Volunteers of America Is Lying About Its Care For The Homeless

The answer to the question of quality care for the homeless in my town is not the homeless shelter. The Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Shelter does not offer quality care. Residents are expected to act forever grateful that they are not being kicked out, or they will be kicked out.
Quality care of the homeless and the under-sheltered in my town is dependent upon one person helping another person. It involves one investing oneself into the well-being of another. The selfless and caring attitude and behavior of the Good Samaritan story, as told by Jesus, gives all of us something of a template to follow for the quality care of another.
The Samaritan finds a man who had been beaten, stripped and robbed, left at roadside to die. The wounded man has already been seen and ignored by two other men who found religious and societal reasons to leave him to his fate. The traveling Samaritan sees the man, binds his wounds and puts the fallen man on his mount. Thus, the Samaritan walked his animal to the nearest inn. There, the Samaritan kept watch over the man for a day, and tended to him. Next day, the Samaritan gave the innkeeper two days’ wages and instructions to take care of the fallen man. If the innkeeper spends more on the man than the money given, the Samaritan will return on his way back and make it right with the innkeeper.
There is a great deal of personal involvement, self-forgetfulness, compassion and trust in this brief but powerful example. Recall that, after Jesus told this story, he said to his listeners, “Go and do the same yourself.”

The Volunteers of America national office website says this in its “homeless” section: “Once Volunteers of America engages homeless individuals, youth, and families with children, we stay with them for as long as it takes to return them to self-sufficiency …”
This, of course, is a lie in Sheridan.
I know. I work daily on my own at no cost to help the people the shelter has wadded up and tossed out.

Shelter Tolerates Only Perfect Guests

If you were to be of enough bad fortune that you had to stay at the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, you would sign an intake document that states that you will abide by the rules in the “Rules and Guidelines.”
This, of course, does not make you safe from the random reasons that the director and staff will come up with to manipulate you or kick you out. It does, however, obligate you to become a perfect guest.
Regardless of your past experience, regardless of some organizational flaws in your life, regardless of the rolls and pitches of everyday life, and regardless of the already too-stressful circumstances that have rendered you homeless, you will adhere to the rules or you will be asked to leave.
What is wanted at this shelter is 30 to 35 perfect homeless guests with no discernible issues that need to be addressed, no behavioral irregularities, and no noticeable emotional scars or mental illnesses. If you are not such a one, you will be better off elsewhere.

'Merry Christmas, Now Get Your Butt Out Into That Cold and Snow!'

Nothing gets in the way of kicking someone out of the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
They advertise case management, but it doesn’t take much program development to learn how to say, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I am hopeful that not very many people know that Volunteers of America, the managers of the shelter, is listed as a church. It is not exactly the hallmark of the Gospel that people in need are readily dismissed, with no concern about where they might go from here.
For example:
It was a cold Wyoming Christmas Day when a female resident, a veteran, returned to the shelter. She had stayed the night with a friend in town. The rules say that residents have to get permission to be gone overnight, otherwise be in by the 10 p.m. curfew.
This young woman said she wasn’t aware of the overnight rule.
This is quite likely, as no staff at the shelter has ever been trained in how to do an intake. Each one does what he or she thinks is right. During the calendar year of 2007, the staff never had training on registering residents, to get everyone on the same page.
The shelter dictator told the woman she would have to leave.
Christmas morning she was kicked out into the snow.
“They didn’t care whether I had another place to go or not,” she told me.
Out! Out! Out! This is how my local shelter treats people in need.
Nothing in the policy and procedures of the shelter indicates that a resident must be kicked out if they are absent overnight. It may be done at the pleasure of the director. And what a pleasure it apparently is for her.
The shelter gets federal per diem grant money to take care of veterans. The story of this woman’s treatment is offensive on so many levels.
I can’t believe this is allowed to go on.
If you would like to voice your concern, click on the little envelope below and email roger-casey@mail.va.gov This will send this post to Roger, and gives you a chance to comment to him. Roger is the initial contact person for the VA Per Diem Grant Program.

