century, it’s difficult to believe it’s still recognizable compared to the few other buildings still standing in this neighborhood with its same original style.  The ground floor was for business purposes, while in its first 50 or 60 years it housed the apartments of the various families who had owned those businesses upstairs.  It’s been a mortuary, too, as well as the original home in this area for the well-known local Salvation Army, and last known as the home of an ecumenical church with powerful spiritual influence with the poverty-stricken and homeless. 

It was through this church that this non-profit organization came into being more than a decade ago, and four years ago it began to serve the needs of single mothers with children with my help.  Two years on, with the influx of Chicago-area refugees, the need became greater for the men, and so the ministry opened up a single men’s program-based homeless shelter year-round.  After, that, the city, in its infinite wisdom, passed a city-wide moratorium on any new homeless shelters or the building and/or acquisition of better facilities for existing shelters.  Shame on the city leaders for their short-sightedness, I thought.

The organization already served the meal site and grocery needs of these same people, supported almost exclusively by locals and in the case of the food site, by phenomenal donations from the regional employee-owned grocery store and some local restaurants.  Many who are habitually homeless knew it as their refuge against freezing to death in the winter time when it opened its doors at night as a winter shelter.  Anyone and everyone were taken in whether or not they had background issues.  We never knew about them.  We didn’t check, even though the “word on the streets” about some was unbelievable and a little bit scary.  It continued each year, and the charitable organization had people who called annually to see if it was going to open early.  Because of funding issues, it hadn’t.  Essentially, the overflow shelter always flew by the seat of its pants for four and a half months.

The advent of the family shelter was a different story for me.  We checked backgrounds.  Things we didn’t want around other mothers and kids were any case of assault, physical abuse, and child abuse or child endangerment.  It’s often bad enough just to be abandoned on the street with your children.  We didn’t need to add issues that weren’t occurring in the “average”, so to speak, single parent homeless household.  We weren’t always lucky enough to weed them all out, but a huge effort was made in that direction.

I was under the misconception when I first started that my many degrees played more than a minimal role in undertaking this job.  I was wrong.  It wasn’t the degrees.  It was the degree of compassion that the executive director saw in me.  It was all well and good to have all that parchment, but none of it really did much to help me with these women and children, except the degree in social work that I received while I was working here.  Even that had entailed only the rudimentary things I really already knew after the 3 years of working at this with a great deal of outside friendships and research.  I found myself counting on those more than the statewide and national classwork that was required in completing that degree.  Not everyone knows everything that works everywhere.  It didn’t take me long to find that out, but still, the degree and my statewide education would at least get me in the door other places, even if they didn’t really address the issues on a local level.

We were able to house, in the beginning at least 9 or 10 families in our shelter, which – with the layout of this building – included the entire second floor and included at the time both apartments on that floor.  That first winter, around Christmas time, we housed 11 families, actually, with as many as 39 children.  We were able to double up two families because they knew each other on good terms. It was shocking to see what I considered a large number of families.  To this day, I am thankful volunteers were here almost day and night to help with the “madhouse”. 

I slept very little then.  Essentially I was on my own.  I thought it was a desperate situation, and I didn’t think I could handle it.  The mothers were far and away worse than anyone could ever think the children would be.  They were demanding divas with few exceptions.  It took a long time for me to understand what was, for most of them, a way of life, especially among the Chicago immigrants.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       **********                                                                                                                                                                                         
Why is this a way of life for them?

With individual exceptions, the general populace down here has expected, generation after generation that the government will take care of them no matter what they do.  What Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to do during the 1930s backfired on him to a certain degree, but only because government entities since have not been anywhere near as farsighted as his government was at that time.

The last few government shifts have evolved into considering obesity from overeating as a disability.  Take that to any hearing at the Social Security office, and you’re almost guaranteed – depending on your weight – a certain amount in disability.  The government thinks this is temporary while the people who acquire that “disability” check see it as permanent.  The number of men and women in particular who have used that for an excuse is greater than I ever imagined.  Some have even used this “disability” to acquire electric wheelchairs unnecessarily.  The people who use this method go out of their way to make it as permanent as they can.  Without realizing it, these same people create their own health problems, including heart disease, diabetes and various other weight-related illnesses which then become legitimate reasons to claim disability.

We, as a community, allow this.  We are enablers, all of us.  We don’t make these men and women account for themselves.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Gone are the days when those who needed real help will get the help they need.  Instead, we went through a period of women having babies just to get more money from the government, and now they are limited to subsidy for three children.  For many, that is too many even yet.  No one works with what they have, nor do they have any sort of work ethic.   Their goal is to find loopholes in the law.  They spend day and night finding a way to worm their way into the government budget.

We have a large population of those who have dropped through the cracks with their levels of mental illness.  What I have seen are people who need a “keeper” so that they stay on their medications.  There is no failsafe for these people.  There is no mental facility that will take care of them.  No institution will, in a sense, “institutionalize” these men and women.  They account for half of our homeless population here.  They are homeless, not by real choice, but by the choice they think they have.

The influx of homeless veterans here has greatly increased, despite the advent of VALOR programs and other veterans programs in this area.  Why?  Most of it is because they have developed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome since leaving the military.  This is a horrific issue that has become worse over just the past few years. 

I feel very sad for these people.  This is how they have been raised every generation at least since 1950.  Their philosophy is, “Well, the government will take care of us.”  And they’ve passed that along to their children and grandchildren.

This is not to blame the “softening”, so to speak, of each generation, but it does account for part of the loss of work ethic.  Work ethic doesn’t happen just because you are of one nationality or the other (e.g., German work ethic).  Work ethic is ingrained in each generation by watching and listening to the generation before them.  Why does this seem recent?  Because these are the generations, since 1936, that have had a safety net.  Each generation has been less and less grateful and more and more expectant that this safety net will be there, and for this each generation has determined based on the previous generation’s reaction to it, that the safety net MUST be there, and therefore they don’t have to do anything to receive it.

The accountability is among the people.  When the people feel there is no need for accountability, then the government passes legislation that follows this path.  The will of the people is that the government pays for some of their living expenses, and they pay for the rest.  As time has gone on, it has become more and more that the government pays for their living expenses – and their desires moreso than their real needs.  It’s not because the Baby Boomer population, those born between 1949 and 1964, are growing older and need more, but that everyone wants more. 

I’ve spent a number of years helping the homeless in an emergency shelter situation.  It’s been frustrating, but at the same time quite fulfilling.  As I have gotten older, I’ve seen that the situation has been much harder for women 55 and older.  Generally speaking, we’ve had an increase of these women over time.  Unless they have a government-approved disability, they have zero income.  Even though employers don’t say this, the reason that a lot of women have been let go has been because of their age and declining speed. This means one thing:  They are unhirable.   This doesn’t mean they can’t work, it just means that companies in general won’t hire them.  Companies don’t see the important things like housing and sustenance.  They see only that some old fart is eating up their profits in labor longevity and not putting out what some 20-year-old can do for them at half the price.  Money talks while skills, talent and ability walk.  And gone are the days of kids taking in their parents or old maiden aunts, etc.  It just doesn’t happen.  Where are these poor ladies supposed to go?

I have an idea.  And I think I can make this work if I just had some help with this:

In Davenport, we have two-year transitional housing for single moms and their kids.  We have transitional housing for veterans.  We have transitional housing for so many types – except these poor women who really need the help and which could be accommodated in a group cooperative living situation.  The “Boomer” generation is getting old, and we’ve known this was coming for YEARS.  We also knew it was the women who were going to suffer the most.

This is what I want to start.  This is something that can be done via the Catholic Worker Movement, something to which I do belong, or even through independent investors and volunteers.  So I’m on a search –

1.  For a house
2.  For people to help repair and make livable said house.
3.  A way beyond my own retirement funds to help pay the taxes and bills required.
4.  Help providing access in one location for these women to improve their skills and get a leg up.

Everything else can be self-sufficient, and I do know how to run a place like that.  (Praise God for blessing me with organizational skills!)

I need all the help I can get, and I’m counting on readers to help me find that help, whether it’s from them personally or through others they know.

Davenport needs this.  Badly.

Homelessness doesn’t take a holiday. 

Also, I’ve made some repairs, such as sealing the hole in the linen closet door that used to have a deadbolt for some very odd reason.  I’ve cleaned staff cabinets so that we can find things.  I’ve done a little preparation for the emergency overflow which starts December 1st – maybe before, depending on the weather.

In that time, we have exited one resident I couldn’t wait to see leave here.  She was 29 going on 2.  What a whiner!  Her insect phobia was so bad, she flipped out over a single fruit fly.  It was ridiculous.  She had so little respect for others she would flip on the overhead light six or seven times a night, exclaim “Ew! Ew! Ew!” over nothing on a constant basis, stole a night light out of the bathroom (We keep them on for safety purposes at night.) and lit up her entire shared room with it, and was just a general annoyance breaking rules regularly.  We had nicknamed her the Princess.  She’s lucky I didn’t buy a bag of dried peas and put one under her mattress.  She was that bad.  She finally took one too many nights out as well as breaking rules and showing such general disrespect for other residents and for the staff.  I don’t know how she survives in the outside world.  There are bugs out there!

     Today, though, I am forced to exit a precious, precious resident for whom we had already given an extension based on her needs.  She had gone to the doctor to have a procedure done, only to go directly into emergency heart surgery that she thought she had time to schedule as non-emergency at a much later date.  Her social worker said that she is in ICU waiting for a long-term facility opening.  No one expected that.  I have been in tears.  I hate to have her leave us like this, but I know she’s in better hands right now.  We adored her here.

Real life is amazing.

I’ve really hit my limit on a lot of things, and this summer’s residents have been a bit of that.  I love helping people and seeing them reach their goals.  Those ladies are broken women who just need a hand.  We give them that hand, and they run with it. On their own, in fact.  The few we’ve been able to help like that have just had their optimism and ambitious drive suppressed a little.

I don’t love trying to work with those who expect us to a) give them a place to stay and b) do everything for them and c) extend that stay as long as they darn well feel like staying.  What has been the proof over the last three years has been that it has come primarily from the singles we ended up with starting two years ago.  This has not been a good thing for us, and I’m not sure how to make it better.  It amazes me when I hear, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” so often.  They most certainly can. We are trying very hard to help these single women.  I hear “I can’t”, and it tells me right away that they think they should be here for months and not do a thing, if we were to let it happen.

Unless they’re following all the rules and expectations, there is no tangible reason to give them an extension, and if their disregard for the rules is blatant enough, they don’t even get the original 30 day limit.  Following the program is essential and if they can’t simply go and see our service coordinator once in the first week, we just don’t see a reason to let them hang out without making an effort to help themselves.  We read the rules to them, and they receive a copy to read later or have someone read to them.

The families?  Well, I was reading through exit assessments from the last three years, and it is clear that, for the most part, single moms care.  They care the most about their children and getting them into a much more stable situation.  They care about keeping their children.  I rarely have seen anyone who apparently had children because they couldn’t control themselves, or they thought that it would net them more money to have children.   Our success stories here have been absolutely phenomenal.   I will have to say, though, that those single mothers who fell through the cracks didn’t get that way without contributing to their problems themselves.   We have definitely seen children who would be better off with foster parents and in the care of the state.  It breaks my heart.

All in all, I love what I do.  I can’t even really call it a job.  It’s helping people without any sort of agenda for me.  I don’t need a raise.  I have that enough in the uplifting feeling I get from helping others.

I love having families here.  Although it was hard on me physically (I’m old), I loved the days we had as many as 40 kids here at one time.  All night, of course.  Every night.  Seven days a week.

I felt really sorry for one of our four year olds this morning.  The poor little girl made it all the way to the bathroom and before she could sit down, she went all over the purple rug in front of the stool, not to mention her socks.

She cried, she screamed, she yelled at her mother that she had tried.  She woke everyone in the shelter, and I do mean everyone.  But you can’t fault that little girl.  She’s a terrible handful, anyway, and that’s because she’s too smart for her chronological age and body to handle.

I have had exposure to that kind of high-level intelligence in a child that stretch far back to when my middle child, now 31, was that age, so I know.  Today she has a fantastic job that netted her three figures right out of college with her degree.  That right there tells the result of her inborn determination and her fabulous ability to channel her energy the right way. In a great many ways, it didn’t change her stubbornness or “I will do it my way” behavior her laid-back and loving husband experiences daily.  She grew into knowing when to use it and when it’s not exactly PC.

