Monday February 20: During the overnight a man jumped the fence in order to steal our recycling cans. Good Workers scared him off without the loot. Lots of intakes on Monday night. One of our guests who had returned over the weekend started to become herself again after coming down from meth. She declared that she would rather have a baby than go through this pain again. Two men tried to check in and asked us to make an exception for them since they did not feel like walking down to the men’s mission. They were turned away.
Tuesday February 21: During the day some guests in room 10 discovered that some of the food in their refrigerator was rotten and cleaned it out. One of the guests who was not home at the time came home she found out her food was missing. She was very upset that her rotten food along with other’s rotten food was thrown out. She was able to calm down on Tuesday night but her anger over this issue eventually caused her to lose her bed later in the week.
Wednesday February 22: Room 10 started to have intense tension due to the angry woman and another woman in the room who was finding fault with anything that she could think of. All in the room have been in on talks to try to restore peace. Staff had also spent some time in cooperation with the Thrift Stores to redecorate and make the room nice. The negative ladies were very critical of the redecoration. The others seem to really like the added touch and the movement of stuff to make more space. One of our guests was arrested for stealing from Winco. She is one of our pregnant ladies so the police decided not to put her in jail. Stealing is against our guidelines so we asked her to leave Friday morning as this situation came to light. The woman who was upset about the food became hostile to her room mates and was very threatening. She was asked to leave.
Thursday February 23: One of our guests came to staff and told us that we were too nice to handle her “this time of the month” so she was going to go stay somewhere else and come back next week. Several of our guests are suffering with the flu right now so there are many puking kids and moms. Not nice.
Friday February 24: Tension exploded all over the place Friday morning. The other negative woman in room 10 was asked to leave. Her daughter who was another adult guest decided to leave as well though that was not expected by staff. A mom refused to clean her room and was asked to leave. She had said that she simply was not going to do it. One of our guests found a coat that she had lost long ago that had turned up at the shelter in the possession of another guest. Over the weekend she stole it back from the other guest.
Weekend: Lots of tension over the coat. It turns out that the coat had been left in the room and when the room was cleaned out it had become a donation. The woman who was the original coat owner decided that she wanted it back so simply took it and then lied several times to cover it up but when she was caught she confessed and was asked to leave. One of our guests went to the hospital for flu like symptoms on Saturday night.
General comments: The removal of the negative women remarkably changed the temperature of the Crisis Shelter and by Friday night the shelter was much more peaceful.
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