Unable to find an apartment in my price range due ...

Unable to find an apartment in my price range due to inflated rent, I m sleeping in my car until I find a place. It gets tiresome to constantly be out in the elements and without access to a shower or toilets so I decided to give the shelter a try despite my gut telling me it couldn t be a good place to be. This was my first time staying in a homeless shelter and here is my honest review:

I went through intake and was cleared to go to the shelter the same day, not sure what their screening process is but it was quick and easy. Rules are you have to be there by 7pm to get a bed, if they re to capacity a bed is not guaranteed and there s a lottery for beds and once you re inside you cannot leave the building until morning. You must leave the building by 8am and cannot return until 5pm, they re closed from 7am-5pm. I was given a bunk bed with a plastic mat to sleep on, a combination lock and locker, dinner was to be served at 7:15pm and breakfast in the AM, I didn t ask what time. The staff was nice and helpful, the shelter was quite clean though very similar to a jail or any other stars run institution and though locked in, there was a fenced courtyard for smoking and hanging out.

Women s dorm is separate from men which is great since they allow sex offenders and that was the part I was most uncomfortable with, the idea of being in the same building as men in general. However, it wouldn t take much for a man to enter the dorm as there s no security or locks and the men s sober dorm is just steps away. The dorm is filled with about 50 bunk beds, extremely close quarters with no storage or shelves, the dorm opens to a bathroom with showers and toilets, unfortunate for the bunks closest to the bathroom as the toilets are very loud when flushed as are the hand dryers and the bathroom lights are very bright and stayed on through the night. Downstairs they offer a very thin blanket and one towel, no sheet or pillow, it was very uncomfortable to sleep on such a thin mat without a pillow and the plastic sticks to your skin since they don t have sheets. I didn t eat dinner because I d just eaten before entering the shelter so by 9pm I was very hungry and asked if they offered snacks and they did not so since I wasn t allowed to leave or I wouldn t be allowed to return, I went to bed hungry. Lights went out at 10pm and for the most part everyone was quiet and in their bunks and I quickly fell asleep from exhaustion. I didn t sleep long though, between the severe coughing of two women close to me and the sounds of everyone tossing and turning on their uncomfortable, squeaky plastic mats and no pillow for my head, I wasn t able to sleep and ended up leaving at 2am to sleep in my car. I left mostly because I couldn t sleep and was so uncomfortable but also because the two coughing women sounded very, very ill and I cannot afford to get sick. I mostly stayed because I needed a shower and had planned to take one in the AM but didn t make it through the night unfortunately. My eye is swollen today as if I have some sort of infection so there s that. This is my honest review of the shelter and though it was not a bad experience, it definitely was not a good one either.