SF Homeless Shelter Model - Makes Respect, Dignity and Hygiene enforceable by law.

San Francisco,  after 10 or 15 years of a somewhat abusive, violent and generally undesirable living conditions,  our City's Shelter System is finally reversing years of suffering and lack of moral and incentives,  the good shelter residents and staff are ready to pass the country's first City Shelter 'Minimumm Standards of Care'.

On February 20, 2008,  There is a Noon Rally on the steps, in front of San Francisco City Hall and a Hearing before the SF Supervisor's Budget & Finance Committee,  at 1 PM - In the Meeting Room 200.

PUBLIC IS INVITED TO SUPPORT THIS VALUABLE AND COST EFFECTIVE LEGISLATION.

Something that all sheleters should have been doing a long time ago,  but lapses in consistent and 'escalating' enforcement of City Shelter Contracts by some City departments and staff (and shelter management themselves, at times for not being more proactive in setting standards.) every day shelter residents suffer harm, losses, lack of sleep and appropriate respect and dignity by our tax funded shelter managers and staff. 

When homeless shelter residents and staff are overworked, stressed out, tired, undernourished (clients, not staff - they eat very well on food meant to the homeless in many SF Shelters),  treated abusively, denied adequate services to 'get out' of being homeless, they all tend to fail and we have to 'recycle' them back into the same system, filled with non-compliance with all kinds of human rights, contracts, local and state health and safety codes and lack of well trained staff. 

It's an expensive revolving door when we do not make standards into law, to insure that positive compliance is not optional, year after year, but required.

Protecting our homeless is necessary to defray all other costs to the community and it saves lives and resources. 

And after the harm, losses and trauma of being denied basic services, to improve the quality of their lives , it becomes much more expensive to correct failures caused by the shelter facilities and personnel, than to have a universal set of standards, in place.

I surmise that in many case,  due to unanticipated need, shelters were often 'thrown together' rapidly, without consideration of what happens when large
and small numbers of staff, work against the best interests of the residents they serve and the staff, become part of the violence, corruption and drug dealing that we supposed to be helping to protect all of our City's residents from,  homeless or not.

[ re-posted with permission via email to The SFHomeless Yahoo! Group, San Francisco, California   ]