10 people
I started doing some volunteer work for The People's Place Shelter about a month and a half ago here in Red Deer. Tonight was only my third shift and we had to turn people away. 10 of them to be exact.
How things normally work is like this. At the PPS we have 23 people who can live at the shelter for a max of 28 days provided they come in every night not under the influence of any drugs what so ever and that they have a plan to meet while they're there (e.g- find a job, deal with emotional problems, find an apartment, etc.) The other people who need a place to stay (which is around 17 to 23 an average night during winter) are signed up to what is know known as "Inn from the Cold" and given shelter for the night by local churches. Normally 12 to 15 people will go to one church and the others the first church don't have room for will go to a second one. However, tonight was different.
At first the second overflow church said they needed another volunteer (1 or 2 at the most)to stay till 8 in the morning if they were going to open up for the night. So, one of us at the shelter said we'd do it and then next thing you know the church is making the excuse they can't open up if the weather isn't predicted to drop below -20 because they signed some papers with the city of Red Deer saying -20 is the magic number that defines when overflow shelters are needed. What does someone even say to something like that?
It is now -20 degrees celcius (with windchill) and 10 people out of the 22 that applied for Inn from the Cold tonight are sleeping outside.
This type of stuff makes me too tired to be angry.
How things normally work is like this. At the PPS we have 23 people who can live at the shelter for a max of 28 days provided they come in every night not under the influence of any drugs what so ever and that they have a plan to meet while they're there (e.g- find a job, deal with emotional problems, find an apartment, etc.) The other people who need a place to stay (which is around 17 to 23 an average night during winter) are signed up to what is know known as "Inn from the Cold" and given shelter for the night by local churches. Normally 12 to 15 people will go to one church and the others the first church don't have room for will go to a second one. However, tonight was different.
At first the second overflow church said they needed another volunteer (1 or 2 at the most)to stay till 8 in the morning if they were going to open up for the night. So, one of us at the shelter said we'd do it and then next thing you know the church is making the excuse they can't open up if the weather isn't predicted to drop below -20 because they signed some papers with the city of Red Deer saying -20 is the magic number that defines when overflow shelters are needed. What does someone even say to something like that?
It is now -20 degrees celcius (with windchill) and 10 people out of the 22 that applied for Inn from the Cold tonight are sleeping outside.
This type of stuff makes me too tired to be angry.
posted by Daniel_v at 10:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home