☆ 500+ local women still waitlisted for overnight beds, says Salvation Army coordinator (3/4)
Image courtesy of Salvation Army Silicon Valley, used with permission.
Most SCC shelters welcome women with kids, or families, but not single women. Thus, roughly 17% of the County’s homeless single women are left waiting, every night, for a shelter bed to open up for them. Salvation Army’s Major Daniel Freeman unpacks the implications—and some unique needs and opportunities—in this Opp Now exclusive.
Opportunity Now: How would you explain the increase of women coming into (and needing) shelters locally?
Major Daniel Freeman: Of the roughly 10,000 homeless people in Santa Clara County, about 3,000 are single women. Now, there are shelter options in Santa Clara County for women with children, or if the woman is coming out of an abused environment. But for single women out on the streets, there's maybe a dozen beds available at most.
Here’s where that leaves us: there are 512 women every night waiting for a bed, according to the county (and that’s only counting women registered with their system). My heart goes out to them. They shouldn’t be left on the streets.
ON: That’s a lot. And we’d only expect the list to grow, with SJ’s planned homeless sweeps in Columbus Park and Alviso.
Go Deeper:
- Case study: San Diego acts decisively to relieve homelessness with high-capacity shelters while San Jose dawdles, misallocates funds
- Data: California spends $42k/yr/homeless person. That's more than double what is considered poverty-level income
- Smith and Wolf: “We've blurred the line between helping and enabling” (4/4)
Based on your experiences, what different sheltering needs do women have compared to men?
MDF: Just as with men, we must consider why they’re homeless (which varies by individual) and find the right programming to address their needs. For instance, some women are experiencing mental health challenges, addiction, domestic violence—so we don’t just want to get them into a building; we want their lives to change enough so they can be self-supporting and function in their community again.
It’s important for women to have a safe, stable place to sleep. Many of them are tucking themselves under bushes and covering themselves with things to camouflage themselves, just so they’re not attacked or hurt. With that, our upcoming shelter remodel will reserve 50 beds for women.
ON: In a separate section, we saw.
MDF: Yes, we want these ladies to feel safe in their own secure section of the building. Give them privacy and dignity. We’ll also eliminate all stall showers and stall toilets and switch to completely private ones for the women; and we’re working on privacy curtains for the bunk beds. The ultimate goal, as always, is to work with case management and eventually stabilize them in their own housing or other programs that could help them move along.
There are 500ish women in Santa Clara County every night who want a shelter but there isn’t a place for them. The Salvation Army is barely making a dent in this challenge. We’re looking forward to breaking ground with the remodeled Emmanuel House at the end of summer, but where will the other 450 women get to sleep?
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