The following is a brief summary of my experiences as a client of the Next Move Homeless Shelter…read morelocated in Mather, California. Prior to becoming a client with Next Move, I had been sleeping behind a public library in the Sacramento area, so when an opportunity to finally get off of the street was presented to me, I eagerly took it.
During my first few months at the shelter I had limited contact with shelter staff , and when I asked how long I would be allowed to stay at the shelter, I was told not to worry about it, and to just follow the rules and I would be fine. I was told this multiple times by different staff members on several different occasions.
Also, I'm a senior citizen who does not drive due to vision impairment, and thus it is not easy for me to navigate from place-to-place in search of a permanent place to live, and I really had no one to help me look for housing. This situation left me feeling very uneasy, as I was very frightened of ending up on the street again, at my age. So, in order to make myself more useful around the shelter, I began picking up trash, raking leaves, and pulling weeds in and around the shelter building where I was staying. I also put a lot of effort into keeping my living space spotlessly clean, but in the end none of this ended up mattering to the staff at the shelter. Additionally, I passed all of the substance abuse screening tests given to me, and I was never accused of breaking any of the shelter's rules. But in the end, this meant less than nothing.
After approximately five or six months, a member of the shelter staff was finally assigned to me as my case manager. I was told that my case manager would be able to help me find affordable housing, and that my case manager would be able to advise me on how to address certain types of issues, which might block me from obtaining permanent housing, but in reality, almost nothing could be further from the truth.
In time, one of my applications made it to the top of the waiting list at a low-income seniors apartment complex in downtown Sacramento. My case manager informed me that my wife, who had since been staying with relatives in Southern California, could come to stay with me in the shelter, and that the two of us would then move directly into the low income seniors complex together. Additionally, my case manager also informed me that Next Move would be able to help me with both my first month's rent and my deposit.
However, less than a week later, my case manager suddenly and inexplicably reversed course on our agreed to plan, and not only could my wife no longer come to live with me at the shelter, but Next Move would now no longer be able to help me with my rent and deposit. Also, because I could no longer bring my wife to the Sacramento area, the seniors apartment complex which I was supposed to move into withdrew their offer for me to rent from them.
It was at this point that my case manager informed me that she had found me a room-and-board type living arraignment in another part of town, and that all I had to do was get into her car with her, and that she would drop me off at a house I had never been to before, where I could pay $800.00 a month to share a bedroom with stranger. I declined the room-and-board, due to safety concerns, and informed my case manager that I would remain in the shelter as long as the law allowed me to legally do so.
A few days later I informed my case manager that I had found a housing opportunity in another part of the country, but I lacked the funds to travel there on my own. My case manager informed me that she was working on a plan to have Next Move buy me a plane ticket, but no ticket ever materialized, and no explanations were ever given. Finally, my last legally allowable day in the shelter arrived, and on that day I simply walked away without talking to any staff as I left.
Due to the incompetence and dishonesty of the staff at Next Move, I was forced to once again sleep out in the street for approximately a month before I was finally able to raise enough money to leave the area. Anyone who relies upon the unskilled and unprofessional advice of Next Move staff is likely to find themselves out in the streets again, and this example is exactly why the homeless problem is only getting worse, and it is not getting any better.