Shelter Usually Eats Dignity For Lunch

She couldn’t believe she was in a homeless shelter.
At 30, she had a college degree in business, a daughter in elementary school, and an ex-husband.
Circumstances sometimes twist, as they had with her.
She came to the shelter with nervous, defeated tears.
For many people who are unaccustomed to requiring the use of a homeless shelter, the entrance and the first few days are emotionally devastating. Adults feel like they are admitting failure, that there is little or no hope, that the simplest choice or activity is overwhelming.
She came to my office fraught with these difficulties. Her daughter was in her ex-husband’s care.
Her own homelessness was too much to bear at the time, so I suggested she relax for a day or two, and get herself used to the people and the schedule of the shelter.
From the first day, she made it clear that she “hated the shelter.” I understood what she meant – this was the worst that things had ever gotten.
She put up with a lot while she was at the shelter – her own feelings, arguments with other women in the facility (lots of gossip and snippiness in the women’s area; men’s area too for that matter), the occasional bullying of the director, job-seeking (and job-finding!) and a trip to jail because she missed a court hearing because the notice was sent by mail to an old address.
She worked days at her new job. She still didn’t have a place to live.
The director asked me how come I hadn’t met with the woman in a while. “She is at work during the day,” I explained.
“Well, she needs to work on her program.”
“She is working on her program, most of which is getting and sustaining a job,” I said. On I talked to the wall that was herself.
When the director heard this woman say she “hated it here,” she was ready to kick her out at once.
I tried to explain what the woman meant, but it was more wall-talking for me.
The director left it to me to kick the woman out.
Somehow, I never got around to it, and within a few days, she found a place to live for a while. A place that wasn’t the greatest, but, it also wasn’t the shelter.
The woman somehow escaped with her dignity in tact. That is a rarity at the “Her Clutches Homeless Shelter” in Sheridan.

Part 2 -- The Day I Met My First Homeless Person

We still had 150 miles to go – another stretch of Wyoming real estate with civilization poorly represented. The route took us past Shirley Basin, Medicine Bow, Rock River, and then to Laramie.
The elevation at Laramie, which hosts Wyoming’s only four-year state college, is 7,186 feet. A trip to Denver, the Mile-High City, is 1,900 feet downhill from Laramie. In mid-March, old snow is still clutching at dead lawns, and new snow via blizzards thick as bricks remains a possibility until sometime in May.
I felt lost and responsible with Ralph. He was physically a weathered old man, but gentle and vulnerable in his bearing. He told me he trusted God. When he first got into the car in Shoshoni, I remember him saying, as if to the dashboard, “I’m a Christian person, actually.” I think he was telling me not to be afraid. I wasn’t scared of Ralph, but I really didn’t know what I was going to do with him.
I drove to Hill Hall, parked, and asked Ralph to wait in the car. One of the guys I played Risk with on the floor above mine was a member of the Salvation Army Church in Laramie. I asked my friend what I was supposed to do with Ralph.
At this time, the Salvation Army operated a shelter in the downtown area. It was recommended that I take him there. I got the address and got back to the car. I turned the key to get us downtown, but my Vega was dead, electronically speaking.
My Risk playing friend didn’t have a car, so my next option was a friend, Dave, in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house on campus. Between the two of us, we got Ralph to the downtown shelter.
I was focused on introducing Dave to Ralph, and telling Dave what all we had done that day. I don’t remember the look of the shelter, but the feel of it is still with me – more like an alley than a street. A broken, lonely atmosphere.
“Thank you very much for the ride and everything,” he said as he gathered himself and stepped to the curb. “You’re a very kind young man.”
Dave walked Ralph into the shelter. I stayed in the car. This didn’t feel right. It seemed like we were putting him in storage.
“Do you think he’s gonna be alright?” I asked Dave.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Hope so.”
“Yeah. Me too.”

