The homeless shelter system in the Boston area does not provide the structured, emotional and psychosocial support that homeless people who are not just temporarily too impoverished to support themselves need.
The shelters take the donations and are lauded by everyone, even though they don't even try to address the severe trauma that most chronically homeless people are experiencing. How many times do I have to say this? The Pine Street Inn actively refuses to take responsibility for addressing the issues that make and keep people homeless.
The Pine Street Inn is the wealthiest and most respected homeless support organization in Massachusetts, but it is neglectful and abusive toward the emotional and psychosocial needs of the population that it is supposed to be helping. Other shelters are even worse.
The homeless shelter system takes advantage of the community, by refusing to address the needs of the homeless population. It will tell you, over and over again, that "you can't make people take help" when the reality is that no help is offered or even available.
The supermarkets often have to cope with the effects of the homeless support system's duplicity because that is where homeless people can buy food with food stamps. The food stamps are important because without them a homeless person's day revolves around when and where he or she can be fed; no independent activity is possible without some food and some money.
The supermarkets assume that the behavioral issues presented by some homeless people are being addressed by the homeless support system, and that homeless people are so messed up that even all the work done by the support system isn't enough. Neither the supermarkets nor any of the other community resources that are being tasked by the negligence and abuses perpetrated by the homeless support system know that the system is dysfunctional.
I'm not too privileged to recognize dysfunction, to identify that the stigmatized, voiceless, ridiculed, feared and hated population that the system is supposed to be helping is not at fault for the system's complacency. My anger about the system's dysfunction, which I have written about for years, is not a byproduct of my personal discomfort while I have been homeless.
