It's the one that the General Assistance office put me in. I'm scared that if I go to another one they'll either cut my benefits or do something that will put me on the street. What they do at the shelters is that they do "intakes" from 4 to 10, which means that if you line up and they have a bed they'll let you in. What this means in practice is that if you line up and they
happen to like you then they'll let you in. Given that there aren't enough beds to go around, and the staff aren't being paid, this means that some of the shelters have incredibly weird ways of dealing with "clients".
Back in December there were these torrential rains so a bunch of us stayed in St. Mary's when they opened up beds in the basement. As far as Sanctuary on 8th street is concerned, when St. Mary's was full some of us went there. It was being run by a group of latinos, some of whom didn't speak English (or pretended not to). They appeared to be saving beds for latinos. Given that there are shortages of places to stay and they may have been ex-homeless themselves, I don't know that I blame them. But it means that the entire system is being run on an old-school graft basis.
At MSC South they feed people 3,000+ calorie meals (ENORMOUS amounts of food) and had us eat at schoolchildren's desks.
I wish I was joking. It was insane and disgusting. I felt incredibly uncomfortable.
There isn't a word for it other than to say that I was worried that the staff might be conducting some sort of psychological experiment on the poor.
They also don't allow people to stay inside the building the entire day (they kick you out at 7am and then you have to line back up at 4pm and hope you get in), which means I have to find shelter in a public building - the only one being the library and a couple of "community spaces" at the bottoms of office towers. While I spend the day worrying if I'll have a place to stay that night.
Not usually a big deal, unless it rains, or I'm being followed by aggressive homeless in the public parks...
I could line up at General Assistance and see if they'll put me in another shelter (with a permanent bed), but my case is on the fifth of April and I don't know if they'll move me. They tried to deny my benefits with three days notice because I didn't have paperwork that showed that I have under a certain amount of money - even though they only told me that was for a $100 stipend. Which, I mean, come on. $100 isn't going to change my situation. So given that, it looks like someone at the office was either incompetent, or, more likely, they attempt to give people incredibly short notice on denying benefits in order to push people back out onto the street so they don't have to pay for shelter.
I'll go and ask again and look into this tomorrow, but I don't know if I move if my situation will become worse. If moving is even possible.