It’s hard not to outright love a child like this little girl without overtly showing it.  Still, I understand her in a way she needs to be understood and probably isn’t.

All kinds of personalities show up in a shelter.  It helps to understand all of them, and there is no way to do that unless you have put in the time, rather than textbook education.

Books don’t tell you everything.

As it would appear, I didn’t have to give the written warning to the resident.   (I just made sure it was in her file.)  That would mean having to put up with the nonsense for several more days.  Nobody needs that, especially the single mom.

Instead, we found out that she had used all of her nights out, and then another one.  All  five of them were no-call, no-show.  They were no only not pre-approved, there were too many in her 30 day period.

She has no reason to be here.  Rules are important here to everyone.  It’s how we keep order in this small space, keep costs down, and  are able to help residents.  It’s hard to help those who fake a need and they won’t cooperate in order to fill that need.

I was fine this morning until the one complainer amongst our residents came in the kitchen and complained to me about not just her life, but the other people in her room.

One in particular is the family that happens to be in the same room because they were in a desperate situation and we had room.  One of the two year olds has night terrors.  She goes back to sleep by comforting herself with sticking two fingers in her mouth and moaning herself back to sleep.

The single woman, who happens to make loggers jealous sawing logs as loud as she does, had the audacity to complain about the child waking up around 2:30.  What I found out from others later is that she said, “Why can’t you shut her the fuck up?”  Red flags on rules violations abound on this:  #1.  Respect  #2.  Verbal abuse and #3.  Foul language.

And especially because she knew the child had night terrors.

It stops.  Her exit date is Tuesday basically because she just hasn’t made progress at all, but I’m not going to tolerate this type of bad behavior in an adult even that long.  I gave her a board-approved written warning that if I ever hear from anyone that this behavior of hers has continued, she’s out immediately.

US Federal guidelines from 2013 show that a single person is considered at poverty level at an annual income of $11,490. My annual income is now at 50% of that level.

I used to make close to 400% ($45,960) of the poverty level, but that just got me in trouble.   The more money you have, the more materialistic you become…and really?  The most First World, denying the alternative even exists.

These days, I’m okay with my pre-retirement income. I do well enough, all things considered, and I’ve found a way to save a few bucks, as well. I’m not materialistic, and I really don’t need “things” at all.

But what I am most proud of is that I don’t take any food stamps at all. I still eat well, and I don’t need government assistance to do this.

I am grateful, however, for the medical assistance from Medicaid, although it’s entirely possible that, with healthcare for the poor going the way it is, it could kill me, but what the heck.   I’m old.  A lot of people would just as soon I didn’t make it, anyway.

Be that as it may, I was asked to talk about what I see down here, what people do, what they’re like, and the percentage of emotionally entitled users to people who really need the help.

I’ll get to that.  I just felt it was necessary to explain my own drastic changes and thereby presenting a little of the basis for my own perspective.

Such busy times right now at our program based shelters.  Families are in dire need, and we have too many single ladies here to make it work to take another family.  It breaks my heart.  These are hard times for everyone, but especially single moms with little kids.

On the other hand, 2 of the 4 single ladies are trying very hard. One has medical issues, but also has family members who want her to let them take care of her.    She’s very independent and strong-willed.  This is just a small transition for her, and her medical condition is obvious and clearly stressful.

The other got a job the day she got here, and is working to save her money.  She is very driven.  She is also in an AA situation and is trying VERY hard to make it right.

The other two?

One is all about “I can’t, I can’t” and isn’t really trying to do much except sleep here and complain a lot.  One thing that is required of all residents within the first week is the only real thing she has done.  This means we are required to keep her for the full 30 days of the program as long as  she abides by the other rules.  In cases of people really trying, it is sometimes very hard for them to find jobs, and equally as hard for them to find a place to live.  If you don’t try and you haven’t done anything but sit at a computer randomly filling out a few job applications for places you know aren’t hiring, there is no really effective way we are able to keep a resident here, because there is such a demand for places to stay for those who actually are trying all that they can.

The other had a reputation our upper management was not aware of prior to her entry here.  It wouldn’t have shown up on a background check.  She’s a user, and she does everything she can to play the system.  She’s very much a narcissist.  She also is here under false pretenses.  She was staying with her boyfriend at a hotel.  He did not kick her out, and there are no other problems.  She said she would be here just a couple of days, and then she started giving us all kinds of excuses why she has to stay here longer.  She won’t be able to play herself into an extension, but she does just enough to irritate us without hitting an exitable offense.  She gets money every month.  She doesn’t need to be using us the way she does.  We have 12 days to pray for her and put up with her.

The percentage of single women that we can help is very low by comparison to the families we can help, and it’s not based on room.  It’s based on desire to actually move forward and do something besides being waited on hand and foot.  There are places for singles to go but they don’t like the rules, so they don’t even bother to try to get in there.  We have soft beds, and in our kindness, we seem to be pushovers to many of them.  There are far too many who feel the world owes them rather than taking that independent stance on their own.

On this side of the river, we might have several facilities for families, but they’re all full with long, long waiting lists.  Yet out there, there are desperate families in living conditions that are not good for single moms and their little children.  They beg for a leg up.  They need the help.  They may not appear frantic, but deep down inside, while the moms are outwardly holding together for their babies, they are distressed beyond all ken.

I spend at least an hour every day praying for not just the families we have, but for the families we aren’t allowed to help because we have the singles here who could go other places.   I pray hard for the singles ladies, too. I don’t cast disparaging remarks about the singles, but I worry so much for those little kids.

I really need to get out more.  It’s not that I’m not doing what I should, but that I am here.  Sometimes I am available too much.  And a lot of our residents at the shelter over the past three years have taken serious advantage of that.  “Well, she’s always here, so why aren’t they open all the time?”  I actually have two jobs, both of which are operated out of my room.  Nobody gets the concept that it interrupts my work schedule to cater to them all the time.  I’ve been late getting other things done far too often.

Residents have a roof over their head for the night.  They are responsible for themselves the minute they leave the building – and they can’t come back in, or they shouldn’t be able to, and they wouldn’t think they had to if they dotted their “i”s and crossed their “t”s every single morning before they left.

Let me put it to you this way.  I don’t mind being here sometimes beyond my work schedule, but like every single one of them, I also have a life.  At any given point over the past few years, I’ve catered to the “what if I need something” syndrome of many who should be more organized than that.  “I forgot my medicine.”  “My baby needs her pacifier, and I forgot it upstairs.”  “I left my laundry upstairs.  I need it now.” “My cigarettes are upstairs, and I can’t make it without them.”

Best of all – “What do you MEAN I can’t stay in?? I’m TIRED.”

I’m sorry.  So am I.

I sound harsh, but I’m really not.  Where is the resident’s level of responsibility?  This is not something to which we pander – lack of self-esteem or laziness, either one.  We are not their 24-hour babysitters.  We are not their 24-hour home.   They have to learn to take care of themselves.  We are here to help, not over-accommodate or become an “entitlement” program to far too many bullies who are trying to take advantage of a good thing.

I live and breathe with the single ladies and moms who really do work hard for themselves.  I am so PROUD of them, I can’t begin to tell you.

The average for me of responsible single women to those who not only are irresponsible, but they feel entitled is 1 to 5.  We have far too many who couldn’t care less just as long as they think they can work around us.  “Oh, rules?  I didn’t know they applied to me.”  They do.  All of them.

The moms are a different story.  They are clearly driven to take care of their children.  They work hard.  They get their kids up, get them to school, go to a job if they have one and if not, they make fast tracks getting one and saving money to get them into a real home.  The average?  I would say something like 4 out of 5.  It is very rare that we don’t have mothers who care.  Sometimes their idea of caring for their children is convoluted, but we do our best to help them work in different ways, and to go and see those people within agencies (usually not state-mandated) that can and do help them tremendously.

Today, I want to cry.  At times I feel we are just so much mud under the single ladies’ feet.  This is one of those days.  The moms, on the other hand, are great success stories and have wonderful attitudes.  I try to keep them in mind and put those single ladies who are such pains on the back burner.  It’s very hard to help those who don’t want it, you know?  I just pray hard for them.

This building is old. It has seen many lives in its 120 years. This entire street was once part of the German immigrants’ manufacturing district, and this building started its journey as a German cigar manufacturing plant. It has lived many lives and has been converted one way or another so many times over the past century, it’s difficult to believe it’s still recognizable compared to the few other buildings still standing in this neighborhood with its same original style. It’s been a mortuary, too, as well as the original home in this area for the well-known local Salvation Army, and last known as the home of an ecumenical church with powerful spiritual influence with the poverty-stricken and homeless.

It is through this church that this non-profit organization came into being more than a decade ago. Three years ago we began to serve the needs of single mothers with children. The organization already served the meal site and grocery needs of these same people.

Many who are habitually homeless know it as their refuge against freezing to death in the winter time when it opened its doors at night as a winter shelter almost 20 years ago. Anyone and everyone was taken in whether or not they had background issues. We never knew about them at first. We didn’t check. It continues each year, and King’s Harvest has people who call annually to see if it’s going to open early. Because of funding issues, it doesn’t. Essentially, the overflow shelter flies by the seat of its pants.  It has grown, though, according to the percentage of homeless by accident, homeless by personal design, and homeless via government cracks in the system.  Each year the percentage of homeless men and homeless women seem to compare substantially to the national average:  44% men and 13% women.  It is for this reason that the women were moved up into the program-based women’s shelter for the season, and we began shutting down the program-based environment temporarily during those months – December through April.

The advent of the program-based family shelter was a different story when we started, and it is the same now today. We check backgrounds. Things we didn’t want around other mothers and kids were any case of assault, physical abuse, and child abuse or child endangerment. It’s often bad enough just to be abandoned on the street with your children. We don’t need to add issues that aren’t occurring in the “average”, so to speak, single parent homeless household. We were able to house at least 9, and as much as 11 families in our shelter, which – with the layout of this building – included the entire second floor of the building, and including both apartments on that floor. That first winter, around Christmas time, we housed 11, with as many as 39 children. It was shocking to see what I considered a large number of families, and I thank the volunteers who were here profusely for helping with the “madhouse”. I slept very little then. I was on my own. I thought it was a desperate situation, and I didn’t think I could handle it. The mothers were worse than the children. They were demanding divas with few exceptions. It took a long time to understand what was, for most of them, a way of life, and they didn’t understand anything else.

We have integrated the two these past two years out of love for all, and while this may limit us because of our capacities, we still do our level best to try to understand and to help.  We never stop praying for our blinded city officials to allow us a new and larger shelter, and for the funds to build such a thing when it happens.

In the past four years, I’ve been educated in the “west end” subculture down here along the river.

This is probably the start of a series about that subculture, the way the women’s and families shelter has changed, and the advent of the program based men’s shelter.

One of the most frustrating things every time the shelter opens for the overflow season is having to work with hoarders.  These are those street people seeking shelter from the cold who just don’t want to get rid of their things.  Last year we had a more open space.  Dealing with hoarders was a large problem, and at the end of the season, it took a long time to clean up after these people were gone.  This year, we are not so fortunate.  The overflow for single women is in a smaller space, and we have to follow the rules in a much more stringent manner.  It has been shocking for me and the staff just how different this is, and how much more frustrating it has become.
First of all, let me say this is not cute.  This is not artistically photogenic.  In a homeless shelter, where we have limited space and we can only accommodate 17 ladies with one tote each as it is, this is a nightmare.  One is bad enough, but four at the same time?  This is a huge problem and a massive fire hazard, especially in a 130 year old building.

We have to have some recourse for those who decline to follow the rules, and it may make me sound horrid, but “homeless” when you have family or friends in the area and/or funds coming to you at least once a month to acquire a storage unit means you don’t need to bring everything you own to our shelter with so little room.  This seems to be the case for most of the hoarders we have in here.  We were not set up to enable these conditions within people’s psyche.  Something really does have to be done.   We can’t afford what it would cost us in the long run by allowing it to continue.

They have been told verbally they have to limit their things to one tote and remove all other items.  This is why:

Hoarder #1 looks like this:

Underneath all these covers, she has a 20 gallon bag full spread out all over the bed.

She was told on the 12th she had to straighten up and get rid of these things. 

