Last night, I woke up at 1:00 a.m. and was awake for the next 3 hours; shelters are loud places to try to sleep, with so many people in them.

Then I fell partially asleep before being woken up at 6:00 a.m., which is the wake-up time every day of every year, including every holiday, at the Pine Street Inn's homeless shelter. 

Then there was a fire alarm at 6:30 a.m., because of what I'm told was an electrical fire in the kitchen at the shelter.  I had time to put on my sweatshirt, socks and sneakers, which I wore outside with the scrubs that the shelter gives everyone to sleep in at night.  Others were out there in the shelter scrubs (short-sleeved) and flip-flops; no coats, no shoes, no umbrellas, for more than 40 minutes, in the cold and the rain.  There is still snow on the ground.  

Apparently, the shelter has no plan for where to have the guests go in the event of an actual fire, if they can't go back into the building within a few minutes.

I'm also not surprised that there was an electrical fire.  The Pine Street Inn has no interest in repairing the shelter building.  The Pine Street Inn is putting most of the millions of dollars that it continues to take from the good-hearted public toward the apartment and SRO buildings where the Pine Street Inn can be a landlord.