The Day I Met My First Homeless Person

The first time I ever met a homeless person I was driving back to the University of Wyoming after spring break, 1976.
I had just turned 19, and was in the middle of my second semester of a fairly directionless college education.
During school, I drove my parents’ Chevy Vega. At the time, $5 in my pocket was enough for the 350-mile trip from my hometown in the north part of the state to Laramie in the south. That $5 was enough – $2 for gas, and $3 for lunch at McDonald’s in Casper. The trip took seven hours, no matter how fast you drove.
The town of Shoshoni marked the end of the first 100 miles of the trip. I had to turn left at the 76 station, drive past the best milk-shake shop in the world, and scoot southeastward out of town to endure the next 100 miles of nothing before reaching Casper.
Standing at a turnout just on the outskirts of Shoshoni, there was a grandfatherly man holding out a piece of cardboard with too much writing on it to read, and too faintly printed. I drove past him and it struck me to stop. I pulled around and got out to talk to him. It was windy with nips of winter still persisting in the air.
His name was Ralph.
He was, I’m guessing, 65.
I told him I was going to Laramie, and he said that would be fine with him.
Dry weeds waggled by the wind on the roadside as we drove along the chipped and weatherworn two-lane highway.
Ralph used to have a wife and some kids. He owned his own paint store somewhere in the Midwest. Now he didn’t have anyone and no place to live. I remember being confused by his story. How did one go from having to not having. How do you lose people, and how is it that a person could not have an address?
Sure, mine was 216 Hill Hall at the time, but my permanent address was the house I had lived in since age 6.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with Ralph when I got to Laramie. He couldn’t stay in the dorm with me and my upstate New York recreation major roommate. I hadn’t a clue.
First, though, was a stop for lunch at the Casper McDonald’s. Ralph had never been to one. He tried to sit down in a seat, expecting a waitress to come to the table. I explained that we ordered at the counter. I let him order first.
“Do you have any Russian tea?” he asked the girl at the counter. She pointed to the menu overhead, which he had not seen, and he stepped back to decide what to get. Coffee and three cheeseburgers. That still left me enough for a Big Mac and a Coke.
He licked the sandwich wrappers clean. Melted cheese and a few smears of catsup from the sandwiches.
“I think I’ll keep this cup,” he said, after he drank his coffee.

(Continued tomorrow)

Shelter Residents Expected To Spy On One Another When Away

Should you become a resident at the Sheridan Community Shelter, you could be manipulated into spying on your fellow shelter dwellers against your will.
I have seen the director haul people into her office and grill them about what another resident was doing while in town, and who they were with.
“Was he with a woman?”
“I think so. We were just driving by.”
“What did she look like? Who was she?”
“I don’t really know.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just sitting on a bench.”
“Ah! Aha!”
Good lord.
One of our female residents had lunch with a friend in a downtown tavern, and was read the riot act for calling public transportation from “a bar” for a ride back to the shelter.
The director fretted over the absent residents, about whether they were having sex, getting drunk, using drugs or causing trouble in some way. Not a very positive outlook.
She once forbade one male resident from talking to another male resident’s girlfriend on shelter property or anywhere else. It didn’t seem to matter to her that the two men were good friends. In fact, the two left the shelter and still share an apartment. I reckon both of them are talking to the girlfriend again.
I often told residents that it was none of our business what they did during the day. “Just be in by curfew.” I never could quite grasp the amount of control that she wanted over the lives of people who could use a boost at the shelter.
Maybe the Volunteers of American Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter could shorten its name to, “Her Clutches.”

Don't Miss Added Link 'Profound Message Of Hope' -- Very Cool

This morning I added a link to a great 5-minute video piece set to the song 'Everything,' by a Christian band called 'Lifehouse.' Over on the right. See it? Profound Message of Hope.
Please feel free to comment after you view by clicking right below here somewhere; where it says comments. 6

Still A Conscientious Objector to Shelter's Poor Treatment of Homeless People

You might be wondering when I am going to get past my objections to the poor treatment of people at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
So am I.
I confess there is no little conflict within me between wanting to be seen as a nice guy by everyone, and feeling obligated by conscience and faith to call fouls in order to set things right.
There is no doubt in my mind that the abuses at the shelter continue as a natural mode of operation. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t wonder whose innate dignity, self-esteem, or value is being crushed under the jackboots (or tennies) of the director and her well-curded staff.
If an outfit is operating under the premise of a compassionate and kind response to people in need, but, actually operates with a stunted lifeless pretense of compassion and kindness, there will result four characteristics as this outfit – let’s call it “the shelter” – attempts to bridge its pretense with reality:
1. Hypocrisy. You say you do one thing, but you do another.
2. Deception. You have to find new ways to keep up the façade to gain and keep the trust (and the cash) of the community.
3. Manipulation. The people you supposedly serve find themselves lorded over and controlled by fear.
4. Dismissiveness. Dignity and respect that are due every person is consciously withheld. The person him/herself is tossed out like used tissue when they will not submit to #3. The CEO of VOA seems AOK with this as long as he believes the crinkled tissue “only” represents 10 percent of the residents. I think one person so treated is too many.
This, then, is no time for me to fold my hands and bless the endeavors (“E for ‘effort’” rather than “O for ‘odious’”) of a work-gone-sour in my community that is clearly hypocritical, deceptive, manipulative and dismissive. That may be the quiet “nice guy” thing to do, but, it requires a good man doing nothing to allow the triumph of evil. Thanks Edmund Burke.
So, this is still me, blowing my little trumpet.