Hoarder #2’s bunk still looks like this after she has downsized several times already – and yet she brings in more things.  She’s been told she cannot keep things under the bed for fire hazard reasons.  So she makes her bed in such a way that she hides the other things she brings in.  She thinks we won’t look.
Hiding your second and third coats almost behind the bed and halfway under the pillows means they aren’t there, right?  The client is already wearing a winter coat for the day.  I’m not sure why she thinks she has to have at least two more. 

Lift the comforter, and look what you find!  ANOTHER winter coat, shopping bags full of clothes and a general mess.  Do you see how close this is to another bunk bed?

 She is wearing shoes, has another pair of shoes sitting on the ladder to the top bunk, and another pair of boots sitting behind the ladder.  Please note she cannot get the lid closed on her tote because it is stuffed full. 

Hoarder #3 is in the smallest of the three rooms.  We were barely able to fit two bunk beds in there.  We just plain don’t have room.

Her things are right in front of our storage door to the linens, blankets and pillows.  It’s a trip hazard, a fire hazard, and this one, most of all, looks like a hoarder’s room.

Hoarder #4 has had her things bagged up.

She did take one bag out, but she still has two in sight, many things still on her bed, and she still has another bag under her bed.  She apparently, like the other client, believes we won’t look.

So today the four hoarders have the opportunity to find another place for their things.  If they don’t, we will find another place for these things tomorrow.  It may mean throwing them in the dumpster.

I do have a fifth who is a confessed hoarder.  She has a storage unit, and she still carries around a shopping cart full of things.  She amazes me, but at least she doesn’t bring in all of these things.  She’s also very conscious of life around her, and it appears clearly that she prefers living on the streets.  During the winter overflow time, these are the women we expect to see.  These are the women who need a place to be in out of the cold at night.

Still, we care for them all, every single one of them.  We pray for them.  We love them.  We have respect for every single one of them.  We just have to appear to be a little tighter with some clients than the others to keep with fire codes, laws, and the rules of the shelter intact.

There is a lady who has come to the meal site for years.  She’s intelligent; she has a PhD; she watches people.  This woman is about my age and has that one small mental disability that keeps her from getting a job. If I said here what it was, it would give her away locally and strip her of privacy, so I won’t.  It doesn’t matter that she has this one issue.  It doesn’t affect her ability to discern special things about people.

One of our young ladies in the shelter has a great amount of disability, yet she has a heart of gold.  She was hurt deeply today by someone, and she came to me in tears.  It was a carryover from yesterday at the bus station, and it happened at the meal site.  I did my best to advise her what to do and gave her a big hug.  She is chronologically an adult, but she is very much a child.  I felt so bad for her.

The lady my age came up to me and said, “You have the patience of Job with that poor girl.  I watch her every day when she’s around downtown, and it breaks my heart.  All I can do is pray for her.”

That’s all any of us can do, and also do what I’ve done, which is let these people approach you, confide in you, look at you as a decent human being…

…and be that decent human being.

Christ did it.  I can do the same.

It’s winter time here.  That means the emergency shelters for both men and women are open.  The number of people increase exponentially according to how cold it is out there.  January will be a nightmare, to put it mildly.  There are so many people to cram into what little room we have and supply them with their necessities.

There’s always one complainer, though.  The guys have theirs already.  If I were to guess what is wrong with him, I’d pick a massive Narcissism disorder.  He stays here and yet, according to him, we do nothing for him.  He went on quite a rampage  We’re supposed to “help” him and we have done nothing.  Help him do what, I wonder?  He may or may not hold a job, I”m not sure, but if that’s the case, what’s so wrong that he can’t find a home of his own?  If he’s on disability, why isn’t he living in housing that affords him what he needs as a mentally disabled person?  Does he have a payee?  If he doesn’t, why doesn’t he?  Clearly he isn’t able to function properly on his own or he would not, after at least two months of doing nothing to help himself here, still be here sleeping in a homeless shelter out of the cold every night expecting everyone else to enable him to continue to make little to no effort as a human being.  We are not equipped to take care of his perceived issues.

We do everything we can to help others within our power, but we don’t enable anyone.  The effort has to be made by the individual.  There are some things we cannot do by law, by logic, and financially.  This is something those with such narcissistic tendencies will never understand.  Neither will those who have never experienced or lived with the poor and homeless like we have down here.

Those who know me know where I stand as a social activist and a proponent of the intervention of humanity at times like these. ..and as an advocate  for human treatment long before medication.  Around here and probably in even larger places, the mentally ill aren’t handled well.  They have a 5 minute chat with someone who simply gives them a script for that 5 minute diagnosis.  Too often we find out they based that diagnosis on what free samples they may have been provided recently.

Do I dare rant about the mentally ill and the government’s inability to handle those people who really need it?  Do I dare rant about the government’s ultimate goal of throwing people to the wolves in the interest of “fiscal responsibility”?

I don’t mind telling the rest of you that the government of the last 50 years has been embarrassing.  It has gotten worse this century.  The original constitution provided for a Congress and government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”  This is no longer true.  This government is “of the Congress, by the Congress and for the Congress” and because of this, the current government is the most irresponsible government to date.

I was, when I was young, a personal friend and ally of many politicians during the late ’60s and ’70s.  Some of them are still in office.  I am appalled.  Even I, who love these people as PEOPLE, want to see them out of office.  Now.  They’re no longer in it for the people.  They are in it for themselves and what they can get out of wielding what they perceive as their personal power.

“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~ John Dahlberg-Acton

The Baron is not wrong, and it is clear that the mentally ill, homeless, poor and hungry are pawns in the power game.  They end up lost, and I blame both the government and the lack of compassion this country has developed in the process.

    A set of graphs for 2014 shows that we are conquering homelessness in the U.S.    Not here, they’re not.  We are ending our program based shelter for this winter so that we can take the emergency overflow for women up here this year, like we did last year.  We still have alcoholics, mentally ill, and a second generation of hopelessly irresponsible adults.  And we are just getting started on those who are homeless and older.  The proof will be in the clients in the shelter this year, but honestly, I see it on the street daily.  The regulars are starting slowly to come back to the area.  For some this is the only home they’ve known in the winter.  Sadly, too many of them already with an income consider this their home rather than find real home of their own in which to live.  Most of them just drink away their retirement income and are so dysfunctional they cannot honestly find and keep a place of their own. 

So many women and men around my age are not old enough to legitimately – according to the government – retire.  The government wants them to retire at 62, but they can’t live like that, basically because it has been proven through economic research that they’re really too young to get all of the money coming to them – as much as 70%, in fact.  In order to reach that goal, though, they can’t be downsized from their jobs, can’t be fired, can’t be what the government wants in all of this, and that is for them to retire early so that they can use that money elsewhere. Think about it.  Think of the base figures you see at the age of 65.  Now imagine 1/3 less if you retire anywhere from 62 to 64.  Then think about hanging in there until you’re 70 and getting at least 1/3 MORE.  What would you rather do?

Now deduct the cost of living and see how well you will survive.  Remember, at a certain point in your income you no longer qualify for food stamps.  So take rental, food, utilities, and certain things you feel are important into consideration.

Even at the age of 70 for some, it isn’t enough.  Food stamps amount to less than $200 a month per person and are not available to any elderly person because they “make too much”.  In Iowa that amounts to anything over $973 a month. If they want to live, they have to give up something else.  In the case of most, it’s usually caring for a beloved pet or their own decent living conditions.  I’ve seen what that does to people in this shelter situation.  They have no other reason to be here than no one else to care for them or to have a survivable level of social security income.  In the past 3 years, I’ve watched the number of poverty-level and homeless elderly rise 400% around here.  This is certainly not reflected in the homeless numbers nationwide.  They continue to concentrate on other special interest groups, but the baby boomers becoming the elderly becoming homeless and poverty-stricken.  (Just for the record, they are not all veterans.  In fact, that’s maybe half of all the baby boomers out there.  Maybe.)

The point-in-time homeless records are skewed.  The problem is that too many feel those are set homeless numbers.  Far from it.  January 28th, which is when ours is done, doesn’t even cover it.  These are only documented homeless.  Those who are staying in abandoned buildings, garages, still under bridges and still in tents elsewhere are undocumented, and believe me, they are out there.   In order to find them all, you have to walk every street, enter every park, and check every bridge to find them all, and that’s far too big an undertaking for any of us.  This doesn’t include those who are sitting in the police stations or hospital emergencies who would otherwise be homeless.  The potential is striking.

People randomly report that there are a great number of empty houses, more than there are documented homeless.  They are correct.  As I look out my window, I see just in this block another red brick building next door to us that has no one living in it.  There is the potential to have at least 4 apartments there, enough to house single people or families.  Across the street there are two more houses, the same thing.  No one is living in them.  They’re big enough to house another 12 to 14 families.  Whose fault is this?  I’d like to blame the city, but they are only partially at fault.  This neighborhood, the historic German manufacturing district, has a load of empty houses.  The city considers it a tumor on the face of Davenport.  Rather than fix it, which they could do instead of sinking money into building Ferris wheels and casinos in other parts of town, they’re letting the entire district just plain die out.  This is their answer to homelessness and folks in dire straits.  Force people out if they can and let someone else deal with it.  They’ve even put a moratorium on shelters.  No one can buy an older building to create one, nor can they build something new.  Even worse, they just don’t care about these people.     

In preparing for the winter overflow, we’re trying to sort volunteers and their possible duties. We know we won’t get many.  No one wants to spend the one thing they will usually waste otherwise, and that is time.  If a volunteer is enthusiastic, they burn out in short order.  That makes them ineffective.  Of course there are far greater numbers who just won’t bother with it at all.  It’s not because what they do is more important for the world, but that it is more important for them and their version of society.  They remind me a little too much of the Pharisees and Samaritans we have read about in the Bible and so many other resources.

We have odds and ends of what might appear to be unusual problems to others.  In the women’s shelter, we don’t mind taking single moms with fairly newborn children.  If a state monitored situation comes up, then we work with them.  It’s not that they don’t have the same rules to follow while the shelter is open, but because they are state-mandated to do things a certain way during other hours, we will follow the state mandate for that person.  Others are not happy, of course, because, to them, others get to break the rules.  In truth, no they don’t, but try to explain that to someone else. I’ve told other single moms that if they have the state mandating their progress, we will do those things for which there is an agreement with the state, but until they decide to be under state watch, they still have to follow shelter rules specifically. 

There is, in fact, a good reason why we are not government funded, and so very few people realize this as one of our key differences.  We are a Christian organization, and we do things without taking God’s and Christ’s names out of it, which is what the government would rather have us do.  Therefore, those who think everything we have is because of government funding have another think coming.  We have only those things and can do only those things for which we receive private donations.  We are very often just making ends meet for this reason.  At least we know we are not part of the reason for the government’s massive indebtedness.  (We also don’t blame other organizations like ours, either, government-funded or not.  But that’s an entirely different book.)

The winter emergency shelter season has started. At this time, what we do is simply to give men and women a place to sleep that gets them out of the cold at night. We don’t check anyone’s background during the winter because there are so many who couldn’t pass it that legitimately need to be out of the elements.

We run the women’s shelter from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. No showers (there are other places for this) and no open kitchen in the morning. It’s fair for the women to experience what the men experience downstairs and our goal is not to be the ultimate winter housing solution. If they have disability or social security income – or some other source – they need to be looking for a more permanent solution.

That said, we see an incredible number come through here that have addiction issues, severe mental issues, and criminal issue that prevent them from easily attaining housing of their own. Government subsidized housing personnel are incredibly picky…and with good reason. Most are just as protective of their tenants as regular housing personnel are of theirs.

This leaves those who have access to resource information to see what they can do for the ones who fall through the cracks.

For instance, I have three current overflow residents who have such severe issues they really can’t function on their own to find stable housing and keep it going.

One has been showing up here every winter between stays with others at hotels. She is a paranoid schizophrenic. She doesn’t do well on her own. She needs more help than any of us can provide.

Another says the police come in every night and tell her what she can and can’t do. Last night they came in and told her she couldn’t brush her hair and couldn’t read the Bible. We are a secure building in this neighborhood. No one, including the police, can get in the door to the building, let alone into the women’s shelter, which is a second deadbolt all its own, so we couldn’t understand where she was getting this. She rambles. She doesn’t sleep. She really needs 24 hour constant care. According to her, she is an ex-nun, her grandfather was a priest, she is also a former police officer, ex-minister, and built the current police station where her name is on a plaque there. It took a day or two to try to understand her thought process, and it’s hard to label her as one thing, since so many disorders rear their ugly heads, but there’s no reasoning with her. She said “they” say she’s insane, but she knows better.

