A police car is parked on top of the sidewalk. Of course, there is no road anymore due to the city’s road works. Where there was a road is now just a chain link fence around some pipes. On the other side is the shelter’s high iron fence. It’s a narrow strip of sidewalk directly in front of the building where some of the shelter’s residents hang out on nice days. The police car has driven onto the sidewalk between the two fences to ticket people for loitering in front of a homeless shelter. (more…)
Nobody had seen Paddy and Helen in days. Their absence is noticeable since it is normal to be able to hear them down the block.
They are like eight year olds. Eight year olds who are drunk out of their skulls, screaming and dragging each other around. They are a cute couple in a weird way because they make the world their playground and have fun in it together. Of course, they’re not eight. More like 40 or 50.
Well, word got around that Paddy beat up Helen pretty bad. (more…)
About 500 people are sitting around, waiting for dinner to start. They chatter. Some read or play cards. A couple have laptops over by the north wall and read the news or play video games. I’m leaning against a wall, as I’m supposed to just be a presence in the room. Every now and then the office makes a page over the speakers but it’s too quiet to hear. It’s just a muffled tin voice coming from the ceiling. Joe saunters by and catches my eye.
“They make billions of dollars off all these multi-vitamins and they don’t work,” says Joe. “They’re scared of me. I’ve got the magic bullet, you see. I’ve got the magic bullet that will make the perfect multi-vitamin and no one would ever get sick ever again.” (more…)
Eddie, with the other client volunteers, and myself are all in the janitor’s room, squeezed around a little coffee machine. The room is humid and smells of disinfectant. They’ve just finished laying down several rows of mats in the ‘intox’ room – a gymnasium sized floor surrounded with lockers, where the severely trashed will pass out later tonight. Being in the back room, drinking coffee gives them a few minutes to drop their defenses and, well, feel free to complain about some aspect of life at the shelter, like they have a private meeting with me. (more…)
I’m in the office handing out medicine and garbage bags. A line up of people come to the window, each with a different problem. They accuse us of stealing their medicine. They lost their bed because they were caught drinking. A senior citizen has a drinking problem, lost their home, and doesn’t understand how to make his way around the shelter. I page clients and take calls. I pick up the phone and on the other end is a woman with an Indian accent and she’s distraught.
“Hello, we want to kick our son out of our house. Can you help us?” (more…)
Every day we are supposed to read the computer logs to find out what happened while we were away.
This morning I read the shelter admitted a woman who was held hostage and tortured in a basement for three days. She had vicious bite marks on her leg, and burns, and had a stab wound in her side. She was severely drugged and delusional. She was only freed after a parking meter attendant was passing by, looked in the window, and saw a man torturing her. He called 911.
She denied medical attention or police involvement, but was overly thankful anytime a staff member did anything for her. She couldn’t stop vomiting for about 24 hours. When asked if she was a street worker she would change the subject. Last I heard, staff were trying to assure her she had a right to medical help and legal advice. She is being kept in a secure room while arrangements are made to move her to a women’s shelter.
I’m sitting on the curb outside with a guy whose face is all cut up and bruised. I got him a bottle of water and he invites me to chat with him, but at the same time he doesn’t have much to say. Out in the road a bunch of people are all drunk and high. One is running around mooning people, the rest are playing a game that basically involves goosing each other.
Then Kelly comes over to talk to me. He’s losing most of his hair, but the hair he has left is long and stringy like a shrunken head that hasn’t shrunk yet. He’s carrying a garbage bag full of empty cans and he’s a little drunk.
“All of these people are thieves,” he says. “Every last one.” (more…)
