CNN iReport

Well, it's been a week since I left a shelter in another community and let me tell you, my experience was less than anything desirable or pleasant. Rather it became one of my worse nightmares I ever had. I had hoped that the administrators of such a place would had made an attempt to help with getting to resources that were in the area, no such luck in my case. All I wound up with was a very bad case of food poisoning, one of my computers stolen, no such thing as clean facilities to clean up in. I'll be frank with you, I didn't think that such a place would be allowed to exist with numerous health code violations that it was even hard enough to look at some of the food preparations in a kitchen I wouldn't even feed my dog in. This was by no means a Salvation Army shelter, this was runned by a supposely church group that made such a negative impact to me that I was totally turned off to their way of forcing religion upon me and I don't apprecitate that at all either. I had a hard enough time trying to regroup to getting my broken shattered life back together and go to into a situation like this only made it much worse.

In the process I did find out a few things about what is percieved to being a problem many communities don't want to acknowledge to existing, and even in my home town here it's swept "under the rug" so to speak. While I was staying in this shelter, we had to be up at 6 a.m. every morning irregardless and out by 8a.m. no matter what. Many times I would go to the library within walking distance to get online so I could do what I could do in job searching and keeping up with everything else. There was a church within walking distance also that had a soup kitchen and needless to say I was surprised at the number of people that was there everyday.

Next door was another place where one could go and clean up with a hot shower I guess and I didn't check that out to see what kind of facilities they had. Anyway, in talking with a few of the homeless (Idespise that term) I learned many came from verious backgrounds, some well educated, others mentally ill, still others who were released from prison, and others who lost their jobs, homes, life savings to being reduced to memories of the past. Still even veterans tat were using their benefits in seeking services they deserve and don't get. I asked a local police officer and he told me that generally the people keep to themselves and don't present much of a problem unless they tie one on and spend the night in jail for a little too much of the bottle.

With state budgets strained and in some cases cutting out programs to help those that need it, I am surprised that this particular problem still exists even today. I know in the past it's been talked about, mentioned in many places, aand yet nothing that I have seen is being done to try to even help those in need. Seems like all we do is send money overseas to fight some war we dont need to be in the first place, when we have one here at home outside our door step.

Emotionally I am ok, I felt like the weight of the world was taken off my shoulders when I left the shelter and in a few days hoping to move into my own place once again, I'll let you know if Ido.