Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I live within a mile of a nice shelter for women and children. There have been no issues with it.
But the overnight shelters for people where they kick them out every morning at 6? Nope. Also would not be crazy about the short-term shelters for single men. Sorry, but the majority of single men who are homeless have issues—sometimes perfectly harmless disabilities but more often addiction and problematic mental health issues, and the shelters can’t really filter for this. Women and children are different — there’s a lot of different reasons why a mom with kids can end up homeless.
+1 We also lived about a mile from a home that housed women and children who were escaping abusive conditions. The home and yard were as carefully maintained as any others on the street. Even had ferns hanging from the front porch.
+2 we live on a street with this kind of shelter and have had no issues. They are good neighbors and I've also found them to always welcome our good condition toys and children's clothing when our kids outgrow them.
I think overnight shelters probably shouldn't be placed near SFHs, schools, or predominantly residential neighborhoods, because the housing is so temporary and even the people these shelters are for often avoid them due to not feeling safe there. Putting them in neighborhoods with lots of kids seems like a bad idea generally for this reason. But I probably would have lived near a shelter back in my 20s when I was child free and living in apartments in dense parts of the city. Those neighborhoods already had a lot of crime, lots of people on the street late at night, etc. I don't think a homeless shelter would be likely to make it worse, and people living in that kind of neighborhood are already okay with some of the downsides of dense urban life.