Is anybody listening?

Residents of the Oxford Street shelter say their grievances are falling on deaf ears.

By Noah Bruce

On the night of July 28, 2001, Bette Thompson, a homeless woman living in Portland, checked herself into the Oxford Street Shelter. Because Thompson had been drinking she was placed in the Milestone Room at the shelter. Normally clients who have been drinking or using drugs are sent to the Milestone Shelter on India Street, but on nights when Milestone is full, these clients are housed in the Milestone Room at Oxford Street. While in this room, Thompson claims she was sexually assaulted by another overnight resident.

Now she’s suing the city of Portland, which runs the shelter, for negligence to the tune of $100,000 — though her lawyer, David Marchese, claims that the true purpose of the lawsuit is to “prevent this from happening to anyone else.”

According to a notice of claim written by Marchese and delivered to the city in January, Thompson “was improperly placed in the ‘Milestone Room’ at the Oxford Street Shelter although the employees of the shelter knew, or should have known, that it was unsafe to place her there. The door to said room was closed and the room was not properly monitored. ” While in that room, the notice continues, Thompson “was assaulted by another overnight resident at the shelter, Emanuel Daviega,” and “suffered physical trauma to her genital area, in addition to mental and emotional trauma.”

Jerry Cayer, head of health and human services for the city of Portland does not believe Thompson’s story. “I am convinced this didn’t happen,” he says.

The grand jury of the Superior Court in Portland was not so sure. It indicted Daveiga on charges of unlawful sexual contact on February 9, 2001.

Men and women normally sleep on different floors at the shelter, says Bob Duranleau, who works below Cayer as Portland’s head of social services, but in the Milestone Room the two sexes sleep together when there are space constraints like there were last July when part of the shelter was closed for renovations. Further, Duranleau admits that though there is a staff member stationed on the first floor where the Milestone Room is located, “they probably would not have visual contact with the room the whole time.” Therefore, with drunk men and women at times spending the night together unsupervised, it seems possible that what Thompson claims happened to her could happen to another woman.

The assault on Thompson, and the fact that Milestone Room policies have not been changed since the incident, raise questions about the shelter’s management. Though the incident is the most serious grievance against the shelter, it is far from the only one.

While members of Portland’s homeless community lodge a variety of complaints against the shelter, those who have grievances that we spoke to have one thing in common: they feel that shelter management do not listen to their concerns. Though clients at the shelter supposedly have outlets to express their concerns, they say the outlets do not work.

Though this could be a case of a handful of gripers who expect too much from an emergency shelter, their complaints may point to a lack of a functional grievance system that robs shelter inhabitants of the chance to speak out and have a hand in shaping their environment.

Not every complaint should result in a change in the system, according to Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington-based homeless advocacy group, but one of the functions of a well-run grievance system is that staff should report back to every complainer on the outcome of his complaint.

“Usually in any grievance procedure,” explains Roman, “the staff reports back what they’ve done: if they’re going to address it or if they’re not, rather than have it go into a black hole.”

Clients at Oxford Street describe the shelter’s grievance system as a black hole.

“In reality the complaint process doesn’t exist,” says Chris O’Keefe, a resident of the Oxford Street Shelter.

Chris Verrilli, also a resident at the shelter agrees. “There’s no client input in anything,” he says.

The director of Oxford Street, Peter Murdoch, says this is not true. He says the shelter has a grievance system and it works.

“It works just fine,” says Murdoch. “It’s called a conflict-resolution system. If they have a beef with something they fill out the form and we deal with the situation . . . [The system] is in place, it works.” He also refers to an advocate program at the Preble Street Resource Center, composed of homeless and ex-homeless who represent Oxford Street clients and other folks who make use of the city’s resources.

Murdoch is backed up by Duranleau. “I’ve heard many times since Peter’s been aboard how open he is to taking complaints,” he says.

But residents at the shelter tell a different story.

According to Tara Cobb and Michelle Labbe, two women who stay at the shelter, their complaints about a male staff member who enters the female dorm when the women are changing fell on deaf ears.

“This staff member. . . he’s got this habit of walking into the ladies dorm,” says Cobb, “and he stands there as we’re trying to get dressed.”

Labbe says she has had the same experience. In total, five women filled out a grievance form regarding his antics. Two or three of these women, along with O’Keefe, who as a veteran of the system often acts as an unofficial advocate for other shelter clients, then took the complaint to Duranleau.

