He Lasted A Week, Then Wanted Escape From Her Clutches

The young man who I reluctantly took to the abusive VOA Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter called me last week and asked for help.
I had left him my card when I let him off at the shelter, telling him that there would come a day, soon, when he could no longer bear the director and at least one of her staff.
The day came, and he called from the library last Saturday.
I met him there and drove him to the bus station for a ticket to Rapid City.
When I asked him what had happened at the shelter, he told me, “Things got weird up there pretty fast.” He didn’t seem to want to elaborate. I didn't press him for details, as much fun as it would have been to blab it all on my blog.
I am not one to believe that my helping a person gives me the right to pry information out of them, or tell them what they should do, or attach rules to my help.
This is one of the places where the director of the abusive shelter and I part company.
Among the inappropriate meddling that I have observed at the shelter include:

Obstructing residents from obtaining spot jobs.
Asking residents whether they are having sex downtown.
Demanding that residents not eat meals at local bar-and-grills.
Threatening to kick out residents who take jobs with employers of which the director does not approve.
Demanding that residents get costly mental health evaluations when they don’t think like she does – or get kicked out.
Demanding that one resident not spend time with another resident’s friend.
Insisting on knowing the resident’s living situation when he or she finds a means to leave the shelter.

This kind of behavior ought to offend every individual and business owner who has supported “the homeless” by giving time, money or items to Volunteers of America and/or the shelter. Any support directed to VOA helps prolong and tacitly supports this kind of behavior against people experiencing some of their most vulnerable moments.
Any support given to the VOA condones this outrageous and manipulative behavior.

'I Am Used To Being Treated Like Crap'

A while back a friend called me to say he had met a guy at a gas station who was looking for the local homeless shelter.
“He needs a ride up there,” he said.
My friend didn’t have a vehicle. I have given him a few lifts, and he opted to call me to help out this other guy.
I met the guy that wanted to go to the shelter, and talked to him for a while.
I told him I really had mixed feelings about taking him to the shelter because the director is a mean-spirited megalomaniac, and he was unlikely to be treated very well, or fairly, or nicely, or compassionately.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I am used to being treated like crap.”
That doesn’t say much for our culture.
Well, I told him if he expected to be treated like crap that he was headed to the right place. I drove him up to the shelter, explaining that they won’t let me on the property because I blog about their poor treatment of people, their disorganized organization, and the fraudulent ways they perpetuate grant money from the federal government.
Anyway, I gave him my card and dropped him off.
His words, “I am used to being treated like crap,” still hum in my head. The shelter in my town perpetuates the crappy treatment of people.
Anyone donating money or materials to Volunteers of America and its Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter is supporting thugs in their thuggery.

New Drug Test Office Beats VOA Hands Down On Ethics

I see where a former Volunteers of America program director of the local drug testing division is forming her own drug testing services.
She is actually going to certify her people according to Federal Department of Transportation regulations for the use of breath test equipment. This is something that Volunteers of America has not gotten around to doing. It was deemed too expensive.
I mentioned this to the DOT, and we have been emailing back and forth for some time. Apparently, the DOT is concerned that Volunteers of America is not holding up its end, which is just another day at the office at VOA Wyoming-Montana.
When I worked in the drug testing division at VOA, we were “certified” as technicians to use testing procedures with Redwood labs of California, and MedTox labs. Our certification required that we take a written test, and it with our administrator’s permission, we did so with the answer sheet in front of us. To do otherwise was deemed too much fuss.
Certification for breath tests was non-existent. Certification for specimen collection/preparation was bogus. Still, on we tested.
It sounds to me like this woman who is starting her own business might have ethics that are missing from the VOA work culture.

Oh My Heavens, There She Is!

