“Oh sure, the Mission does good things, but they don’t help the elderly or folks with disabilities! That’s why we need a new low-barrier shelter-Mc-thingy! And that’s why we should pay for it with our taxes!” they confidently proclaim in front of the City Counsel. The following day this message gets posed to me as a question with a concerned tone, “Is it true that you don’t help old people with disabilities?” First, let me express an exhausted sigh… and then let’s walk through the answer.
Start by defining your terms. What do you mean by “elderly” and “disability”? While the annual average age of our program participants is 41 years old, at the time of this writing I have 13 clients over the age of 60, the oldest of whom is 76 years old. So, I’m guessing that either we are talking about people much older than this or someone simply made up yet another “fact” about the Mission that isn’t actually true. In my book, the term elderly means anyone who qualifies for a senior discount at Sizzler or receives AARP coupons and that handy carrying case for their silly magazine. I’m pretty sure that number is 55, which even makes me officially in the club.
And what is a disability? I currently serve a gentleman, over 60, who is vigorously battling cancer and serving all 55 of our male residents in our kitchen with one arm in a sling. You should hear him get fired up when people complain about being sore or tired. In the last two months we just graduated one fellow who spent most of each day in a wheelchair into his own apartment, and another we were able to help land into an adult foster care home that could care for his mental health needs (and he is 75!). We have worked with folks who had neck surgeries, back surgeries, countless hernia surgeries, broken legs, foot surgeries, and the list goes on. So what are we talking about?!?
The dirty little secret…
Let me fill you in on a reason that people who hurl unfounded and undefined charges against the Mission do so. It’s because if they were to get really specific about the details of a particular person that they have in mind, one that they know we would turn away because we are unqualified to offer them reasonable care… they also are offering as a solution something that is significantly below what this person needs. An elderly person who is outside of our ability to properly care for because of their age is also outside of the ability of any low-barrier shelter. It is shocking to hear anyone associated with the medical community suggest placing such people in the same housing as people who are actively using drugs and alcohol.
People who need adult foster care or medically assisted living should never be housed in tents or a low-barrier shelter. The same is true for those who need housing for folks with debilitating mental illness. These people simply become victimized and traumatized by the actions of those addicted to drugs and alcohol or have their needs neglected because they are physically unable to properly care for themselves. Put simply, a homeless shelter of any kind is completely inappropriate for some people, not because they don’t deserve shelter but because they deserve and require significantly more than simple shelter. It’s not because we don’t want to help everyone, it is because we recognize when someone has needs that exceed our ability to help.
So, while there are in fact people that the Mission turns away due to our inability to provide proper care for them, the solution will never be found in a building defined as “low barrier”. Offering such a thing is like offering shoes to a man with no legs… and your amazing resume and good intentions doesn’t make the gift more usable. What needs to be done is to help get the elderly and disabled, those outside of the scope of care that a Mission can provide, into the organizations that already exist who are eminently qualified. Adult foster care homes, senior assisted living homes, and medically assisted living programs already exist, and maybe as a community our fundraising efforts should be focused on scholarships for entry into or expansion of such programs.
As Keith Cunningham might put it, “We should build the machine to fix the problem that is, rather than building one to fix the problem that isn’t.”