One of my homeless friends was really drunk last night. I’ve never seen him like this before, but I heard second hand about his problem. He was sitting in a chair outside – it was pretty cold. I offered him pizza, but he was not responsive. At all. Ten minutes later, I hollered at him. He opened one eye, looked at me and said, “I love you too much to kick your butt, but I want to kick someone’s butt.”…
Apparently some folks in local government came to see one of the homeless programs after hours. It must have shook them. Some funding has been restored. It wasn’t our program, so I won’t name them. There’s something about looking into the faces of the people being served – old, physically worn, disabled, broken. This will clear bureaucratic fog, to meet some homeless people at 10:30 at night. Tell us what to tell homeless people at the end of the night…
Last night was the final night of the Boat Street shelter, staffed by workers from Compass Housing. The building will be torn down this month to give way to a community park on the edge of Seattle’s ship canal, near the University of Washington. In fact, it was a perfect set-up for a shelter – nice bathrooms in abundance, two large rooms, with plenty of space to spread out. But people have to have their park, I guess. Promises have…