Less Than Six Percent Homeless By Choice

Okay, my first-ever poll has closed.
Of course, this blog is young enough that almost everything is first-ever.
According to a support center for people who are homeless, less than 6 percent of the homeless are homeless by choice.
This matches my own experience at the homeless shelter I worked at for a year. We saw about 370 people, and about 20 of those were people who were not interested in programs and services. They were just stopping off on their way to no place special.
When I asked on guy where he was from, he said, “The highway.” He said he had been on the road for 50 years.
Next time someone tells you people are homeless because they want to be, you can tell them that isn't true for 94 percent of them. Even those in the six-percentile are due dignity and respect. Let him among you who have always made perfect choices cast the first stone.

'Good money' -- Money That Makes A Difference

There is good money and bad money spent on people in need.

Here is an example:

A guy is living on a front-room couch in a friend’s apartment. This is a person who can be considered “precariously housed.” He is under some pressure from his friend to hurry up and find a place of his own.

The guy has already been to the homeless shelter, and he doesn’t want anything to do with the weird ways by which this particular shelter is directed. He makes a rare find: an apartment that is available. The property manager has agreed to hold it for him for just a few days.

The problem is, to get in, he has to come up with $135 up front. He won’t get paid for 8-10 days. This is a pretty typical situation for anyone looking for a place. He is $135 away from a missed opportunity, with darn few other options.

This particular $135 is “good money.” That is, this money is going to perform well. It is going to bring a young man out of homelessness, and into an apartment so he can gain some ground and get his life settled down.

I consulted a pastor about helping me get some money to this guy. The pastor said that his church does not help people with rent. In other words, if I come up short during the month, I can’t go to this church to help me make rent. Different churches and outreach groups have different means whereby they serve the community. It will be a project of mine to try to put these together so I can match the need to the appropriate helping agency.

At any rate, I gave the pastor my “good money” speech, and he liked it. So, the guy got his apartment.

Another example: A friend who doesn’t have two nickels to rub together is lacking $40 for a physician’s physical as a requirement to get into an effective alcohol treatment program. That $40 is good money.

Other examples: The cost of a set of work clothes for someone’s new job is good money. The cost of sending a wayward kid home to his parents in the South is good money. The cost of the fee for a new birth certificate that got lost or stolen is good money. Circumstances many times place different values on money. Sometimes ten bucks is just ten bucks. Other times, it could be the difference between making or breaking someone.

The Risk Of Showing Kindness

It is difficult for me to give money to a person who asks for help without the thought, “He’s just going to buy beer,” flitting through my mind.

I don’t let this stop me, but it shows me that I am still “trained” to think along the lines of a culture that has grown cynical and weary from real abuses of kindness that all of us are aware of.
There are what are called “pros” in the begging business – some making a pretty good tax-free income by deceiving the kindhearted. There are shysters in every field. We all know stories about lawyers, doctors, ministers, loan officers, public officials, accountants, personal assistants, etc., who have used dishonest means to get into the conscience of the nice person and abuse that trust.
Anyone trying to lend a hand to someone in need is risking, to some extent, the possibility that they are being fooled.
In my own heart, I have come to terms with this by admitting that I could be ripped off a time or two, but the vast majority of people who seek help or hold signs over by Arby’s in the warmer months are not con artists. They may be stretching the truth a bit, or have their “pitch” down pretty well, but, as a matter of survival rather than trickery.
If we let the shysters stop us, kindness and compassion will freeze in our chests, and beware how dark is that darkness!

My Letter To The National Office of Volunteers Of America

I write to inform you, as a matter of conscience, that you have a blot on your record out here in Wyoming.

The VOA Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter is treating the poor and the vulnerable who seek services there with a brusque, dismissive and depersonalizing air. I estimate that about one-third of the people who enter the shelter are either kicked out or leave on their own because they can no longer tolerate the intrusion and bullying that goes on toward them by the director and staff.

I took it upon myself to advise the local board about this. The vice-president, in the local newspaper, said there was “nothing to” my concerns. The CEO of the Wyoming-Montana VOA disagreed with my statistic, and said it was more like 10 percent. He said this was “a pretty good success rate.” I fail to see how a dismissive and over-lording attitude toward 10 percent of your clientele is “pretty good” in anyone’s world.

