Who knows what this woman went through before being asked to smile for this picture? She's not going to tell anyone; I guarantee it.
I know how you have starved the shelters of funding, refused to provide programming or other support for the issues plaguing homeless people such as substance abuse, domestic and sexual violence, rehabilitation from criminal activity, how these issues aren't even mentioned in the shelters other than to give some Narcan trainings for inevitable overdoses due to your lazy, greedy negligence and the entire shelter system's discrimination against and contempt for all homeless people.
I know that it was only because of advocacy from me and other homeless people that, in the year of its 50th anniversary, the Women's Shelter at the Pine Street Inn finally started to install some electronic push buttons to make the heavy doors to the building and the restrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor accessible to handicapped people. I know that you only did this because the Disability Law Center was alerted.
I know that you were never woken up in the middle of the night by a handicapped woman crying because she had wet herself in the hallway from not being able to get into the bathroom. Maybe you saw the pictures that I published at Twitter of women's hands scraped by the doors of the building from having to maneuver their walkers and wheelchairs through them while also holding them open. Maybe you saw the pictures of the swollen, sunburned feet of a wheelchair-bound woman whom the staff would not allow to stay in, and maybe you heard about how she was subsequently barred from the shelter for a year and ended up sleeping in an elevator at a T station. Maybe you heard about the elevator breaking down over and over again, stranding disabled people in the building or causing them to have to crawl down stairs and across floors. Maybe you didn't, or maybe nobody has realized that your leadership is a problem.
I'm not saying that housing that is specifically for formerly homeless people has no function. I'm saying that there are 6,000 homeless people in the Boston area from one year to the next, and that you think of those people as being permanently in line to pay you rent, or to have rent paid to you for them, not as human beings whose problems can be addressed so that they can get better.
Every homeless shelter is an opportunity for intervention to break the cycles that make people chronically homeless. Nobody who administers shelters takes that responsibility; it is actively avoided.
You also lied to the media and elected officials about the absolute impossibility of social distancing in homeless shelters at the onset of quarantine. You even blamed that impossibility on homeless people's stereotypical stupidity, supposedly paraphrasing a homeless person saying "Why can't I sit next to my buddy," when you know damn well that all the shelters are crowded and that the tables at the Women's Shelter are ROUND. Your dishonesty caused a slow reaction in taking the need for more space seriously. Everyone who knows anything about homeless life knew inmediately that social distancing would be impossible.
Don't tell me that nobody can figure out the funding.
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Article:
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2018/08/07/abby-johnson-fidelity/