We had one lady here only one night. She’d gotten off the Trailways bus and come here, saying she was simply shelter hopping because the government conspiracy has taken everything from her and she’s trying to stay ahead of them trying to find her.

Our third regular client is a woman whose husband is in the men’s shelter. They stay on the run. We suspect he beats her. We know he steals from everyone he can, and he was suspected last year of setting fire to an historical landmark, burning it to the ground. She, being the sweet girl she is, just follows him like a puppy dog. She is very low functioning. But we can’t help her without grounds to do so. And there are no agencies with guidelines at all into which she fits for the help she needs.

Many states made devastating cuts to mental health services back in the 1980s shutting down a large number of much needed mental institutions, and made further cuts for fiscal year (FY) 2012, putting tens of thousands of citizens at great risk. This is just three such cases.

None of these ladies are veterans. Therefore, there are fewer resources for them these days. To say that no one cares about the homeless, mentally ill, and addictive personalities wandering the streets right now is unfair to say. To say that there are certain factions who continue to fall through the cracks is a very invisible but screamingly loud statement to me.

This world is not perfect.

We have all types here at the shelter ranging from completely normal and only in transition to a new place, and variances of normal ranging from alcoholism to drug abuse to schizophrenia to paranoid schizophrenia to bipolar…and the list goes on.

Try putting them all in one room. Some really don’t cope well with that. This year, right off the bat, we have one that doesn’t cope well, yet she returns every night, causes trouble among other residents just in making passive aggressive snide comments, and is going to find herself outside if she continues.

Another part of her issues is that she doesn’t take a shower, doesn’t see the need to wash her clothes, and generally doesn’t take care of herself even with the very basics. This is a sure sign of mental issues of some kind. Not having a PhD in psychiatry, I can’t identify it all right away without looking up the idiosyncrasies in the DSM V manual. Right now, I don’t have that kind of time.

Most of her comments this morning were wide ranging Supreme Court comments and her rights as a citizen. She made those comments in reference to another client in the room, who she insists made rude comments to her in the night.

We did check into some things and it is very clear that she has never been medicated or in therapy because even though she had been seen by someone many years ago, when they told her she had problems, she said she was not “insane” and refused treatment. In the past four years we have not had anyone like her up here.

Hence, we’ve made a call to our favorite homeless outreach psychologist in this case. Referring her to him, he can assess the situation and at least get her in for a 3-day evaluation and get her some help especially if she is not competent enough to do this willingly. Her actions and reactions here indicate that to us.

We pray for her and hope she gets through this.

It takes all kinds to make up this overflow, particularly since we don’t check backgrounds, and we don’t make them follow the program-based rules or requirements.  It’s a completely different game.  At this time, we become a place for people to go when their time is up other places.

For instance, 7 of 9 ladies here currently have used up their time at Humility of Mary.  They’re here, instead.  The 8th one is a challenge all by herself, and doesn’t want to be anywhere but here.  The 9th one is just a beautiful lost soul desperately in need of help.

One of the primary problems is gossip.  They want to talk about someone here, but they wait until that person is gone to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about them behind their back.  For the first time ever, I said this morning that this disappoints me.  It’s just as much a form of disrespect and verbal abuse as anything else.

Truth?  What is happening in someone else’s life or their idiosyncrasies is not anyone else’s business, and we need to be tolerant.  Period.  Sometimes one person will get so bad with it and in many ways passively bullies that person to the point I have to write them up.  I had to do that with one of the ladies here, and she then tried to go behind MY back and complain about getting written up.  She doesn’t get it through her head that I discussed this with my direct report before doing it, so that I am not charged with an “unfair” write-up.  I let her slide for a short while, too, to make sure I was correct in what I

I take a lot of verbal abuse myself during this time of winter overflow.  And that’s okay.  Unlike so many of them here, I am not passive at all.  It’s not in my nature to be so.  I’m direct in how I deal with things.  There are no favorites, and there are no special privileges for anyone, outside a written medical prescription or note in which we have to accommodate someone’s health issues.

It’s hard here this time of year.  All you can do for the most part is listen and help if you can.  And control the negative vibes.  Sometimes that is hard to do.

People are definitely strange – which is completely not PC to say, but hey – I see that strange everywhere.  And strange is in the eye of the beholder, right?  As it happens, despite others who say differently, I’ve been diagnosed as “normal” – no quirks outside first-world normalcy – unless you want to seriously categorise high-functioning Asperger as some sort of weirdness, and I don’t.  Not in this life.  Not ever.  I operate beautifully in the world.  I just tend to use logic – my head – instead of following the lemmings out there.  What?  Lemmings?  Youdamnbetcha.  I’ve seen them in action here.

What I have experienced here over the past almost 5 years working with homeless single and family residents  is some serious inability by some to operate in that real  first-world environment.  One of my overflow residents is a major study in where the cracks are widening in the mental health system, thanks to federal overspending in various unethical ways.  This has caused some belt-tightening and horrendous budget shortages that have caused serious backsliding in the mental health system.  Why has this happened?  Easy.  The real mental cases are in Congress.

Until we wipe out the sitting legislators entirely and start over, this will not change.  War-mongering, to me, is a mental health problem.  Pork legislation is yet another mental health issue.  Congress is rife with both, and they are so afraid of admitting this to themselves, they refuse to a) put an end to the problems and b) get professional evaluations of themselves from accredited and ethical professionals.

Activists against these kinds of overspending assume they are dealing with logical people.  They assume too much.

One particular night was probably the worst ever we have had during the overflow season.  Without the alcohol-related problems they have with the men downstairs, we have had mental problems galore, and last night we had even more. The average number didn’t really rise, but we certainly had a change in residents.  Some who are usually here weren’t, and we had two new ones come in.

The war started with one of the “new” ones who had been here in past years.  Rules had changed and they didn’t suit her.  She let us know with every loud expletive she could muster and complained long after lights out.  After all the trouble, which I won’t go into, which included personal attacks on me, I did tell her that this isn’t prison – she could leave and we wouldn’t stop her.  (Please, please, please…)

It was very hard for me when she started getting personal.  My outside work is none of her business.  I do a lot more than sit around “homeless”‘, especially when I’m not.  I do not sit here, eat bon-bons and sleep all day.  Neither does Bonnie.  We both have other places we could live, pay our bills and be free – and we chose what we do.  This requires a lot of work from both of us, including maintenance, cleaning up after everyone, and I have a whole lot of paperwork to do.  I’m old.  This isn’t such a piece of cake.  Add to that working with residents trying to find them a place to go from here, work opportunities, interfacing with Human Services on many levels, connecting some with the World Relief Organisation (which should have been their first contact with some of them) and analyzing mental conditions so that we can find a way to effectively work with them.

In Winter Overflow, it’s a scaled down version of what we do in program-based.  They are less responsible to me for things they do outside the shelter, and I have to put up with a considerable amount of “gimmee-gimmee” and bad attitudes.  It only runs from December 1st to April 15th, but there are times when just such episodes, as was brought up here by this woman, try my patience – even more than mothers and families.

Today I am ready to retire, but doggone it, we only have 4 more nights to go.  I am not going to throw in the towel yet.  I love program-based.  It starts May 1st.  I can’t wait for this baloney to end this year. That two weeks’ spring break can’t come fast enough.

Saturday night was a different story with the resident in question.  She came in apologizing profusely for the night before. I accepted it without question, but she did feel the need to explain:  she had run out of her medication (I don’t know which one in particular, but she had run out, nonetheless) and her behaviour was poor for that reason.

On medication, she is honestly tolerable and reasonably well-behaved, but off-meds?  She is horrendous.  I’ve seen this happen enough times up here that I should have known better than to take offense to her actions based on that one night.

This is a lesson in the fallout from the mental health systems, government involvement and their subsequent budget cuts and its cracks that have become, thanks to Congress, gaping holes.

Do I think that Obamacare covers enough?  That answer would have to be “no”.  I look at what has been happening here in the last year, and I see some scary things.  A young man who had a ruptured appendix was taken to the hospital and two days later, he’s in the shelter because he has no home.  He’s from California and on his way to New York, so MediCal paid for the operation, but the boy needs pain medication and antibiotics to keep down the INFECTION he received when the appendix ruptured – not covered, of course.  His mother, who is on disability, had to use some of her very tight funds to get his medication for him. Ask me if the hospital was allowed to keep him long enough, and I would tell you not in this lifetime.  Cut, sew, release as fast as you can. Why?  Government regulatons.  The “gummit” won’t pay if you keep them what they consider “too long”.  There are not exceptions to the rule.  And medication?  Sorry, pal.  We don’t care if you hurt or if you die from infection.

I’m particularly sensitive to the fact that people die thanks to the government’s lack of care and putting poorer voting members of this country at a larger risk than those “up the hill”.  In 1933, my mother was 9 years old.  Her mother, my biological grandmother, died at the age of 26 from blood poisoning.  She would not have died if she had been seen at the hospital in the order in which her issue had been received.  Others came in after her and were seen right away.  While the hospital did this, she sat in a chair in the waiting room with an injury that was markedly evident, infection that was creeping from her foot up her leg – also markedly evident – and they did nothing.  Eight hours after she entered that hospital in Colorado, she did.  In the chair.  In the emergency room.  No one cared.  How many people die from lack of insurance? And care. And compassion.

“Well,” you say, “we’ve come a long way since then.”  Have we?

Regarding medication, we have the same situation with this resident who came in Friday night unmedicated.  Another family member had to buy her medication for her.  This is thanks to mental health budget cuts. Everything about her screams “HELP!”, and yet, not enough has been done.  Anywhere.

One should always start this kind of a day with a song, eh?  Yes.  Last night with the foul-mouthed resident was a struggle.  She apparently didn’t take her medicine.  Her behaviour with the other residents was completely unwaranted, she told me to go to hell, claimed she learned more in church than I did (come to find out, she sat in the back on a couch and slept through it), and everything out of her mouth was a foul word or criticizing everyone for not following God’s laws.

This morning, she intimated to Bonnie that God has rules, and it doesn’t include leaving at 7 a.m.  Everyone all season has followed the rules here without a problem, basically because they had things to do and get done and it’s only an emergency overflow during this time period. She should have found out by now that she is not the only person God cares for, and she has fallen into the sad category of the last to understand this.

Of all the issues we have had here, hers is the worst to have to deal with on a daily basis.  Our other resident with severe issues has a domestic version of complex PTSD, but she keeps to herself.  The most we have to do is clean up after her.

The thing I am most thankful for is that the season ends Wednesday night.  Everyone has to be out Thursday morning.  Three nights – I can make it.  I just won’t be doing winter overflow up here next year – at all. 

It’s opening day for the 2015 King’s Harvest Program-Based season. It’s going to be a busy night.  We’re starting out with three single ladies, which doesn’t sound like much, but all three have to be in the same room (we have room for 5 single ladies up here), three different personalities, and all new intakes with stricter rules.  It’s going to be a challenge.  Thank goodness it’s Bonnie, me, and Margot handling the night.   Also, normally on weekends we won’t be taking new people, but we are, just this once.  It’s a mom and 1 year old who would come tonight, if it weren’t for the fact we were already doing 3 intakes.  It’s a lot and I did say it was okay just this once.  I was promised this will not happen again.  To keep things on an even keel, since we don’t get volunteers Friday, Saturday or Sunday, we operate much better if we don’t have intakes on weekends.I’m pretty excited about the fact that I can use my new social work education working with the moms and the single ladies.  I don’t expect 100% adherence to program requirements, and they are certainly different with each person, thus requiring a certain degree of discernment, but it’s a new world for those who have been here before.  We have consequences if they can’t prove that they are working effectively toward their goals.   The release form they have to sign gives me the right to call places where they claim they have gone for applications and/or resources, and verify their efforts.  They can only stay as long as they are really moving forward. They just don’t get to “flop” here.

As an example, we have one woman who has been here every year during both program-based and winter overflow for four years in a row and really done nothing to promote herself.  She claims she’s been working toward disability.  She has been denied only once; she just can’t rely on this to get her a place to stay and some cash.  She’s going to have to do something.  She’s already been warned this is her last stay during program-based, and she will only get to stay as long as she’s making progress.  A resident doesn’t have to be super-ambitious; I ask only that they prove they’re doing something.