I was fired from my job at the shelter just a few days before Christmas because I passionately objected to the treatment of others at the shelter. I am a former minister, and I can tell you that I have never seen a human service program that rides so thoroughly roughshod over its homeless residents. I was extremely bothered by this, and ended up speaking quite boldly and firmly to the director about her unseemly ways. She didn’t take it well. My concerns have been dismissed by VOA board and administration because I am now perceived as merely a disgruntled former employee.

Details about this misshapen program are available at my blog at http://www.helter-shelter.blogspot.com/ This includes the letter I wrote to the board, and many examples of poor treatment. I am not guilty of exaggeration, but even if one were to believe only half of what I wrote, it is clear you have a problem that no one in the local VOA will face.

Your own website on “Working to End Homelessness” says, “We stay with (the homeless) for as long as it takes to return them to self-sufficiency.” In Sheridan, this statement is not truthful.
Sincerely, Tim Cummings

Hoping That, As I Hurl Eggs, None Gets On WySTAR

Of course, I haven’t been very complimentary to the Volunteers of American Wyoming-Montana mis-administrators and the malanthropic tendencies of the overlord at the homeless shelter.
I am duty-bound by my conscience and my faith to call out the abuses of the needy and the abusers. The abusers don’t seem duty-bound to do anything about it, so I play my little trumpet as best as I can.
It may seem strange, then, that today I added a link to WySTAR, Wyoming Substance Abuse and Recovery Center, located in Sheridan.
When you click on the link, you are taken to a Volunteers of American website! I know! Weird, isn’t it?
As an organization, WySTAR just recently moved under the umbrella of Volunteers of America. I hope WySTAR can stay out of the rain. I fear this move may have doubled the reputation of VOA, but halved that of WySTAR.
I am familiar with WySTAR as an effective program. I am familiar with some of its staff (some of the best people I know, including Mark, Beth and Pam). I am also familiar with some of their clients, current, pending and past. I have nothing but good to say about WySTAR, and I hope that my deepest concerns about the failures at the homeless shelter and my offense taken by the smug and self-congratulatory management will not in any way be construed as being aimed anywhere else – particularly, not at WySTAR.

Homeless Vet Kicked Out Of Shelter Gets Second Chance From VA Dom Across The Street

My wife and younger daughter and I went to McDonald’s last night.
While we were ordering, one of the guys who used to be in the fancy homeless vets program at the Sheridan Community Shelter came in with a friend.
Need I mention that the director kicked him out of the shelter? Uh-huh. About three months ago.
Fortunately, the guy got shelter through the VA’s domiciliary, which is right across the street from the homeless shelter. Everybody calls it “The Dom.” Kind of makes you wonder why this duplication of services is there, especially since the specialty of the homeless shelter is kicking people out.
Once across the street and in the Dom, this guy is getting his life straightened out – something I was unable to get going with him because the director had her face in the rule book so much, she forgot the guy was a person.
I was so happy for him – he said he is on track, and things are working out with his girlfriend. He looked good, and said he felt great.
The shelter didn’t give him enough time. You have to succeed quickly at the shelter or you get the boot. Fortunately, the Dom is more patient and caring.
This guy is on his way to better things, no thanks to the homeless shelter’s short-sighted concept of care.

