Thanksgiving at the Pine Street Inn women's shelter, 2016

This is the address of a video that I published on November 24, 2016, when I was living at my last apartment:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8eHI8DDqeE



There is a cafeteria at the Pine Street Inn which guests aren't allowed to use. It is only for employees and for catered luncheons for potential donors. There is no reason that the cafeteria, which is big enough for all of the guests of the women's shelter to eat at one time, shouldn't be accessible to us for our meals. There was never a reason that guests of the women's shelter should have had to be called in shifts to have dinner. There was never a reason to take all of the moderately soft chairs out of the lobby of the women's shelter or to replace them with numbered tables and hard chairs.

The Pine Street Inn's schedule for bed distribution, dinner, showers and curfew more or less forces homeless women to be at the shelter from 2:00 p.m. until the next morning.  At the very least, everyone who shelters there will have to sit on those hard chairs for several hours every day.

During the winter months, when it is cold enough that the shelter legally has to stay open during the day, homeless women who lack other resources (because the Pine Street Inn does not make a real effort to connect them to other resources) will be sitting on those chairs for up to 12 hours every day; from 6:00 a.m. to 5:30 or 6:00 p.m., when they are allowed to go to the 2nd and 3rd floor dormitories to shower for 10 minutes and then try to go to sleep, most of them in large rooms that have more than 20 people each.

If the women's shelter director got rid of the softer chairs because there weren't enough for everyone and she wanted to stop the guests from bickering over them, I doubt that she'll achieve her goal of reducing tension.  She could have replaced many of the tables and hard chairs that were already in the lobby with more of the softer chairs, and changed where we have our meals so that we eat in the cafeteria.

Also, making the homeless guests sit on hard chairs for hours every day, at tables that are all crowded together, is not going to stop the guests from arguing or increase their respect for staff or supervisors who demand respect without offering it.  Making the guests as uncomfortable as you can, while employees sit in softer chairs to supervise them from the mezzanine and in the dormitories and even while giving out the shelter's small towels in the shower room, is not going to create peace.

Next winter will probably be the worst winter ever at the Pine Street Inn women's shelter.  I'll be surprised if altercations don't turn physical within the first weeks of winter confinement.

Presumably, the director of the women's shelter also isn't planning to increase the time when the shelter's new resource room is available for guests to do employment and housing searches.  It is the first resource room that the Pine Street Inn has had for guests since the Pine Street Inn started operations 50 years ago.  It has 2 computers, for 120 Emergency Bed guests.  It is only open for 20 hours every week; the director keeps saying that she "doesn't have the staffing" for it to be open at other times.  It is not open on the weekends.  The director of the women's shelter refuses to give the password for the shelter's WiFi to guests of the shelter who have their own phones, tablets or laptops.