bill jade

Review of South Oakland Shelter

Staff is nice to you if you're a struggling parent...

Staff is nice to you if you're a struggling parent or elderly person in need of assistance, but for a young black man, be prepared to be steryotyped and treated like a kid/threat.
I told them i have a car and they seemed so shocked as if "a man of this caliber actually having a car!?" Then they did everything they can to prevent me from being able to use my vehicle because it was considered "dangerous" although they have no problem with the parents and elderly folks driving.
And then when they realized i had a vehicle, i noticed the staff would look all in my car to see what's in it not knowing im looking right at them. I was also caught up in situations where there would be conflict amongst the clients and certain staff members would automatically assume im the cause of the conflict, which would later be resovled to find out that i have nothing to do with it at all, and the conflict was actually between other clients. The staff is more focused on coming off as an "authorative" figure than actaully helping. They formed a meeting with me to tell me about what i cant do, but cant even find the time to discuss my future living arrangements. They leave a blind eye to clients they like more and try to emphasize order on prefered clients selectively: biased.
And if you have any issues, dont expect the grievences to get you very far. They're all friends and business partners, and are working together in sync and will just outnumber they're perspective on you as a homeless smut, subjugating you're opinion as irrelevant, and invalid. They use they're power in alliance to manipulate the order of things into a group home/inpatient-type of infrastructure.
They will rush me to take an alchohol test like im holding things up, in the mean-time there will be clients that havent even arrived that they greet patiently and willingly upon arrival.
Overall, the services are acknowledgable, but it is a prejudice nightmare of an experience for a young black man but like i said, if your anything but that you probably wont notice any of the things i am talking about. When i stood my ground that they are being irrational they tried to intimidate me by telling me they normally kick people like me out and pretty much left me with the decision to either get kicked out or remain kissing they're behind. I partially feel like they're sending me subliminal messages saying "you're a black man, you where made for the streets. Go back out there unless you want to keep being our pet monkey!"