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Chapter 8 Policy Implications Kat: In Search of Shelter Kat was one of the more resourceful women I interviewed, but she was also one of the most disadvantaged in terms of having no material possessions and little social capital. She had not always been in this situation. A hard worker, Kat took a service job right out of high school and held it for a short time until she found an office position. “I worked there until I got married when I was twenty-one,” she said, “And then when I was twenty-two, the company relocated to [Big City], so I quit. I didn’t work for a few years after I got married.” The city was about thirty miles away, but Kat, like many of the women in the poor suburban communities, did not have a car and did not often venture there. The first time I met Kat she had a home and a job. She had recently left an abusive husband, taking her teenage son with her. At fortyfour , she looked worn out from a difficult life and damaged by domestic violence. But her will was strong, and she appeared to be able to handle emotional issues, judging from her calm recounting of her story. The next time I saw her, she was homeless. Kat was a proud woman, and she told me she was ashamed of her current situation. Her son was living with friends temporarily. She did not want to tell me where she was living now, but she asked me to drop her off in a deserted trailer park seemingly inhabited only by dogs, cats, and rats. Based on her recent history, I suspected that she was squatting in an empty house near where she used to live. As I mentioned, she was resourceful. I recounted my third meeting with Kat in chapter 2, describing how I spent twenty-four hours looking for a motel manager who would take her and her son without an ID. I personally paid for her extended-stay room for a week. Although I asked her not to allow other women to stay with her, since the manager might charge more, when I came by I saw another woman living with her and her son in the one room. Kat did not lie. She told me her friend had nowhere to go and that they help each other out. She also told me that the manager would not mind. He had already propositioned them both 159 to exchange sex for an extended stay in the room. They refused and had to be out at the end of the week. My two assistants and I made calls all week to find Kat a place to live temporarily. When we started, I had no doubt that with our combined contacts for service providers, professional credentials, and technological resources (we had a phone and a computer), we would find something in a week. We were surprised when we had nowhere to send Kat by the day before she had to leave the motel. Most of the places we called did not return our calls, even though we each left a phone number on the voice mail recordings . When we did get a real person instead of voice mail, we were told that they did not have room or that Kat did not fit their criteria for acceptance. The three of us called more than twenty services, including domestic violence shelters, family shelters, women’s homes, temporary housing, emergency services, and churches. We documented all our calls for the study. The evidence we collected that week supported what the women had told us: “They never call back.” If a person answered the phone, it was typically a low-level staffer or volunteer who did not have real answers but merely read a long list of exclusion criteria. The reasons that excluded Kat included no photo ID, she had to pass a criminal background check, and her son, now fifteen, was too old. I also was worried about the drug testing that every shelter performed at intake, since I knew Kat smoked marijuana and might have taken a few prescription pills recently that were not prescribed to her. She had been suffering from terrible tooth pain for weeks, and I had driven her to a dental service that claimed to provide free and reduced services for the poor. In fact, the service had a base fee, that I offered to pay, but Kat...

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