“Two or three of the females went down with me to talk to Bob at 9:30,” says O’Keefe. “He blew us off till 1:30. When we got back at 1:30 he had already talked to Peter [Murdoch] and told us to talk to Peter. . . By the time I got into the discussion with Peter he had already made an agreement with the women and he told them it was not going to happen again. He said that guys would knock before they came in [during changing times] and they would try to have female staff in the room instead of males.”

However, Cobbe and Labbe say the situation has not changed.

“Murdoch said a knock policy would be instituted, but nothing has been done,” says Cobb. “They still have men walking in.”

“This morning [he] walked in without knocking,” says Labbe.

According to Murdoch, the problem is not the male staff but the women who change outside of designated areas.

“Women are supposed to change in the bathroom,” he says. “They are not to be dressing in the actual dorm. The dorm has to be accessible to male and female employees. They asked me about that. I’ll certainly encourage [male staff] to knock, but they can come in whenever they want. I moved the female dorm upstairs so they could have a bigger bathroom to dress in.”

According to Cobb, the bathroom is simply not large enough to accommodate the needs of the number of women who stay at the shelter and use it to dress every morning.

“You try to fit 30 women in that tiny little bathroom,” says Cobb. Cayer and Murdoch, however, say that the women do not all change at the same time, and that some do not change clothes at all, and therefore the bathroom is big enough.

There is also debate between residents and management over the lack of recourse available to someone who has been kicked out of the shelter. A case in point revolves around an incident involving Cobb.

Cobb admits she was accused of threatening staff but claims that the employee whom she supposedly threatened does not speak fluent English and mistook Cobb’s frustration for an actual threat. The situation began when Cobb got into an argument with another client named Mary as the two women were at their lockers.

“Mary started calling me names,” she says. “I asked her politely to stop. Then she started hitting me in the head with the locker.”

Cobb says at this point she appealed to a staff member for help, but he responded with only a slight rebuke, telling Mary, “You gotta be more careful.”

Cobb left the room and encountered the staff member who speaks little English.

“[She] started to say something to me,” says Cobb. “She gave me attitude. She was talking in broken English. I said, ‘I’m going to turn you in for your fucking attitude.’”

The staff member responded by calling the police, who took her to the Maine Medical Center’s McGeachey Hall mental hospital, and then presented Cobb with a no-trespass order barring her from the shelter.

According to Duranleau, this was an extreme situation. “The only time we would ban someone and call the police is if they’re violent or threaten the staff,” he says.

It may seem hard to believe that a staff member at a homeless shelter would call the police for such little provocation, but Cobb’s story is supported by Labbe. She describes the exchange between Cobb and the shelter employee like this:

“What Tara said was, ‘Leave me the fuck alone. I just want to leave.’ [The staff member] said, ‘You threatened my life, I’m going to call the police.’ [Cobb] did not threaten her. ”

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OXFORD STREET: are resident complaints valid?

Though he will not comment on specific cases, Cayer says that staff have the right to throw out anyone whom they feel is threatening them. Then if the client who was kicked out feels that the punishment was unjust, they can appeal to Murdoch or to one of the advocates.

According to Cobb, she has tried to speak to Murdoch about the situation, but he will not listen to her.

“I tried to talk to Peter Murdoch,” she says. “He keeps blowing me off. There are a half dozen witnesses but because staff wrote [about the incident] he won’t listen to [the witnesses].”

Murdoch says he did not avoid meeting with Cobb. In fact, he claims Cobb didn’t bother to attend the meeting they scheduled to talk about the incident. “I set up a time for her to come, and she never showed up,” he says. “I was willing to listen to her side of the story. ”

For a homeless person, getting kicked out of Oxford Street shelter during the winter is a serious penalty. “When you get kicked out of the shelter and it’s winter and it’s below zero, that’s a life-threatening punishment,” says Cobb.

Duranleau says that when someone is thrown out of the shelter, management tries to find alternate housing for the person. However, Cobb and her husband spent several nights sleeping in their car after she was thrown out. They stayed in the car until Wayne Russell, housing and employment coordinator at Oxford Street Shelter, helped the couple find a room they could rent by the week. As of March 1, however, they claim they will not be able to afford the room, and their only shelter will again be their car.

Perhaps equally disturbing are reports by the residents we spoke with that staff at the shelter use punishments to discourage Oxford clients from using complaint forms. Dale Theriault, an Oxford Street client who is new to the Portland area from Bangor, says that he was temporarily kicked out of the shelter after he asked for a grievance form to complain about an employee.

According to Theriault, he had just entered the shelter after saying goodnight to a friend on the street. A staff member told him he was being too loud and he needed to “learn to be quiet.” An argument ensued and Theriault requested a grievance form.