It’s the start of the season. Of course there are those who want into the shelter initially.  The word will spread quickly about how structured this is for them.  Some will see it as a deterrent.  I am gentle, but I am all about taking care of your needs.  It’s hard to do, starting literally from scratch like this, but it can be done, and done well.  I’ve seen it happen, even with a couple of moms who had 4 children apiece.  It is not as impossible as it may seem.  And I’m here to help as much as I can.  So are the volunteers and Bonnie.

I would have never believed it, but every single resident had a place to be for Mother’s Day.  One exited last night, but other than that, it was quiet here – no screaming babies, no adults with issues.  It amazed me.  What a quiet morning here!  I’m ashamed to say I slept a couple of hours longer than I intended because of it.

This particular group of women has been pretty good to have all at the same time, despite minor mental issues.  There have been no alcohol issues, no criminal issues, no thoughts of threats or parenting issues.  We talk, and I’ve been discovering a great many wonderful things about these ladies, most of which you will find in your own families.  What’s the difference?  For all but the one that left, it is a case of having money, but not sure how to apply for housing properly or where, and a little bit of downright fear among them.

The one who left just wasn’t thinking clearly, causing many of her own issues.  She has been here many times before completely jobless and bouncing from shelter to shelter, knows what she has to do, and yet, seems to think her lack of ambition makes her a special case for which all should change their rules.  Because of the way we are set up, to let someone in past 11 o’clock isn’t viable, and we let them know this at the outset.  She didn’t think it applied to her until Friday night when she finally called to let us know she had a job and was working second shift.

There is a group in Iowa City called Rock 10.  They’re a great employer, and they reach out to other cities to make this fly for them and for those who are unemployed and needed work.  They’re always busy.  There are people who have lived here in Davenport, more than an hour away, who have worked there for years, taking the bus to and from.  This I understand, Being in your own home lends itself to more flexibility. We are limited in our capacities and therefore unable to be as flexible.

She knew that.  Trying to help and always with love, I suggested she stay at the shelter in Iowa City for a while to build up funds and regroup a little and come back to the Quad Cities, which she prefers.  She went off, screaming discrimination and prejudice (really??) and anything with an “f” word she could spew out of her mouth.  She called us all kinds of names, some of which just aren’t worth printing – and the others just not for anyone’s ears or eyes.  She’s not the first to do this, no matter the circumstance, and she won’t be the last.  We just carry on.

I stuck to my guns.  It’s not like the rules are mine arbitrarily – and she had already been told about the time limit by the executive director here.  She was in a panic and would not calm down.  Her life has been a mess for years, with details I won’t go into here, and this was just one more point at which she wasn’t thinking.  She honestly hasn’t been thinking at least since she was 20, maybe before that.

She exited on her own.  We didn’t kick her out.

I can speculate on how this will turn out in the end, and I would be pleasantly surprised if it didn’t, but I would rather just let things happen for her on her own – and in a positive way. Maybe she will learn to work on these things on her own.

We have been somewhat dismayed, but at the same time thrilled, that the need for our services has limited itself dramatically when it comes to moms with children.  We are strict about certain things, and because of that, we are finding that some of these moms are becoming choosier and opting out of any need they may have for our services.  When moms can become choosy, it means two things:  1) they have somewhere else to stay and 2) they have all kinds of other options presented to them for anything from income to daily needs.

That’s an okay thing.  It means we have a couple of empty family-only rooms, but it also means families in general are in better shape than they were when we first started in 2011.

I have had a lot of trouble settling into the fact that the need is dramatically cut.  Then, again, it may be our way of being available to those caught in the mass exodus from Lake Canyada’s bankruptcy which will occur July 1st.  We are bracing for that catastrophe because it will, without a doubt, be a catastrophe for humans and pets alike. It is my understanding that the people who live there don’t have enough money to really live – and a lot of them are cat hoarders.  This is dangerous for all of them, and my heart hurts because of it.

One of the things we understand here at the women’s and families shelter is that there is a tremendous fluctuation in need.  In another month, it could change again, but for right now, we’re making a big change.

There are apparently enough shelters for single mothers and their children to accommodate those without some form of housing or some form of moderately acceptable communal living, whether it be with parents, relatives or friends.  This means we have too much room for families and not enough room for single ladies.

That being the case, we felt the need to open up one of the empty rooms designated for families to house more single ladies.

Why do you suppose the shelters around here for single ladies are bursting at the seams and overflowing into ours?  I think you’ll find when doing an age assessment that most of them are near or over 50.  And most are disabled, receive some SSDI, and yet they have to work to make ends meet.

Finding part-time work for people with disabilities around here is a nearly lost cause.  The disability they receive is impossible to live on by itself. But why would employers give experienced people an opportunity to work even part-time when you can find some kid who won’t be there as long, nor will they work for less than those who really need this?  It’s difficult for employers, and such a headache.  Young people can stand on their feet, as a general rule, much longer, lift heavier packages, and do more physically demanding jobs.  This leaves an entire list of part-time work available for older, less physically capable men and women who don’t get those jobs because some younger person has competed for and acquired those jobs.

Why?  Because employers don’t want to have to deal with a disabled worker’s problems.  They have a tendency to pass over disabled job seekers because of what they perceive to be a “hassle”.  From what I have seen here, there is no real “hassle”.

So they’re here, trying to fight their way through the system.  It’s hard.  So many options, yet none available to them.  

This costs all of us because of the monies the government has to spend in the long run.   Heavily.  And those monies are on the decline, catching these poor ladies between a rock and a hard place. These beautiful women just need to be able to get the jobs.  At this point, it isn’t entirely their fault.

The week has been interesting.  With the types of people we have had this year, it has been nothing but interesting, and fruitful almost daily.  I feel like I’m earning my keep when I have weeks like this.

Some days, it’s a little hard to remain open-minded and compassionate.  Most days, the open-mindedness and compassion make all the difference.  We aren’t just here to give a random roof over someone’s head.  We’re here to get them out of the situation in which they’ve found themselves, and it’s during these times of goal-based residency that I find us doing the most good.  I would give anything and wait to retire if I could do this year-round.  That doesn’t seem to be the makeup of our organization, unfortunately.  Hence, early retirement is just around the corner.

Anyway, about this week!  We were delighted to receive a woman with a mission.  She was prepared to do just about anything to make it right in her world.  After her first night here, she hit a brick wall.  Her daughter in another state was about to hand over her children – the woman’s grandchildren – to the child protective services agency of that state.  Grandma wasn’t having it.  She contacted her ex-husband and they decided together to get the children and that she would take care of them.  I told her she needed to get legal guardianship of those babies.  She understood, but there was no stopping her – and while she could have come here with them, she opted not to.  At this point, without the legal guardianship already in place, what she was doing was akin to kidnapping those children. She didn’t want to see us get in trouble for harboring fugitives.  Knowing what she was doing ahead of time would have put us in that position.  She was exited at her request the next day.

The first night this woman was gone, we were honored to get another woman trying to rectify her life’s issues, get a job, and a place of her own.  Not so easy.  She’s in her mid-fifties, and age discrimination is very prevalent here.  She had an impressive work history and some fabulous degrees.  As we were talking, I discovered she was a Marine veteran.  That’s when I knew I could really help her in a positive way.  Not four blocks from us is the office of the VALOR program.  We have one of the 38 VALOR programs in the entire US, and it’s placed within walking distance for us.  Not only that, one of the other shelters as a Veterans Transitional Program.  That is three blocks away.  They work hand-in-hand with VALOR.  I am proud to say I know just about everyone in charge of both.  We got her an appointment with VALOR, and Kathy at VALOR got her into VTP.  Bing, bang, boom.  Done.  She’s on her way to much better things.  We exited her a couple of days ago, and we do miss her greatly.  But what a great opportunity for a very smart woman!

The third one this week came in that same night the veteran did, but she was so far and away different, I can’t begin to tell you.  Right off the bat she told me she was gay and looking for a girlfriend.  In our shelter, romantic connections are not allowed here, or with the men’s shelter side. Period.  Focus should be on getting back on track, not on another relationship.  Still, she tried to attach herself to one of our other residents only to find out that resident was absolutely not interested.  I worried about her resume.  While it looked good, the universities she attended were questionable.  I had to look up their U.S. accreditation to make sure they were valid for her here in this location.  She hit the streets hard, but couldn’t really get anywhere.  She asked if she was the wrong color.  This area has just about the least amount of color discrimination and professional prejudice I’d ever known.  She was wrong on this.  Then she started complaining about the men in the men’s shelter being drunk and hitting on her.  According to tapes, neither was the case.  She then told me she had tried to call the shelter a few blocks from us to get in, only to be told they didn’t have room.  So I called them.  I found out she was wrong yet again and sent her to that shelter to get in.  She asked me if she had done anything wrong here, thinking that was why she was being told to go to that shelter.  I told her no, but that since she was concerned about her safety here, I had made sure there was another place for her.  She exited our shelter that night.

The current residents are all hardworking and dynamic.  They will make it and be good successes, too.  More about each of them in the next few weeks.

This is the time of year I love my job and I feel I’m “earning it”.

Anyone who is my friend on Facebook (there are some of you) saw this blog coming.  We had a similar case about a year earlier with a client with similar imaginations and a need to assume this was their house.

Her very real (to her) life threats of tap water and electricity are hers to be concerned about, but we cannot accommodate that for her here.  She needs to bring her own bottled water, wrap herself in tin foil, and not bother other people in the middle of the night. 

So far, she has shown others very little, if any, respect for sleeping times, or for our rules and our property.  On top of disrupting her roommate all night, she has tried to break our hall lights because of electrical impulses, and has caused trouble by messing with all of the electrics.  Personally, I have had to correct all these things, and to have to do this for one person who we suspect is suffering from dementia, is a little frustrating and is likely to become costly.

One of the things another of our residents observed was that she sprayed silver all across the van she owns in order to deflect both electricity and radio waves – as well as keep away the electrician that she is sure has been following her around trying to kill her for the last 5 years.  This goes hand in hand with lining the inside of her van with tin foil for protection.

It is not that she does strange things, but that she is imposing her philosophies on others and making everyone here uncomfortable, let alone finding a way to wreak havoc as well.

If her behavior in the shelter continues through the week, after I talk to her tonight, I will be forced to exit her.  I’d like to help her, but she is absolutely positive she needs no help.  This is why she’s homeless, hasn’t been able to get into an apartment, seems to be very lost, both mentally and emotionally, and doesn’t understand the importance of respect, or even what it means.

Sometimes this is very hard.  The state interferes using HIPAA’s “privacy” laws as an excuse for why we can’t even get those with problems like this a three-day psych evaluation, let alone anything else.  This can be such a disaster.

Let’s just say the morning started dark.  And I don’t mean the rising of the sun or any cloud cover.  That one intake was angry.  She accused us of letting her stalker in the room last night so that he could paint the underside of her bunk black.  It’s a walnut-stained wooden bunk bed, no paint.  It has always been that way.  Nothing has changed. It isn’t black, just dark wood.  And we don’t let men into the women’s shelter.  Period.

She also thinks the volunteer who was here last night stole her tin foil helmet.  The volunteer has no interest in her tin foil helmet.  Neither do the rest of us.  She needs it to be able to cope, and everyone is very aware of that. 

She slept under a foil blanket and wrapped rubber around her head.  According to others in her room, she was up and down all night moving a second foil blanket from window to window to block out electromagnetic radio waves from the non-working satellite dish we can’t remove, and she kept everyone in that room from sleeping.

I completely understand EHS.  The other mental manifestations are unexplainable. She needs mental help.  We can’t get it for her until she lets us, and she won’t.  In fact, she left this morning saying she will never come back.  She claims it is unsafe here.

The outer entry door automatically locks 24 hours a day.  The entry door to the women’s shelter not only has the door lock, but also a dead bolt.  One key does not fit both.  You have to have two separate keys, and the only other persons who have those keys are my coworker and the executive director of the ministry.  “Not safe”, my Aunt Fanny.  I’ve lived here 5 years without a break-in to our shelter EVER, and we are in one of the worst neighborhoods in Davenport.

I can only give up.  There is nothing we can do to help this woman.  Thanks to the lack of care and concern by our governor and the Federal government’s restriction for getting people help, she remains on the street.