Local money for homeless goes to maintain high lifestyle of local VOA officials

It feels good to support causes that are important to you – the ones that pull at your heart or your conscience, and cause you to want to make a difference somehow.
This is a tremendous human brotherly impulse. Whether we personally reach out and help someone nearby, or send a check to a project, we are tapping into this very basic human facility – good will.
Many fine people in my town give money, food and clothing to the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
Most people don’t require that their donation go to a particular thing – like computers, or children’s toys, or new pillows. They just cheerfully give and assume that their charitable donation will be used to support the homeless.
I am afraid that the cheerful, generous giving of my townspeople would not be so cheerful and not so generous if they new the abuses of their donations.
As I mentioned in January, truckloads of physical donations (clothes, dishes, furniture) were taken to the city landfill. Ever single pair of jeans and every plate and every stuffed animal was donated by the great people in my town.
Not only by the truckload, but sometimes an armload of stuff is brought to the shelter. The nice people are thanked. After they leave, the staff joke about the “crap” people bring, and take the stuff across the street to a conveniently-placed dumpster.
On paper, the donation is written down as an “in kind” donation, which means the monetary value of whatever the items were can be used to match grant funds. In effect, the shelter converts physical donations to cash, and then toss the donation in the landfill.
It is legal, but it is hardly ethical, and lacks the character that one would expect from a religious organization that relies on its neighbors for support.
Sometimes, the shelter receives good old hard cold cash. They get $40,000 a year from some great people who operate a foundation.
Thing is, VOA pays itself $60,000 per year from shelter funds. The local VOA office skims $5,000 per month from income for the shelter. This money is “administrative costs” – not the shelter’s, but the officers of the local VOA. This particular $60,000 does not even pay the salary of one of the top five officers in the local VOA office.
It is my informed opinion that once the top five fill out their expense vouchers for travel and food, there is much more than half a million dollars of the organizational budget.
There is enough financial smoke and mirrors in the organization that it should give anyone pause before they grant thousands of dollars, or take a used pair of shoes to the shelter.

Great work being done for the homeless

This is a great article about a guy in Atlanta who is doing what he can for the homeless in his community.
Notice how he talks about the homeless, about blaming, and about dignity.
If he saw our shelter, I don’t whether he would laugh or cry. Well, probably cry:

http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/win98/homeless.html

Shelter Holds Your Medications Hostage

I am soon to be 51. I never thought I would make it to this number. It is darn near exhausting being 17 three times.
Each year, on Ash Wednesday, the priest has an increasingly vaster canvas on which to draw the ashen cross above my eyeballs when I present my ever-baldening head for marking. I hardly need a reminder that I came from dust, and to dust I will return. (Where is Kansas when you need them?) My feet and my knees and my hips and my back are always singing their painful refrain.
As I get older, I am adding prescriptions to my medicine cabinet at the rate of about one per year. I am up to five, and soon will have to move my stuff from the cabinet to the cedar chest or something.
Many zillions of us are taking medication – for pain, for moods, for a sagging endocrine system, for blood pressure, for fungus, for tumor shrinkage – name the part of the body, and there is an industry our there to support it, correct it, enlarge it or tenderize it.
Our homeless brethren are no different. Many come to the shelters with a bag of prescriptions. One guy who came to the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter had emptied all of his prescriptions into a one-gallon freezer bag. He must have had 2,000 pills in there, of 20 or 30 varieties, from psychotropics to vitamins.
The question of one’s personal prescription use, as you might imagine, is a large one in the context in a homeless shelter – in a worthy one, much less the Sheridan one.
As you might guess from the tenor of previous posts, the dictator at the Sheridan shelter uses strict controls to limit access to medication. Not only is it highly unlikely that anyone else would get to your medications, you yourself could have a difficult time as well.
Imagine being accused of drug abuse because you want to take a pill an hour early so you can make it to town for a job interview. (One of the shelter staff claims near psychic powers in 'knowing' who has a drug problem. Turns out, his answer is 'everybody.') Imagine your head throbbing for two hours after you asked for access to your migraine-strength Tylenol because the staff and director are too busy.
The last time anyone kept you waiting two hours for your as-needed (PRN) pain medication, I will bet you were angry as well as hurting. Unfortunately, the shelter dictator not only limits access to a homeless person’s own medication, but she often counsels people on what they should be taking, or when they should be taking it. This direct control and major intrusion on one’s privacy and one’s condition is yet another way that the resident is lorded over and depersonalized by a megalomaniac behind a desk.
“If they don’t like it,” she says, “they can leave.”
Many have.

