Homelessness, Part III - Homeless Shelters

Hey America, Tis I...well, you know whom.  To prevent blog stagnation, I've decided to write about what I've endured, during my soon to be brief homeless period; being, currently, a man of no State to call my home...yet.  I'm currently working on that, as we speak...sort of.  Good news, I won't be this way for much longer; I'm where I think I want to be for good, start a job tomorrow, and by the following morrow, will have a home to call me own...also sort of.

You'll note that this is Part III of the subject of homelessness, mainly because there were two previous parts, naturally.  These are phenomenal articles, done back in those days waaaaaaaay back when I started this blog, and can be found here:

http://themightyswordamericasdeadlysins.blogspot.com/2014/06/homelessness.html

and here:

http://themightyswordamericasdeadlysins.blogspot.com/2014/08/homelessness-part-ii.html

If you'd like, you can start there, and come back...or just forget the whole thing, and read this one.  Matters to me not, as long as you read ANYTHING I've written, and I'll be as happy as I can be.

As we know, the demographic of the homeless is e'er changing, because, well, the Government and those of the financial world are currently in the process of recalling those things, places and properties that never really belonged to us in the first place...those thingies we call "Homes".  I don't care if you paid off your property; your ownership of these places is not at all real, and can be repossessed or sold off at anytime, if you don't pay your straw man's taxes.  Just wait til the day you can't pay your $2,000 property tax some year, and they sell your home, for just that amount.  Funny, how you can pay $200,000 to own your home...and they can take it all away for just a measly amount of taxes that you couldn't afford to pay, is it not?

Anyhow, my point is, that more and more middle-classers, especially those who couldn't, even for a single moment, imagine that they COULD have been homeless, are now joining the lower class in their homelessness, much to their dismay.  When you arrive there, please, by all means, prepare to stare the worst directly in the face, in the form of today's homeless shelters.

One thing you'll notice is that there now only appears to be two kinds of missions remaining...Gospel Missions and Salvation Army missions.  Oh sure, you could further categorize and say "wet" shelters and "dry" shelters, but those categories still fall into the main ones.

The Salvation Army missions have been around almost as long as the homeless problem itself.  The others, Gospel Missions, are primarily only Gospel Missions for one reason...because this is the only lucrative type of mission to have today.  This type of mission is the one that gets the majority of federal funding.  If your mission is any other type, and you can pretty much bet that you're going to have to fund it yourself.  To get federal funding, you must now prove that your mission is, in some fashion, religiously or "program" based.  You don't really have to act it to the fullest...but that helps, I'm sure.  So whether or not your mission of choice is REALLY religiously-based is questionable...but they have to say it is, or not much fed funding will be made available to you.

That means that you, as a "client", are going to have to attend a flurry of things that you didn't used to have to back in the pre-present days, such as mandatory chapels (usually held prior to meals...you don't attend, you don't eat.  You don't eat, you don't stay).  Another thing you'll probably notice, is that once you apply to stay in one of these missions (applications in places like this require an awful lot of personal information that you wouldn't normally be comfortable giving your employer, i.e., SSN's and the like), you will be required to stay EVERY day, for as long as they need you there...or you will lose your privilege of having a temporary home.  That's because, if you don't stay there EVERY day...they don't get paid.

Is this what being homeless, as well as helping the homeless stop being homeless has come to?  Evidently so.  I'm sorry, but some of the homeless are going to take longer to get out of being homeless than others, thank you very much...and religion, as I understood it, was a personal choice.  Now, the majority of these missions stuff it down your throat.

Another thing you'll notice is that all of them are now "Program Based"...and in accordance with this, the living conditions for those that choose NOT to be on some "program" are very shabby indeed, comparatively.  Funny thing too, all of the program guys and girls are evidently encouraged to encourage YOU to be on "The Program", so that you can enjoy the special privileges that they enjoy...as they do it almost continuously, during your stay on the "dark" side (The non-program side).  That, I'm sure, is because certain "programs" also receive some type of federal funding.

I've noticed that some shelters are quite AA and NA program-based as well.  These AA and NA based shelters often make it so you almost HAVE to attend these kinds of meetings in order to be inside.  Very non-useful for those with no alcohol or drug type issues.  Again, living conditions on the non-program side of these shelters is no picnic; it often involves such bad conditions that living on the street or outside is often better.

I don't know what happened to this country, America, but everything seems to revolve around federal funding anymore, even non-profit agencies..as I've previously written about in the history of this blog.  Nothing is the real deal, and phony is the new in; if you can't feel it, pretend to be it is the motto.  Whatever it takes to get the money...right?  This, in and of itself, is socialism at its finest.  If nothing is done out of the goodness of your heart, but only for money, then how is a non-profit organization going to be allowed to really be a true non-profit organization?

Homelessness, by the way, in my current city, has dropped 22 percent since 2014.  After being in the shelter that I've been in for nigh a week now, I can most certainly understand why.  Homelessness these days is hardly a personal choice, so let's not make the homeless's lives more miserable than they already are.  Most of us don't ask or choose to be this way.  :D