One of the things that has always been frustrating is who, of the agencies, gets particular things donated to them and who then passes out those items.  Some of the agencies consistently supply certain things.  When they are unable to do so, they tell us.  Usually.

This time, I heard from the residents that one of the agencies no longer provide items and are getting angry with those of us operating other facilities for sending people to them for that assistance.  If they had just told us, this would not be a problem on my end, ever.

Quick fix:  Take them off the list, and make sure people go to other places to get those items.  One of the biggest problems for most of the people who need these items is that going to this particular agency is a very long way – and actually farther than they would have to travel for these items under other circumstances.  Incidents such as these hamper our efforts too much.

Our population in the shelter is changing.  We have many more older single ladies than we’d ever had before.  They’re looking for jobs.  Despite company protests to the contrary, there is, indeed, a  very noticeable age discrimination problem down here.  I find myself searching daily for new avenues for some of these ladies.  Almost every single one of those trying so hard find themselves stepping outside their comfort zone to find something new and different.  I wouldn’t say I push, necessarily, but I encourage until I am purple!

I’m also pushing to make a change in screening.  Too many have gotten by our “background check” by having suspected undiagnosed mental conditions. We aren’t set up in such a way that we can handle the extreme cases we’ve received.  With so many older ones in particular, if we just used the St. Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) examination, it would give us a base on which to underscore changes in behavior and goal-orientation.  If they don’t fall within a certain score, we would be better able to make an official mental evaluation a condition of their stay with us.  We aren’t equipped as a mental health facility and this can likely get more people the help that they need.  Cases in point would have been “That One Intake” that had been here recently, and two others before her just in the last year

It’s been a busy seven days.  We have done five intakes and five exits.  Of the five exits we have had two wonderfully successful ones.

One poor lady was here at least two months working hard 6 days a week at her job and trying to find an appropriate place to live.  She felt she didn’t make enough money, but according to several Federal assistance programs, she “made too much”.  That’s the Gummit for you.  Make the poor stay poor. Undaunted, this dear woman pushed until she found a good place, worked with the landlord to meet the deposit, and the kind man made special arrangements for her to move in sooner than she would have under normal circumstances.  She exited the shelter this morning.  We will miss her terribly.

The second major success was a woman we knew pretty well from seeing her at the meal sites for a couple of years before she was ever forced into homelessness – again thanks to the Gummit cutting her disability and the landlord (Gummit subsidy folks) kicking her out.  She cared for her father, who was just about 60 and not in the best of shape.  Still, even after having a tumor removed on the 1st and a few days of recuperation, she was back.  Within 2 days upon her return she had just what was needed for her father, a job for her to start Monday, and a home for the two of them.  She was determined!  And she exited 4 days before the end of her 30 days.

A third exit was That One Intake.  While I do breathe a sigh of relief that she has moved on from here, I worry about her.  The minute any other landlord sees how she is, her opportunities for finding good retirement rental are poor, unless she’s willing to go to assisted living for someone with possible dementia issues.

I don’t know if you’d call the other last two exits successes, but they were both here one night, disappeared and left their things here for the next several days, then came back and said they had “new homes” and “jobs”.  They didn’t elaborate.  Both were the types of personalities that would lead one to believe, after several years watching women and families coming and going from the shelter environment, that neither situation was going to last.  This may be a problem for them at least where we’re concerned,  because they can’t come back here for a year.

Usually this shows as an identifier for what we would call down here “chronically homeless”.  One can almost track how they do things through the years.  I’ve been here long enough to see some ladies more than once because of their poor choices.  Their levels of success remain intermittent at best.

They were two of the new intakes this week.  The other two are fun, dynamic, hard-working women “on a mission”, and they are enthusiastic about reporting their progress.  They won’t be here long, and they will both be successes.  I can tell.

I have worked with a particular staff member for at least 18 months.  This person has always been extremely ethical and straightforward, works hard, and goes above and beyond whatever is asked of them. We have become friends.

I am not judgmental, and what I consider gossip by others does not affect me. There has been a lot of gossip. And be assured I have no interest in this person other than as a friend.  I haven’t seen my coworker and friend with this particular alcoholic individual at any time.  I think that’s because I rarely leave the building, and therefore don’t see them outside our workspace.

That individual is very well known for constant drunkenness, conniving, lying, trying to con special treatment from others, and, since that person is homeless, sleeping their way into a roof over their head every single night.  I know what this person is like and I know what they’re after with this coworker.  I have seen and heard about them for years and years. They were once a resident here.  They desperately need rehabilitation.

Since I live and work in this building, it bothers me that, since my friend and coworker has keys to other areas, they have been letting in this alcoholic individual, thereby giving them a special privilege and access to the building, so that they can spend time alone with them romantically. What they do on the street is nobody’s business, including mine, and the two of them have been very blatant about what the two of them have been seen doing while on the street, but when my coworker lets that alcoholic individual who is unauthorized, into private parts of our workplace, the rest of the staff feels violated.

This includes me.

I’m lost spiritually about this, even though I have been praying all day.  The blatant breach of ethics that was seen by another staff member hurts me, as well as my coworker’s behavior.

When an intake came in two nights ago, and she had no Iowa Courts or Rock Island, Illinois Courts record, I had hoped we could get the ball rolling with a job and a new home in short order, even if she was pushing 56.  It’s not often we get someone up here with a squeaky clean record.  We usually have to try to work around something.  This looked, on the surface, like a perfect setup for us.

Then it started to come out.  She lives and breathes her cigarettes.  We don’t have a smoking porch on our shelter, as they have at Humility of Mary.  When coming in for the night, a smoker is done until they leave in the morning.  That’s 12 hours without a cigarette.  For hardcore smokers, that is impossible to achieve.

Then we talked about her various times she’d been in a rehab facility off and on to control her drinking.  I really applauded her for that, thinking that she could get by without drinking at all.  During program-based we have a zero-tolerance policy.  One beer will put them out for the night, no matter when they drank it.  Zero means zero.  We have a breathalyzer to back us up if needed.  If it registers at all, they have to stay elsewhere for the night.

And then, what came to light was that she makes over $900 a month in disability.  So why is she here?  Around here, that gets her an apartment with subsidized housing, food, pays the utilities, and so forth.  It just doesn’t pay for a 5 pack a day smoking habit and a six-pack a day drinking habit, neither of which she needs.

Still, we could work with this.

Yesterday she sent her boyfriend to pick up her things.  She’d been drinking and realized there was no way she could stay within our zero tolerance policy.  She admittedly drinks too much.  Why she couldn’t come to talk to me, I don’t know, but it’s a sign of the type of cowardice one develops when their addictions are in control.  I’ve seen it before here.  I know I’ll see it again.

So much potential, and yet that potential is killed by addiction.

Living here brings about a number of roller coaster moments.  Sometimes I am sad because someone can’t make it past their perceived roadblocks like the last resident.  Then there is one today that just makes me want to float on air.  She is 45, which is an age where she is teetering on the brink of the unspoken age discrimination found in this area.  She’s had a tough life – in and out of prison in the long, long past, but such a good soul now, and she has been diligent since her intake a little over a week ago.

She is anything but weak and pathetic in nature.  These days she has her feet firmly planted on the ground, she’s at peace with the world around her, and she is taking steps every day in a forward direction.  She wakes up smiling, quietly excited about what the day will bring, and once she brushes her teeth, she is ready to get out there and greet the day each and every day.

Her ambition is her driving force.  We have talked at length about the progress she has been making.  She has a beautiful résumé she’s worked hard to produce, been through Illinois’ Partners in Training to achieve additional skills, and gone through every job fair and online application process she could find since coming here.

She has a fabulous job interview tomorrow – full time, more than minimum wage, and options for pay rises to look forward to already.  This is her second interview, and they told her to be prepared to fill out paperwork tomorrow.

She doesn’t even want to look at apartments until she has had a job for a couple of weeks.  She’s already saving all the money she can.

I say “Bravo!”  This is the mindset of a successful woman.

What a wonderful day!  I’ve been hopping the past several days, mostly to keep order with the ladies in their job searches.  All of my ladies are earnestly searching, and they’re feeding off of each others’ enthusiasm.  I couldn’t ask for a better group.  I’m helping them finesse their ability to search, and sometimes it’s a little bit of a challenge.  Of the group, only one had a résumé.  We’ve been working on that.  That’s just okay with me.  They’re trying their best.  I live for this kind of activity.

Each has a different set of skills, and they are doing what they can to utilize them.  I’m doing all that I can to find them places that are hiring.  Sometimes we can fit openings with skills.  Sometimes they’re applying for cashier and customer service representative (CSR) positions.  For these ladies, it’s whatever works and who is willing to hire them.

The days of you picking the job are over.  I remember when I used to be able to pick and choose according to my skill level. As I watch these ladies all try to do that, I see a very big change in the job market.  The job market is now in charge, and it’s not pretty.  Minimum wage in Iowa is currently $7.25.  That’s tough and hardly livable, especially when a lot of those jobs are part-time at best.

I shudder watching them try so hard to make it in this economy.  Even in Iowa, which runs in the black with its state budget, most people barely make it.  Subsidized housing and food stamps fill in some of the cracks, but very often just barely.  In essence, you rely on the government and you become what I call a “ward of the state”.

And all of the current presidential candidates call THEM losers and lazy?  Look who’s talking.

I have literally been having fun this week.  While all the ladies here have their own issues privately, they are focused in other ways.  All but one needs a job.  Between the lot of them, they are happily talking to each other about this and helping each other with leads, On top of that, I’m also looking during the day for them while they’re gone, printing out current listings at major local companies (Kraft Heinz Company and Purina, especially) and everything from UPS, FedEx, retail stores, and warehouses.

It’s a race from Monday through Friday, and then breathe for a couple of days, only to get back at it on Monday.  I’ve learned a lot about the job market and how to be creative in searches – and I’m far too old to even worry about searching!  For them, though, it’s helpful.  I’m glad to do it.

On the side, we’re dealing with everything from child custody cases to family member alienation to finding life after jail – and all without ever spouting a particular religion or lack thereof.  We show compassion, all of us.  We care for people.  Even though right now the problems are not all that horrendous, I feel a lot like Dorothy Day might have.  She was, to me, the epitome of a deeply spiritual woman.  I wanted to model myself after her, but that is probably too late.  Instead, I am who I am.

Not much to say about all of this today.  So busy.  One of the residents came to me with a list of resources being passed out at Community Services, provided by United Way – and it’s at least 20 years old.  It has random things on it like a shelter just down the road having a meal site?  It never has.  Ever. I’m going to c0rrect this thing and send them a new sheet – and United Way, too.  This just amazes me.  It is yet another indication that the Davenport area is just out-and-out clueless.

I’m going to format it, too.  This way all they have to do is print and hand out.  All it takes is one person who cares.  Today, I am that one person.

This is the first year during program based that we have had all the ladies get along with all the others.  They laugh, tell some of the most amazing stories, and help each other out finding locations and jobs.  It’s like summer camp.

Lights out is at 10:30.  I can still hear them giggling and snorting like a bunch of 12 year olds, even after that time.  It’s a nice sound, and so very unusual here.  I feel a bit like a camp counselor.

What’s truly amazing about this is that they came in randomly, without knowing each other, and they have formed their own bond.  How I got such emotionally open women all at the same time is a mystery to me.  Since 2011, this really hasn’t happened. I couldn’t ask for a better group than I have right now.

They keep me hopping, but in a good way.  I’m on the staffing websites constantly helping them look for jobs, updating resource information thanks to their diligence on their own, and helping them find decent, inexpensive housing with good landlords.  It requires a lot of research, which is right up my alley. This might not sound like much to you, but it’s immense to them, and it keeps me out of trouble.  (I should have been in HR…)

I have had some this time around who have had an issue with alcohol or drugs, but they certainly don’t present it here, and while we’ve worked through various group therapy options, they’re past treatment and rehab stages for the most part, have their wits about them and they have their sponsors, and they’re just looking for a little extra help.  I’m not sure you can imagine the problems they go through finding a decent job or housing because of their previous issues.  To say that few will give them a second chance around here is an understatement.  I have never been more ashamed of this town than I have been since I started working here.

Perhaps that’s my problem.  I can’t separate my personal life from the lives of the ladies who come through here.  Sometimes they have been a frustration.  Sometimes, like now, they have seemed more of a blessing to me.  They have become a sort of family to me, and I am proud of all of them.