'Welcome' is a funny word at this homeless shelter

About one-third of the people who seek assistance at the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter are either later kicked out, or leave on their own because they can’t endure the contortions of living in the tilted chicken-wire hutch that is the director’s world.
Not only is the revolving door at the shelter spinning fast enough to affect the weather, those who are whisked away by the breath of the dictator’s nostrils are placed on an ever-thickening stack of pages known as the dreaded “Not-Welcome-Back List.”
It was, in fact, my job last year to dream up a written policy on this list. For nine years the shelter had been operated (yes, by the same director) without a set policy on how one got one’s name on “The List.”
Worthy shelters have a policy backed with a process by which an applicant can request a review. Worthy shelters let their resident know that this process exists.
As you might guess, policy or not, names are added to the list based on the whims and distortions of the director. If you are difficult to work with, disorganized, unsociable, or if she missed lunch that day, you are sure to go on “The List.”
To be included on this list is the director’s way of saying, “We Will Not Help You,” unless you consider a referral to the next shelter 100 miles down the road as “help.”
She has even talked about veterans in the contractual program with the VA, saying, “If he leaves for any reason, he won’t be welcome back.”
I know what you are asking. The answer is, “Because.” That’s how the “Not-Welcome-Back List” policy works.
Just last month, a Sheridan woman was found to be camping out by Interstate 90, and a certain amount of public brouhaha was raised.
In the newspaper, she made it clear that she could not use the Sheridan Homeless Shelter as a resource because “five years ago I got kicked out of there for using the ‘F’ word.”
Incidentally, in the written policy, there is no reference to the use of the “F” word, which I presume to be “Forbidden.”
This woman knew she was on “The List.” For five years.
This comment from the woman made the shelter look bad, so there was a scurry within Volunteers of America to nip the appearance of poor service in the bud, even though t’was true.
“Our image!” came the howl from local headquarters. “Our sacred freaking image!”
Much ado occurred in the office, and a lot of coffee was likely spilled in the effort of VOA officials to lunge at whatever was close by to use as covering for their asses, which were, to some extent, hanging out.
“Oh my,” cried the director in the newspaper. People can always come back to the shelter and, she said, if they have made some changes in their lives, they can come back. “We love to help people.”
Two problems: First, not a single individual in 2007 who was asked to leave, was told they could check back later to revisit their “status” on “The List.” Second, the shelter stance on the homeless is, “We love to help lovable people. Others, not so much.”

Problem smaller, responsibility larger in rural America

Comparatively speaking, my town doesn’t have as big of a homeless problem as some of the larger communities within an afternoon’s drive from here: Billings, Rapid City, Casper and Cheyenne.
Certainly, we in rural America do not come even close to seeing the numbers of homeless in metropolitan areas – the makeshift homeless “camps” on the fringes of the cities; the alleys, bridges, the curbs, the parks, the hallways all populated with people who have no other place to go.
You have to be wary of statistics when talking about homelessness, because a nose count is impossible. One source estimates that 750,000 people per night are homeless in America, and also estimates that 9 percent of the homeless are in rural areas.
That is 67,500 people. This number is just over 12,000 more people than are estimated to live in Wyoming’s largest “city”: 55,314.
Statistics tend to make the issue of homelessness unwieldy and impersonal.
If someone in your immediate family is homeless or becomes homeless, this personalizes the issue fairly quickly. It is a big deal.
In many families, the family itself comes to the rescue and brings its beloved member back into safety and stability.
Sad to say that I have spoken with dozens of homeless people who have told me that they have family in another town or another state – sometimes even in Sheridan – but staying with them is not an option. I guess it has been a long time since ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ was on TV.
It is, however, true that the basic social units that we find ourselves a part of, can and should adequately serve, sustain and assist the homeless persons we find within those units. For example, a neighborhood. A rural neighborhood might have one or none homeless person – a guy who sleeps at the park, or holds a sign on the street.
If it is my neighborhood, I share some kind of responsibility for answering to this need.
If it is my community, the number of homeless person will go up, and so does the number of community members who share some kind of responsibility for answering to these needs.
From here, of course, we can go to county, district, region in the state, the state itself, and the state’s region in the nation, and the nation. As the perspective broadens, my individual responsibility shrinks. In rural America, the homeless are not necessarily more evident, but our individual responsibility is much greater because there are fewer of us.
Rural communities do have their own-sized homelessness to resolve. We are going to have smaller works, making huge differences in the lives of our relative few homeless and under-sheltered people. In so doing, we heal the hearts of people. What greater work is there?

