It was late when “Mary” arrived at Safe to Sleep.
At 87 years old, with a broken arm, she had missed her bus and arrived later than usual. By then, darkness had fallen along East Division.
And the area’s only emergency women’s shelter, Safe to Sleep, was full.
Because Mary had not arrived when expected, her sleeping pod had been reassigned to another woman who needed shelter that night. Every available space was spoken for.
For a moment, we faced an impossible question:
Where do you send an 87-year-old woman with a broken arm in the middle of the night when there is nowhere else for her to go?
The last bus had already run. The morning routes were still hours away. The nearest hotel was many blocks away. Along that stretch of East Division, sidewalks are limited and nighttime options are few.
Mary had nowhere to go.
Then something remarkable happened.
The woman who had been given Mary’s pod heard what was happening and volunteered to leave.
“I have somewhere else I can go,” she said.
And just like that, one woman experiencing homelessness gave up her bed so an 87-year-old stranger wouldn’t have to spend the night outside.
It was an extraordinary act of kindness.
But she should never have had to make that choice.
This Isn’t Just a Homelessness Problem. It’s a Housing Problem.
Nearly every night, Safe to Sleep is bumping up against capacity. And while it would be easy to assume we simply need more shelter beds, the reality is more complicated.
Right now, approximately 25 women staying at Safe to Sleep have been with us for more than a month. They are meeting with case managers. They are completing housing applications. They are gathering documents, following up on leads and doing the work we ask them to do.
Many are ready to move forward.
There simply isn’t an affordable place for them to move to.
When someone who is ready for housing cannot find an available unit, she remains in shelter. Her pod remains occupied. And the next woman — perhaps an older adult, someone leaving the hospital, a woman escaping an unsafe situation, or someone who simply has nowhere else to sleep — may arrive to find that there is no room.
That’s the bottleneck we are facing.
We can provide shelter. We can provide case management. We can help women navigate applications and connect to resources.
But we cannot create an available apartment where one doesn’t exist.
We need our community’s help.
Does your church own a house that could temporarily provide safe housing for women who are ready to move beyond emergency shelter?
Are you a landlord or property manager with an affordable vacancy we may not know about?
Could you contribute toward emergency transportation so that, when every pod is occupied, we never have to send a woman into the night without a safe option?
There is no one, simple, solution to our community’s housing shortage. But there are things we can do together.
Mary had a safe place to sleep that night because another woman sacrificed her own.
The next time we’re full, we don’t want anyone to have to make that choice.