“I asked for the grievance form and she kicked me out,” he says. “She was not going to throw me out until I asked for the form. She said, ‘Don’t come back till 11.’ It was 8:30. I said, ‘So can I have the resolution form?’ She said, ‘No, I’ll give it to you tomorrow.’ ”

According to Murdoch, however, what likely happened was the employee wanted to diffuse the situation before dealing with the grievance. “The time to give the grievance form,” he says, “is when the situation has calmed down. The policy is to quell the situation, then sit them down and give them the grievance form.”

Cayer states emphatically that it is not shelter policy to punish people who try to air their grievances. “I can assure you,” he says, “that if that was the practice, the advocates would be very loud about it.”

However, Chris Verrilli, a client at the shelter, says incidents like what happened to Theriault have scared him away from using the resolution system.

“I’m afraid to fill out a complaint because I’ve talked to three people who voiced their opinions and they got thrown out,” he says.

Clearly, if residents are scared to fill out complaint forms for fear of being thrown out into the cold, the entire system is undermined.

According to Duranleau, Cayer, and Murdoch, there are other means for shelter clients to air their grievances besides filling out a conflict-resolution form or talking directly to management. But, the homeless people themselves say that, like the conflict- resolution form, these outlets do not work.

One of the avenues management points to is the advocate system set up at the Preble Street Resource Center. A client with a grievance has the opportunity to speak to an advocate about problems with Oxford Street or any other concern. Advocates are made up of homeless or ex-homeless people who receive a small stipend from Preble Street. According to Preble Street Director Mark Swann, the job of advocates “can be anything from testifying in Augusta, to walking someone to the city to ask for general assistance money, to anything in between.” If an Oxford Street resident brings a complaint to an advocate, the advocate will then bring the issue up at one of two meetings: the advocacy meeting between the advocates, Murdoch, and management of Milestone Shelter; or the larger emergency shelter meeting, consisting of the above participants plus representatives from up to a dozen other social service organizations

According to Cayer, the advocates are “one of the strongest voices for the homeless in Portland.” They serve as an outlet for homeless people who do not feel comfortable filling out a complaint form or speaking directly with Murdoch or Duranleau.

Chip Land, an advocate at Preble Street, says though there is “a lot of red tape” involved in making changes and sometimes the changes “take a long time,” he feels the “advocacy group works really well.” Land points to his success lobbying to have some clients reinstated at Oxford Street as proof that the advocacy project works.

Donna Yellen, the facilitator of the advocates and a staff member at Preble Street, characterizes the system at Oxford Street as imperfect, but willing to change to meet the needs of its clients. “It’s certainly an ongoing struggle,” she says. “We’re always working on improving the system. We’ve been working fairly closely with the city [which runs the shelter]. We don’t always agree on things, but for the most part we do. We both believe in improvement of services.” On the whole, Yellen says, “People in the city are fairly agreeable to listening to what advocates have to say.”

Though management at the shelter believe the advocates effectively represent the concerns of the clients, clients we spoke with expressed frustration with the advocates. According to Cobb, she went to one of the advocates to complain about the male staff member walking in on the women changing, but she never heard anything more about it. “I guess it’s still sitting in their files,” she said.

Yellen, however, says an advocate did bring the issue up at an advocacy meeting and Murdoch told the group the he would try to have females instead of males in the area at that time and would have males knock before entering. That was two months ago, and Yellen claims she only recently heard that one male employee frequently does not follow the policy. However, this recalls Roman’s point about making sure that clients know the outcome of their grievances. It seems reasonable to expect that Cobb would hear back from the advocates either way.

O’Keefe says that he went to see Yellen about this particular staff member, who, according to several residents at the shelter, not only barges in on women as they change, but often treats clients in a rude and condescending manner. O’Keefe says Yellen said she would bring it up at the next staff meeting, but he has not heard back since. Yellen claims that this is a problem with an employee rather than a policy and therefore falls outside the scope of the advocates. Again, however, the outcome of the grievance was not communicated to O’Keefe.

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CHRIS O'KEEFE AND TARA COBB: they claim their attempts to complain about Oxford Street have gone nowhere.

Shelter management also mention weekly house meetings at Oxford Street. “There is always an opportunity for people to bring up issues at these weekly meetings,” says Duranleau, of further avenues for the registering of client complaints.

According to O’Keefe though, there has not been a house meeting at Oxford Street since “October or November.” And when there are meetings he says clients are encouraged to speak up about small complaints, but that discussion about larger concerns are avoided.

“If you have a minor beef, like a TV issue, they’ll talk about it,” says O’Keefe. “But if you have a major issue, they don’t want to talk about it. Pete [Murdoch] has told me not to bring things up at the meetings.”