Faith In Others Is A Casualty Of Homelessness

I talked to a guy in front of the Edwards Hotel the other day. I knew him from my shelter-working days. I hadn’t seen him in a while.
I was looking for another homeless man who had been kicked out of the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter (like so many others) several months ago. He is often walking along the main drags of Sheridan. Since he got kicked out, he has been living in a room about the size of two double beds. I walked up the narrow claustrophobic staircase and paced up and down the hallway a couple of times, hoping to spot the guy.
No luck.
I came downstairs and out on the street in front was this other guy – a veteran, a musician, an alcoholic, a thinker.
We surprised one another. Neither of us expecting to see the other, and especially not in front of the pawn shop on the ground floor of the Edwards Hotel.
“I was hoping to bump into you sometime,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“I just wanted to touch base and see how you are doing.”
“Really?” he said. “What’s your agenda. I mean, are you just a nice guy, or are you doing this for some reason.”
I am still getting used to the natural mistrust that seems to be more apparent among the homeless. He had had so many things stolen from him, so many fights on the highways and by-ways, so many promises not kept, so many assurances not followed through.
I smiled and looked at him through the corner of my eyes.
“I am just a nice guy,” I said. “C’mon. You knew that.”
It is hard to trust yourself into the care of another, especially when care has had a history with you of halting starts and frequent sputters. Comprehensive care and an unbroken continuum of care are still at the dreaming stages, but I am convinced if we keep paddling our little boats, we may one day reach shores only heretofore dreamed of. Feather those oars, lads, lest we shorten our carry! Nautical talk, that.

No affirmation here, just down words

Legal trouble pushed him to the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
He had been placed on probation for a non-violent crime, and his probation officer had given the young man specific and limited latitude on where and with whom he could live.
Housing was tight in Sheridan then, as it is now.
He could not have a roommate, and he had to have a place with a landline phone. He had to maintain employment and pay regularly on his fines. He could not leave the county, nor have his probation transferred to his home county in another state.
He was required to make three job applications per day until he got a job. I advised him to take no less than $10 per hour, so he could pay fines more quickly and save for the initial expenses of renting an apartment.
He was never trouble at the shelter. He did his chores, met with me to make sure he was on track, and ignored a staff member who often taunted him by saying, “What are you doing here?” or, “Why are you still here?”
This staff told me he believed the young man was a drug user, and would come to nothing during his stay at the shelter. I, too, ignored the staff member.
Of all the things that a homeless person needs when they get up enough courage to enter a shelter is personal affirmation – someone to believe in them – someone to believe in them for them. Of all the needs ignored most at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, it is this need of affirmation. One of the staff and the director are quick with criticism and belittlement and bullying – the exact opposite of what one expect from a supposed Christian-based work.
It is in the “Rule of St. Benedict” (the founder of the Benedictine monastic order) that each stranger is to be treated as though he were Christ in disguise. At the shelter, each stranger is treated as a suspect, a sore festering with dereliction, a problem, a threat and a pest. The Rule of St. Benedict is not spoken here.
The young man stayed a long time with us, given his constricted situation. Eventually I suggested he ask his PO if he could have an approved roommate, and said I would attest to his good behavior, hard work and pleasant character.
He just barely made it out of the shelter before he was to be kicked out. The director was very concerned that we had helped this guy out. Apparently, she doesn’t like to see people succeed outside of her control.

Shelter's status quo hurts good people

He had become a little disconnected from life.
He came to the shelter, alone, with a vague idea that he was going to head east and make amends with his parents and siblings.
He was just on the other side of middle age.
Once at the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, as sometimes happens, he decided to try to drive a stake in the dirt and call Sheridan his home.
This meant finding a job.
He had a technical background in his work history, and wanted to pursue jobs specific to his knowledge and abilities. Jobs, at this point, were hanging on trees in Sheridan. Employers were falling on the feet of anyone who would come in and apply for work.
The process of applying and acquiring a technical job would take a little longer than running downtown and nabbing employment in the food service, construction or sales industries. We both knew this.
He started the application process and got a lengthy spot job pulling weeds in a field for a nice lady who paid $100 per day, which, good Lord, was more than I was making at the shelter.
Meantime, a staff member bet me that this guy was a “shelter hopper,” and that he would not amount to anything. I begged to differ.
The shelter director decided, on a whim, that the shelter would no longer “support” spot jobs. She was bound and determined to push this man to get a “real” job.
I defended his choices, believing that in time he would get a good job in his technical field, once the application and waiting process had run its course.
The staff member one day announced to the man that he had “three days to find a job, or you are outta here.”
They especially like saying “outta here” at this shelter.
The man came immediately to my office, and said, “Tim, what am I going to do.”
“You are going to get a great job in your field,” I said. “I am going to tell so-and-so to stop mindlessly threatening people.”
Honestly, I don’t think I even slowed him down.
The man got a great job in his field and a place to live. Sheridan is his home.
The status quo at the shelter would have bumped him down the road.
There is a vast difference between making a person someone else’s problem, and working on solutions for that person. The shelter director and some of her staff must have missed school that day.