What Are You Supposed To Do About All This?

All of this material I have been sharing is just dandy to know, but what are you supposed to do about it?
I suggest any of the following:

Stop donating to the shelter.
Your used clothes, household items, your gift cards, your cash, your time – all of these things are converted into matching fund money for grants that perpetuate the oppression of the homeless in our own backyard. The thrift shops, the Salvation Army, the Advocacy Resource Center, the Lunch Together program, and local churches with outreach ministries to the needy all have a great need for help. None of these is oppressive or abusive toward the people they help.

Write your concern.
If you work with senior citizens, you need to know that plenty of the abused at the shelter are older people.
If you have a heart for military veterans, old and new, the shelter always has a number of men from at least the Vietnam era, if not Korea, and now young guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They get pushed around at the shelter as much as the civilians.
Young families? They come through the shelter, and find themselves held hostage by the director telling them how to raise their children, and added threats to call the Department of Family Services.
Young people trying to get their life on track? These get kicked out rather quickly, I suppose because the director believes they are robust enough to sleep under a bridge without too much damage to health.
Writing the VOA won’t do any good. They still get paid whether you like them or not. Write the Senior Center, write Disabled American Vets, write the VA, write friends in the business community, write your pastor or priest, and write your city councilman or county commissioner, and the mayor, and tell them no more support for authoritarian manhandling of the homeless at the shelter.

Make a move against homelessness in your own way.
You don’t have to undo the shelter in order to make a difference for homeless or under-sheltered people in our town. Try to think in terms of direct help. How can you help someone else? If you spend time with this question open in your mind, the answers will come swimming up to you. I promise.