During overflow, we had a woman who wouldn’t listen to reason, refused to do what she was asked, continued to break the rules, and had, generally speaking, a rather violent life with a particular “husband” who beat her up all the time.

He’s barred from here, and she was almost barred at the time.  She smoked in the bathroom, the fire alarm went off, and, needless to say, it startled her.  When we say “no smoking”, we mean it.  Period.

Lo and behold, the weekend person who has the office phone went ahead and approved her for program based.  We know she has no goals and lives a hard and violent life outside of our shelter.  Well, we will deal with that.  She can’t come and go like she did over the winter, she has to have goals, and she has to follow the program.  The minute she doesn’t, she will have to exit, 5 months pregnant or not.

We will not give an inch for her any more than we would for anyone else staying up here.  Everyone else knows this.  She will learn or be gone.  What’s nice about the other ladies up here is that they’ll give it to her chapter and verse, and help her all they can.  There’s nothing more forthright than others in your position who will tell you how it is.

Respect is where it’s at.  She doesn’t do well with that.  To be continued.

Last night, around 9:45 – almost 2 hours after curfew, the executive director contacted us.  She happened to be dropping off a tenant and saw a woman with two suitcases outside our building.  It was not only after the women’s shelter curfew, it was after the men’s.

She threw board policy out the window:

The person staying with us during program-based has to have been here for three months.
We do a background check on everyone in program-based.

and forget the curfew of 8 p.m.

She had the audacity to ask, in front of this woman, “How kind-hearted do you feel?”  Seriously?  I was going to say “No” to the director in front of this woman?  I felt I was forced to break and bend the rules in order to take this person and afforded no opportunity to discuss the issue first.

The woman had just gotten off the bus from Chicago at 9:00 p.m.  That makes her new to the area.  She didn’t even bother to check to see if she could get into a shelter in town before she came here, and then wondered when she got here why she couldn’t find a place.  In talking to her this morning, it turns out she’s just feeling out the area, maybe not serious enough to get a place.  She’s going back to Chicago on the first.

And she couldn’t get a hotel?  She’s on SSI.  Where’s her money? And how on earth did she get here?

How do you tell the director this is not the pet rescue, and this is not a stray puppy?  Not only that, but this shelter should not be used as a vacation destination.  Ever.

We can’t do a background check until Monday.  Fortunately, she is fitting in with the other ladies up here okay, which is more than I can say about the one that the person answering the office phone sent me during NORMAL hours yesterday.  That one has major unmedicated mental issues.

This is not winter overflow.  This type of behavior, though, has not changed since 2011.  Override the rules and policies because they say so.  Make people think they can always break the rules if they talk to the director.

The straw has broken the camel’s back.  Retiring can’t come fast enough.  My current pain level this morning is at 8.  What does that tell you?

The person we took in on the 18th at the executive director’s request has kind of bombed out.  There is always hope, even when rules and policies are thrown out the window, but this time, the new intake couldn’t follow the simplest of rules and had to be told time and again every little thing.  If we’d had the time, we would have made her sit down every night when she first came in and continually read the rules to her.  She just didn’t understand.

She said she had a Section 8 voucher and could get an apartment anywhere.  Her voucher was not as “universal” as she thought.  It is county-specific, and our county in Iowa was not that county.  I tried to help her and made several calls to see what was up.  She has to go back to Cook County, Illinois for this voucher to be viable.  Unless she had planned ahead (she did not), she wouldn’t be able to get it switched without a long period of waiting it out.  She can’t stay here and do that. Explaining that to her was an exercise in futility.

Because she wasn’t screened by the office before entry, and she had just hit town from Chicago, she had the rare requirement to go to The Center within 48 hours and get her goals worked out and a slip signed by the staff she worked with up there that indicated she had been there, and it would have listed her goals.  She had until Wednesday night to do this and bring me proof.  She felt it was not a thing she had to do at all, so even with the threat of exit facing her, she didn’t bother.  I told her at the time, and to be honest, she had it in writing, that if she didn’t do this, she would be exited.

It didn’t take her long to also break one of our totes.  I originally told her that her pull-along suitcase was good enough, as long as she kept everything in it, but going to the other staff member and insisting she have one was important to her.  Within an hour, it was broken.  Why?  Because she put that heavy suitcase on the lid with nothing in the tote.  The lid? Crushed.  The tote became unusable immediately.  There went $17.00 in a matter of a few minutes.  She batted her eyes at me, “I didn’t know it was broke. It wasn’t broke when I got it.”  That’s because you’re the one who broke it, sweetie.  “For real? I did not!”

Between her inability to follow directions and her destructive tendencies, she has to exit.  I spoke to the executive director and verified that I am doing the right thing.  Then I gave her an exit statement that specifically says she has until Monday morning to gather her things and leave.  I also gave her a list of other local shelters and specifically told her she had to call them.  Whether she does or not, she has violated rules here and shown far too much disrespect for the staff here.

She said she didn’t have a mental health issue, no such diagnosis.  We have others up here coping with issues and on meds who have all come and told me she is “crazy”.  We can do nothing about that.  As long as she is not harmful to others or herself, we have to let it go.

She tried to tell another woman of color in the room that I am prejudiced against her color, and that is why she has to leave.  I just shook my head.  The woman she said this to, and a Native American woman who is staying here both said nothing could be farther from the truth.  I already knew that.  I work with those who will work with me accomplishing their goals, and I am happy to do it.  They could even be green, and I wouldn’t care.

The closest example I could find to someone with her behavior is Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?  If you have never seen that film, watch it.

The person who came into our shelter by request from the executive director is gone as of this morning.  I saw her out back complaining to someone else about my racist tendencies.  The woman she was talking to was white. I recall her calling me a dried up old whore in the process.  I’m also prejudiced against the poor, she claims.

When someone has a Section 8 housing voucher for Cook County, Illinois, and comes to another state without validating a reason to be here, let alone see if her voucher can be transferred, it’s frustrating.  I can’t find her housing – nobody can.  Section 8 housing isn’t available for the people with vouchers from here, let alone anyone else.  The waiting list is several years long for those who have vouchers already.  When you get on the list here, you might as well know that you’re waiting years before getting into a place.  No one is special.  No one.

I tried to explain this to her many times.

She was required by the office to go to another agency and bring back proof she’d been there and listed her goals.  She didn’t do that.  She didn’t think she had to. She was warned ahead of time – in writing, even – that she would be exited if she didn’t do this. She had all kinds of excuses, none of them valid.

Besides the exit statement, I gave her a list of other shelters to try to get into.  She didn’t call the others, and she threw the list away.

This doesn’t make me prejudiced, and it doesn’t make me racist.  It makes me a follower of the rules and policies, and their consequences for everyone.  Some people’s ignorance just screams at you.  If anything, I am prejudiced against selective ignorance.

Anyway, she’s gone.

A young lady with a child was to come today to call the office about getting in.  The office opens at 9.  She has no phone, so she was going to call from here.  She didn’t show.  It turns out she was able to call the office without coming here.  In talking to the assistant director, she understood that being here would not protect her or be a safe enough place against the threats she is receiving to steal her children from her.  She really needed to relocate.  Our assistant director gave her a connection in another town a good two hours from here, and she ended up calling there.  They would pick her up and get her out of town.

So it’s quiet now.  I’m kind of okay with that.  Unless something crazy happens, we’ll be quiet at least until tomorrow, and I can easily concentrate on those who are here and working hard toward their goals.

It’s been a heck of a week.  So many prima doñas in one place is a bit much.  That much ego smells really bad.  I’ll update the issue after the weekend.  To be honest, I’ve been working on past and current paperwork today.  The paperwork can be a bit much, and it has been recently.  I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this week helping residents find jobs, dealing with unmedicated and unmanaged mental and addiction issues, and some remarkably inept resident self-organization, or lack thereof, attempts.  Mostly lack thereof.

I tried reading.  I got about this […] far, and at the expense of decent amounts of sleep. Because of an unrelated incident, in fact, I lost an entire night of sleep, too.  There’s no way to catch that up.

My age makes recuperation nearly impossible.  It could take a month.

I’m not on duty either Saturday or Sunday nights.  Watch me stay out of the way as much as possible.  I’d like to say I will force it if I have to, but we all know that isn’t likely to happen.

After all this time – years, in fact – I should have been able to balance work and personal life.  No such possibility.  Why?  Because I live where I work, and I’ve received very little, if any, administrative and general support.  That’s my fault primarily because, unlike everyone, I don’t put myself first.  Everybody thinks they should come first, at the expense of my having any sort of personal life.  I can do one of two things:  force the personal life aspect, or give it all up until I retire in November.  Guess which will end up winning out in the end.

That is, unless I die first.

I don’t even know where to start with this, but I am at the point where I no longer feel productive, and being around most of the residents here is now depressing me a great deal.

What happened to my life?  I had one.  I know I did.  But five years of this, where I chose to do good, rather than make money, has become a real issue.  I turned down a $40,000 a year job in order to do this.  Some might say it wasn’t a wise move.

I am 62 now, and I can retire.  Yet here I am, not quite getting to the Social Security office to get this ball rolling.

We are four months from winter overflow, where the productivity is even less than it is during program-based.  My depression is greater, and not because it’s winter.  The women here now fluctuate between self-motivation and no motivation.  During winter overflow, they aren’t even motivated to clean up after themselves, let alone come in sober.  I end up losing my ability to use any of my education in social work or my plethora of resources acquired over the last 25 years.

And I have to live onsite.  The office for this shelter is in my room – all 180 feet of it.  There is no alternative, and many of the more ungracious ones think I’m homeless because I’m here.  I’m not.  I’m tired of telling them that.  I’m also tired of explaining what I do all day, which is work.  All day, every day, seven days a week.  Paperwork, maintenance, cleaning, and so forth.  That doesn’t include the meetings I attend, or the people I need to see while I represent the residents to agencies and others.  I do far more than my monthly stipend would indicate.  To say that most of my time is volunteered would be an understatement. Of the 127 hours I work each week, 19 are paid – through housing, utility and cash – and the rest are volunteer.

I have watched others whose enthusiasm for their work within this ministry crumble because of the weight of the volunteerism expected of them.  I can’t say that I think the volunteer hours are expected, but the work needs to be done, and I am expected to do the work.  No one else is really available to do most of it.  I also don’t think that anyone on the board or in the administration of the ministry has a clue as to the magnitude of the work that has to be done here.  That’s the trick.  No one else working here in this building, either the women’s shelter or the men’s shelter, can do the paperwork in particular.  Only two other people here have the expertise to do mechanical things here, and both of them are on the men’s side, already busy enough to make them grouchy some days (and I don’t blame them at all!)

I nearly died two different times here.  Nobody knows but me, but it has been enough of a wake up call to force me into retirement.  I can feel my body shutting down because of the weight of it all, and I need to stop before I become so incapacitated that I will, quite literally, die here.

My advice to all is to limit yourself and don’t give to the point that you fall apart.  God wouldn’t want that.  Do what you can, but not so much that you become your work, which is exactly what I have done.  There is more life out there.  Be strong, be active.  Respect your personal life.  Others will respect you for it.  The ones who don’t….well, they need to get out of your life.

What a rotten day, even for a Monday.  It’s Bug Inspection Day, and all but one gets a note about too much stuff. It’s an exitable offense. Then there was the lovely call from the office about a possible intake.  This one was a “no” because she had been barred last year.  She is barred permanently – both program-based and winter overflow – because of her poor behavior last time she was here.

She needs more than shelter.  She is 67.  She suffers from some severe mental issues that also include prejudice like I’d never seen it before.  She needs assisted living for her mental health, and she has the money to do it.  We are a homeless shelter.  We cannot provide the mental health assistance she truly needs.  She is alienated from her family and refuses to work with her family attorney, so no one can commit her, which is what she truly, truly needs.  In a whites-only facility (if there is one).

So now, at almost noon, I need to get my hair washed, and prepare for tonight.  All the residents here are going to freak when they get their notices, and I’m on duty alone.  No volunteers.  I’ll have to listen to the whining and complaining and the myriad excuses for why they can’t follow the rules.  I’m set to exit them all if I have to.  Both of us on staff could use a good night’s sleep.

Our shelter is on the front lines of battling homelessness and starvation, along with many other places.  The other places don’t all happen to be in this very dangerous and scary neighborhood.  Another shelter and a meal site, though, are located about three-four blocks from here to the west.