It finally happened.
I saw the woman who directs the homeless shelter face-to-face at Wal-mart Saturday.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, as Sheridan is not a vast metropolis where you can get lost in the crowd. Someone in the crowd usually knows your mom, taught you in school, knows your daughter, or just knows your car.
It was she and her husband and maybe an offspring.
She was all smiles and said, “Tim, how AAARRRE you.”
“Fine.”
“We sure miss you at the shelter.”
“Oh, you do not,” I said, smiling (or sneering, I can’t remember).
“Of course we do,” she said.
“Well,” I paused to decide whether to argue, then said, “That’s nice.”
“I really do wish you the best,” she said cheerily.
Since that isn’t a complete sentence, I am supposing she meant “funeral you’ve ever had,” or, “case of some quick and lethal disease.”
At any rate, even a crude, horrible man such as myself can appreciate her civility, even though it was an opaque façade. Even psychos can be nice sometimes. She might have been in a good mood because she just kicked somebody out of the shelter. That really gets her endorphins going.
Had I had the presence of mind (never happens when it needs to) I could have asked:
1. Does this mean you are going to pick up the telephone now, when your caller ID says it’s me?
2. Are going to allow staff to talk to me when I call?
3. Are you going to call the resident to the phone who I want to talk to?
4. Are you going to allow me on the property at the shelter without calling the VA Police to escort me away for trespassing?
5. Are you going to stop grilling residents about whether they have been in contact with Tim Cummings to cause trouble?
Naw, she doesn’t miss me THAT much!

The VOA Sheridan Shelter Song

Sheridan Shelter Song
To the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies”

Come and listen to a story
‘bout man named Fred,
Asked the Sheridan shelter
if they could spare a bed.
He was told he could stay
and could eat the shelter food,
but from that point on he was treated pretty rude.

Like soil, that is. Vexed was he.

Well, the next thing ya know
He was treated less than fair.
The director always spoke
With a condescending air.
She tripled his load
Of his worries and his strife,
He didn’t know that her ‘help’
Meant she’d overtake his life.

Meg’lomania to the gills, that is. Thinks she’s God. Grooves on pow’r.

His stay wasn’t long
‘cause he couldn’t acquiesce,
when accused of a crime
she demanded he confess.
He was kicked down the road
Cuz she was in a bad mood,
And no one would know
Cuz her actions aren’t reviewed.

(End theme, accelerando)
And now it’s time to say goodbye,
Cuz Fred could never win.
The tilted box that was her world
He could not quite fit in.
Underneath a bridge, he figured, was a better place to be,
Than to put up with the Sher’dan shelter’s ‘hospitality.’

Bye now!

No Follow-Up From Shelter; VOA Guilty of Grant Abuse

A former homeless veteran called me last week and said he needed help in his apartment.
I was happy to oblige ...
... But I also wondered where the VOA Homeless Shelter was with the follow-up on veterans who leave the shelter and find appropriate housing. Their Per Diem grant requires this kind of follow-up. Not happening.
The Federal Government grants them more than $26 per day per veteran. The average vet-per-day count is supposed to stay around 16. Where's my calculator ... that's more than $416 per day. The grant contains certain expectations from the grantee organization, and, try as I might, I can't find where it says, "Sit on your a-- and enjoy the free money."

'Human Dignity of Every Person' Not On The Menu At Local Shelter

I have noted during Pope Benedict XVI’s papal visit to the United States, that he has referred several times to “the human dignity of every person.”
It might be thought that it is safe to assume that we do not live within reach, out here in Wyoming, of lapses in this particular area. This is a false assumption.
Our nice town has the potential, or, in the case of the homeless shelter, human dignity issues already in need of addressing.
Any time we care for the vulnerable in our midst, we must hold up the doctrine of the dignity of every person as the standard. Our shelter does this lousily, very lousily.
We must also hold up this doctrine in our nursing homes, our day cares, our medical facilities, our rehabilitative services, the special education components at our schools, our mental health services, our correctional facilities, our alternative schools, our addiction treatment facilities, our youth homes, our probation and parole offices, our courtrooms, our recreational facilities and our social services providers.
Obviously, this doctrine goes wherever people go.
As members of a healthy community, we must be on our toes to guard this human dignity of every person, and not go the way of the Volunteers of American Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, with its smug dismissive, authoritarian, intrusive, manipulative, counter-productive and controlling ways, which in only the most distorted and twisted of minds would be considered “helping people.”
There is no agency more undignified than the shelter. Any individual or group supporting this shelter is aiding and abetting.
Plenty of dignified works in Sheridan can use your gifts, and will not toss them by the truckloads into the landfill as the shelter did last summer, or make the residents feel like they are either in prison or kindergarten.