by Amanda Witherell
Note: Though much of the investigation for Shelter Shuffle: Inside San Francisco’s confounding system of housing the homeless was done undercover, the following profiles are of people who shared their stories with me after being informed that I was a journalist.
RUBY WINDSPIRIT
Ruby Windspirit has been homeless since Jan. 14, and her first shelter experience, at A Woman’s Place, was not good. “I felt safe only because I know I can take care of myself,” she says, “But the women who were mentally handicapped did not. Their biggest concern was getting thrown out on the street.” She describes instances of shelter staff asking clients to fetch food from the store in exchange for not getting written up when they broke the rules. “I was really upset at that,” she says. “It was only certain members of the staff that did that.”
“The first night I was there I said, ‘Can I have a towel so I can take a shower?’ They gave me three heavy duty paper towels and said I had to give them back because they reuse them.” Windspirit describes the towels as thick paper, like the kind mechanics use to wipe oil dipsticks. She did what she was told and gave them back when she was done.
Windspirit has bone cancer, but when she asked for an extra blanket and a thicker mat to cushion her 59-year-old body from the floor, she says staff turned her down.
“I was getting sicker and sicker there. Finally I ended up in the emergency room,” she recalls. “The doctor who visits a Woman’s Place saw me and said, ‘What are you doing here? You don’t belong here.’ I said, ‘I don’t know the system.’” The doctor sent her to Tom Waddell Health Center, which referred her immediately to the hospital for emergency care.