Ruth Rader, another resident of the shelter claims that she was ignored at the last shelter meeting, though she had her hand up throughout the meeting, because she is viewed as a “troublemaker.” When another woman asked about the lack of hot water, Rader claims Murdoch “shot her down” and did not answer her question.

Murdoch says that the weekly meetings have been happening on schedule, and there has not been a lag in the meetings. He notes that perhaps clients who claim there has not been a meeting in months were simply not around at the time the meetings were held. Further, he says issues that take a long time to discuss should be brought to him after the meeting. And if he shot down a question, “maybe it was the fourth or fifth time I had addressed that question.”

Finally, management says that clients at the shelter are welcome to attend the advocacy meeting, held once every three weeks, or the monthly Emergency Shelter Association Committee meeting. Duranleau says that the last few meetings of the advocacy group have been particularly enjoyable. “The last couple meetings we’ve joked because there haven’t been a lot of issues,” he says. Perhaps the meetings would have been more substantial if residents from the shelter had attended, but O’Keefe and Cobb claim that they have never heard of the advocacy meetings.

Duranleau emphasizes that the Emergency Shelter Association Committee meeting is advertised in the Portland Press Herald. It is open to the general public, including shelter residents. As for the advocacy meeting, he views the attending advocates as homeless representation enough, but does says that anyone staying at the shelter is welcome to attend.

According to Michael Stoops, community activist with the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based non-profit that works on homeless issues, people who stay in a shelter feel a lack of power in controlling their circumstances. Stoops should know. He’s been working on homeless issues for 30 years now, and has stayed at every homeless shelter in the country — including Oxford Street.

“When you stay at a shelter you are disempowered,” says Stoops. “You are told when to go to sleep, when to take a shower, when to come into the shelter. Rules are made by someone else and people think, ‘Well, you’re homeless, you should be grateful to have a place to sleep.’”

According to Stoops, shelters that work best enact policies to counteract this feeling of powerlessness. He reiterates Roman’s point about notifying clients about the outcome of their complaint.

“If you want to make people in a center happy you have to tell the grievant the outcome, ” says Stoops. “Homeless people are used to losing, but they do have a right to know the outcome of a complaint. If you don’t let them know they will feel like the system is rigged.”

Another tactic shelters can use to give clients input is to create a resident council. In such a system, representatives from the client population work with shelter management in the creation of shelter policies.

At the Center for Homelessness in South Bend Indiana, what Stoops considers to be the model of an ideal shelter, the resident council does not actually create rules, but it does advise management about policy formulation and policy clarification.

“The council says this is how a policy is working and this is the grey area [in the policy],” says Drew Buscareno, director of the South Bend shelter. “They are an incredibly important voice that says this is how a policy functions in people’s daily lives.”

Though Oxford Street does not employ a council, and South Bend does not use the advocate program, the two shelters do have a similar system in addressing grievances. Like Oxford Street, residents at South Bend take complaints to management at the shelter, and if they are not satisfied with the results, they can appeal to higher managers. Does the system work more smoothly in South Bend because their employees have more time to deal with complaints? Or is it that they are more interested in helping clients? Or does the problem instead lie with residents at Oxford Street do not take advantage of the system that is available to them? Clearly there is a strong disconnect between the shelter residents interviewed for this story and shelter management.

Residents like Theriault claim, “There’s no communication between us and them.”

Cayer, on the other hand, questions whether the problem is not the lack of a functioning grievance system, but rather residents who do not take advantage of what he describes as a simple system to use. “When you boil it down, you have three avenues: the advocates, Bob [Duranleau] and I, or Peter [Murdoch],” he says. “Are the concerns being directed to the right people? There’s a part of me that feels like maybe they are not.”

However, Cayer says that all clients “should expect to be treated with dignity and respect.”

But shelter residents say this is not the treatment they receive. Rader claims that when she tried to complain about lack of accessibility to exits in case of fire, shelter employees were “rude and nasty and they told me this was a shelter and shut up and go to bed.” O’Keefe says that some staff members speak to clients in a way that “you would not speak to a 6-year-old child.”

Duranleau stresses how difficult working with some clients can be. He notes that Oxford Street is the safety net that catches people who have been thrown out of other shelters. “Remember, half the people here on any given night have mental or substance abuse problems,” he says. “When you consider that we have to manage with people who have been thrown out of other shelters while being respectful and maintaining safety, I think it’s remarkable how well the shelter is run.”

Noah Bruce can be reached at nbruce@phx.com.