In a lot of ways, the minute we step outside, we are in danger.  Shootings occur both at night and during the day.  Robberies are far too constant.  The attitudes of some of the residents here, and of a lot of those who come to our meal site have gone from at least having respect for where they are to violent negativity.

This past week’s resident, who I wrote about last time, is a classic example.  For us on the women’s side, the percentage is much lower than on the men’s side, but when we get that one resident, it is very intense and causes far too much stress, especially for me as the point of women’s shelter operational authority.  To be passively threatened with harm doesn’t help, because I’ll be spending at least a month looking over my shoulder.  Sleep isn’t easy, and my entire body is clenched all the time.  I hurt right now more than I have ever hurt because it’s harder for me now at my age to deflect.  My “Wonder Woman” persona is old, and my bracelets are tarnished and rusty.

But it’s quiet with the ladies with this issue resolved, the mom and child feel safe now, and we move forward in peace.

Things for which we are all grateful.

It’s Tuesday morning, and I have to just grin a lot.  It was a rough Monday, but when the antics of an adult are such that all you can do is think of a toddler throwing a tantrum, all you can do is smile.  First, it makes them even more angry when you smile, and second, it goes to show what spoiled children become when they are young adults.  (Lesson to parents everywhere!)

When this young lady turns 40, she will discover that this just won’t work for her anymore.  In truth, it’s not working for her now.

When she got here, she was enthusiastic about getting things done.  She got a job right away and claimed she was going to save money.  After she’d been working a couple of weeks, she quit, claiming pregnancy complications. She admitted she was lucky to get the job since she’s pregnant, but she just wasn’t “feeling it” any more.  She quit working.  She got this hot idea that she could get into an apartment complex where she wouldn’t have to pay rent, but even telling her they were very strict in their entry requirements didn’t stop her from putting all her eggs in one basket with them, and assuming they would take her.  When she was denied, she was actually surprised.  She had an outstanding utility bill, one eviction and a history of late payments on rent.

In all of our conversations with her, it seemed her train of thought was that she was too cute for people to deny her.  Ah, well, young lady, cute gets old.

We tried and we tried, but in the end, conversations with the office pretty much told the story.  She had been here three months, nothing has happened at least in the last six weeks, and her reality is that she has to leave this Saturday.  I’m sure this is quite a shock for someone whose sole purpose right now seems to be to hang out at the public library and fool around for hours.

She stomps up and down the hall, makes snide remarks constantly, and walks with her nose so far in the air, I’m surprised she hasn’t fallen over backwards.  We say nothing.  The more she does like this, the more she hangs herself for any future years in which she may ask to come back.

I’m sorry for her, but I’m even sorrier for the baby.  She’s not a good mother to her other two children (both with their fathers), and I really don’t think that will change with this one.

As it turns out, for all her protests against going to Humility of Mary that is exactly where she went.  In a lot of ways, it was best for her.  She can go from their Emergency Shelter to their Housing First program and on to Family Housing when the baby is born.

One of the greatest things is to get a resident who is so absolutely driven that you have no worries whatsoever.

To start, both the office and I had a gut feeling about this young lady.  Granted, she was coming straight from the Chicago area, and we have a general policy that we don’t take people during program-based coming straight from the Chicago area.  We have many, many reasons for this, the key being that they have to have lived in the Quad City area for at least three months.  Not that they’re any easier to handle necessarily, but their general familiarity with the area makes it easier to help them with resources and where to send them for various things.  A lot of times coming from another state, they don’t understand that often resources are different as you go from state to state, and so preconceived notions tend to be ingrained.  It is very difficult sometimes to break those notions and its accompanying behaviors.

Patience, love and respect often go unrewarded, but not in this case.  This young lady was the exception.  She left the Chicago area already hired for a job with a major employer here, she had no idea where she would end up living, she didn’t know what was available to her that was safe and comfortable in the area.  But she was open to all the assistance we could give her.  We helped her find a safe place to live.  She saved her own money and didn’t want or need rental or deposit assistance.  We put her in touch with a furniture warehouse that helps the poor with furniture needs.  She didn’t overuse that program, asking only for basic things like a bed, couch, and a dresser.  She figured she could acquire other things she may need on her own.

Not bad for a 24-year-old, eh?  I’ve seen this here with older women, but this is the youngest single young lady we’ve had here for a good couple of years with this kind of drive and ambition.  She was here with us just a few days over a month.

I’m glad when we have successes like this.  I really am.  That’s why we’re here.

One of our most diligent residents, working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. five, sometimes six, days a week, always on time to work and here, dedicated to her family members, dead tired during the week, got a call at 8:30 last night from one of her nieces.  She had already had her shower, cleaned the tub from the residue always present from the work she does, and was in bed drifting off to sleep.

This niece has a boyfriend whose sister and this sister’s boyfriend came to the state, flopped at her house, claimed to be looking for jobs, didn’t pay for anything, didn’t even watch the kids, and yet thought they could do what they wanted.

That would be no.  A relative from the state that was their home was to send them money so they could leave, basically because this niece had been through enough with them.  That money was to come today, and they were told to leave.

Hence the call to Aunt Vic.  She can fix everything, you know.  She’s built like a bouncer, is very calm but takes no baloney from anyone, and is, of course, always available 24 hours a day.  They asked her to spend the night so that this sister and her boyfriend leave tomorrow, are aware they cannot come back, and help this niece (old enough to do this on her own, really) stand her ground.

The woman is stressed.  She is calm, but it’s going to kill her eventually, all this need to protect her family along with the family’s ridiculous dependence on her.

Add to this the problem with her best friend, who has a serious drinking problem.  This friend just got out of rehab, stays with us at the shelter, and she’s watching her constantly forcing the friend to go to AA meetings and to be accountable to her.

I admire her for all she is doing.  She’s homeless, working hard so she can save money for an apartment, has been through hell, apparently has family and friends who NEED to learn to live without her and can’t, and she still gets through life beautifully.

Somehow we acquired a new resident a week ago who doesn’t understand “program-based”.  She thinks because she got in with a clean background, that we are just a flop house and she doesn’t have to do anything.  She will be shocked with the after-effects of her poor behavior.

After the first night, she became so comfortable here that she began to selectively regard some of the rules as not applicable to her.  She has been in the kitchen before it opens at 7, rudely walking into the rooms of other residents without permission, touching them, preaching to them, getting loudly upset and vocal when she offers them food and they say, “no thank you”…taking coffee and tea to her room when the rules specifically state water only (because of the carpet.),

She has violated my privacy completely in my own room – and this is my home!  She just blatantly decided to walk in because she felt like it. No knock, no waiting for permission, just throw herself in my chair or on my bed.  Do not touch.  Do NOT touch.

When I asked her what goals she had here, her response was, “Oh, I don’t know….get to know people?  I like to talk to people.”  This woman has been everywhere in the last several years.  After all this time, she is still floating around the country from place to place, never stopping.  It’s fine to be a free spirit, but have a little respect while you’re at it for the place to where you’ve floated.  And rely on yourself, not others.

I’m sorry, but this is not how we’re set up.  In this situation, you don’t get to be that self-contained.  You have to have focus, get a job, get an apartment, and she just doesn’t intend to do any of that.  She has a crutch she uses for two reasons:  she has osteoporosis that affects one leg, and she craves attention.  You can tell when she’s using it to get attention.  She leans heavily on it and pulls a sad hangdog expression.  This was not a new diagnosis for her – just new people to pull it on.

The quandary here is this:  What the heck do we do with her?  There is no funding to send her on to where she would be more comfortable – and that would be a university town like Iowa City.  No agency or church has funding for that.  We certainly don’t.  As irritating as she is, it doesn’t help to just put her on the street, even though we will have to do it if she continues to try to fly under the radar with her drinking.  We have access to a Breathalyzer, and we’re going to have to start using it.  (Zero tolerance is zero tolerance, and she is already aware.)

To be honest, this is not so much a mental illness as it is a lifestyle for her.  She’s been this way all her life.  To this day, she blames her parents.  It’s not their fault.  It’s hers.  She is 53 years old.  When does she become responsible without excuses for her own life?

Two weeks ago, we had a new intake who we thought was clean, because the main office found nothing on her checking area records in either our state, or the first county closest to us in the neighboring state.  In ours, court records are statewide in one online site.  In the other state, their population is so huge that they go county by county with sites.

I had a problem with her drinking once.  We are a zero tolerance facility, and she didn’t know that before she was told she passed the background inspection.  So she had been drinking the day she came in.  Other than that, she appeared to be nice enough, and ambitious enough to get an apartment soon.  She was on disability and didn’t work, otherwise, so no need to be looking for a job.

On Monday, she said she wouldn’t be in because she had to go to court the next morning in her hometown in a county near St. Louis – again not anywhere near us.  She said she would be back the next night.  She wasn’t.  She wasn’t in the night after that, either.

That’s when I started looking on my own at that particular county’s web site.  Holy moly!  Not only had she been violating several orders of protection on her  in the past few months, she wasn’t keeping in contact with her probation officer.  Then there was the list of charges that had been leveled against her in the past several years for various aggravated assaults and both Public Intox and DUIs, and the Criminal Felony DUI which was currently in place, which is why she had to go to court.

She failed to appear (FTA) anyway, so the bond they had on her was forfeited and another bond for $50,000 was levied against her with a warrant for arrest.  No one has seen her for days.  The fact that she’s missing makes me think she won’t dare come back here, and that the courts should be checking ALL neighboring states to find her, too.

She doesn’t get to stay here anymore. To try to stay would be an Interstate Flight to Avoid Prosecution.  We comply with law enforcement agencies, even if they aren’t local.  And if we have to, we will call the local police department and give them all the information they need to arrest this woman if she shows up.

This is the second Interstate Flight we’ve had this season.

Because of the stroke I had on the 4th, I am going  to retire a month early.  I feel useless here, which should be no surprise to anyone.  This place moves fast.  There is an incredible amount of work to do daily.  I can do very little of it – but I sure can bark orders!  Yes, I do have my speech back.  It didn’t take long for that part of it.  Mobility and writing are no good.  They will take some work.

Meanwhile, work goes on.  I have passed the baton to the new program director already.  She’s good.  And we have had two exits and three intakes since.  It’s nice to know the person taking my place knows what she’s doing.  One exit was a tough one, but she handled it like a pro, and I didn’t even find out about what happened until it was over.  She needed no supervision.  That is the mark of an intuitive individual.

I will write one last post when I leave, and then this blog site will be done.  I’ll clean house and move on to my Gizzie Dailies and  officially retire.

This week has been a challenge.  We needed to exit one woman (her time was up).  She didn’t show last night, so we’re packing her up today and washing her bedding.  Another one has tried this week to manipulate our system, thinking she could just slide and make things work her way.  That was the one most annoying, and she’s not going to get away with it.

A 64-year-old came in representing herself as a family one night, having cleared the background check, telling the assistant director she was bringing her grandson.  She’d been here about 3 years ago with one of her grandsons, who was, at the time, 9 years old.  I barely remembered him, but as long as he fit the parameters, it was fine.

He didn’t fit.  We don’t allow junior high age boys to stay at the women’s shelter.  No child who has reached 12 can stay.  It has been this way since the shelter was first opened 4 1/2 years ago.  She knew this coming in. 12 year old boys are too mature, and therefore too old.  Not only that, but she wrote down the wrong grandson on the intake form, anyway.  The intake is a contract.  Who stays here is based on that contract.

She whined and complained to the new girl, using her own old age as a crutch for “not knowing” and insisted that the new girl call the office to confirm. It was as if we hadn’t discussed this already among the staff and office.  It was as if I were already dead and hadn’t done this already – and hadn’t been the program director since the shelter was first established.  I was the one who wrote the memo saying she had to go, and why.  I still have authority here for two more weeks.

If I weren’t protecting my blood pressure, I would have told her off in spades.  You don’t come in here and try to manipulate the staff the way she tried.

She used her grandson to try to get in here as a family.  Then she wrote down the wrong child, who is actually 18 and couldn’t stay here, anyway.  THEN she tried to switch children.  From here on in, the keyword for her is “manipulator”.  Absolutely not allowed, and I am advising the office to bar her this time.

Hoarding

Manipulating

Age

Entitlement

Foil Helmets

Frustration

Choice

Resources

The Government

First person, told as a story, more women’s fiction