"Hookay," Sparkle sighed, looking over his classroom and giving them all a wry smile, "I'm guessing you guys have probably noticed by now that I've been sort of squirming away from just straight-up suggesting you use homeless shelters. And the reason for that is because, while in theory they're amazing, and having a place to rest your head on a cold night might even save your life, many of them - not even all of them - come with more than enough problems to make sleeping on the street seem like the safest, sanest option for a lot of people."

This was probably going to get long.

"Ideally, a shelter is a sort of way to start setting your life back on track," Sparkle explained. "They've got a sort of stability to them, with set mealtimes and places to shower - the showering is generally mandatory, and they'll usually supply towels and soap - and sleep. Best case scenario, sleeping in a place crammed up against a bunch of desperate strangers can be a little uncomfortable, but so long as you can check in on time and you keep a close watch on your stuff, things turn out okay. But it's kind of a gamble as to whether you'll have a best case scenario night or not, so I'm gonna go down a list of things to keep an eye out for. You might encounter some or none of these things... or you might encounter all of them. Better to go in prepared for a worst-case situation than get totally blindsided."

You only had to get blindsided once, right? Sparkle blew out a breath.

"I don't even know if I can get through everything," he admitted. "But I'll try. Some of them aren't even going to apply to you guys, like maybe you don't have a pet, so the usual 'no pets allowed' rule isn't going to apply to you. But sometimes even that one gets taken a step too far, and a lot of assistance animals, basically dogs that have been specially trained to help their owners with tasks they might have difficulty doing themselves, will get turned away as well. Seeing eye dogs and hearing assistance dogs are generally safe, but if you have a dog to help you if you have limited mobility, or one specially trained to help you deal with anxiety or PTSD, you might end up standing in line for hours just to be turned away at the door.

"And I do mean 'standing in line for hours.' Shelters only have so many beds, and especially on cold nights, they fill up fast, with a very set check-in time. If you're homeless but employed, you might not even be able to make it in time to beat the line-up. Even a 9-5 job means that you'll end up at the ass-end of the line at best, and might get turned away at the door as a result."

Which was less than fun all on its own, really.

"Most people who work at these shelters mean well, but they're human, and, I mean, not all humans are great people. There are gonna be the ones who ask invasive shit when you check in, like asking straight-up about your sex life, if maybe there's some guy you've been fucking that you can stay with instead, shit like that. There are gonna be the ones who just assume you're a junkie and a criminal and that's why you're on the street. You might encounter the ones who don't understand the difference between mental illness and drug addiction, for example. Both will often get turned away at the door. In their defense, however limited, a lot of these shelters run by donations, and don't have the assets it takes to train their staff to be able to handle mentally ill clients, but it means that a lot of people get needlessly left out of luck regardless. A lot of shelters are some degree of religious, too. Which is fine if you don't mind sitting through a mandatory religious service in exchange for a roof over your head, and is less fine if you do. It's hard to devote yourself to Jesus if you can't bring yourself to see any way in which Jesus has devoted himself to you."

He reached a hand up and scratched the back of his neck.

"And remember that statistic I gave you guys at the start of the semester? About how there's a disproportionately large percentage of LGBT teens among the homeless?" Here was one that he was clearly speaking from experience with, right here. "Yeah, homophobia doesn't stop just because you're homeless. It just makes it harder to find a shelter at night, especially if you're visibly queer. And even if the staff lets you in, that doesn't mean you aren't going to be in danger of some sort of physical or sexual abuse once you're in. This is the shit that always scared me off, honestly. Never had a job keeping me out, so the line-ups weren't that bad. Never had a pet until I came here, so that wasn't an issue either. But I was a gay kid. Not necessarily a great thing to be while surrounded by desperate strangers."

Deep breath. Exhale. Righto.

"Of course, gay kids aren't the only vulnerable people who might be exploited and victimized once they make it into the shelters, if they make it into the shelters. Women might have to contend with unwanted sexual harassment, from both other people staying at the shelter and the odd employee looking for sexual favours in exchange for little extras. Disabled and mentally ill people are at a disadvantage, too, because of the biases I mentioned before, and because if you, say, have limited mobility or difficulty reacting in certain situations, people are going to assume you're easier to steal from. Hell, plenty of shelters aren't even wheelchair accessible. And other ones will take away things like walkers and canes overnight, generally so that they won't be stolen, but that leaves people who have difficulty getting around clearly more vulnerable to abuse than someone who can just get up and walk away from it."

Abuse was kind of going to be the depressing sticking point of the day.

"Drugs aren't allowed in at the door, but that doesn't mean you aren't at risk of running into junkies or dealers, people who are dangerous because they want something or who are dangerous because they threw their mind out before they made it in the door and managed to hold it together long enough to get past check-in. Another tick in the 'danger' column. There are a lot of ticks in the danger column. I can't list every single danger, so just... like... if you stay at one of these places, be aware that desperate people, people who have nothing left to lose, and people in positions of power can all be dangerous to you. Especially if you look like an easy target. There's a certain amount of keeping your head down that you have to do in these places, but you have to know how to do it while keeping your eyes up, too.

"Moving right along into another one of my least-favourite-topics-of-the-day, these places are pretty much parasite and disease vectors. Big, happy, too-many-people-in-too-small-a-space disease vectors. It doesn't matter how much you make people shower on their way in, a bar of soap isn't going to take care of head lice, pubic lice, or bedbugs, or scabies. There's a constant cycle of people coming in and out every day. Hundreds of them, many of whom often sleep on the street. Parasites are gonna happen. And that isn't even a matter of being clean. There are plenty of people with homes and working showers, ridiculously fastidiously clean people, who still deal with lice and bedbugs. Who still get sick. You see it in, like, daycares. One kid comes in with a cold, twenty kids go home with one. Now give like half of those kids weakened immune systems due to malnutrition and shit, and pack them together like sardines in a can and make them sleep that way overnight. Yay, heightened risk of tuberculosis."

It was not yay. Just in case any of you weren't sure. It was very much not yay.

"And have I mentioned the theft? Because you have a lot of people with nothing to their names, there's gonna be theft. It's gonna be your stuff. You stay in these places enough, and sooner or later, something is going to walk away. Some shelters will have lockers, but not all of them. Some of them will just straight-up have staff that throw your backpacks in the dumpsters on the way in. Which is an extreme case, yeah, but if they're making you choose between all your worldly possessions and not freezing to death at night, that shit is fucked right up, and fuck that."

These topics always made Sparkle so much more eloquent. Truly.

"Like I said... a lot of this stuff is 'extreme case' stuff. Plenty of shelters mean well, and just want you to set you on the path to recovery so you don't need to use them anymore, but this shit is complicated. If you ever end up in a position to choose between a shelter and the street, it's better to go in forewarned, so you can make that choice with some idea of what you might be stepping into. If you have an alternative, like a friend with a couch you can crash on, or a car you can lock the doors to, or a tent in the woods that nobody will find, then you might choose that instead. Hell, maybe you're one of the really lucky ones with a job and you can scrape together enough for an extended stay in a hostel or something. You gotta do what's right for you. Or what's safest for you. Seriously, guys... just... stay safe."

He spread his hands a bit.

"Any suggestions for how to avoid any of this shit would be great," he added. "I covered homeless shelters in particular today, but I can probably expand on other options next time around. Won't do you guys any favours to give you a bunch of reasons to avoid one thing without giving you something to work with, anyway."