15 Surprising Facts about Life in a Homeless Shelter

I’ve been homeless for 2 months now. My city’s shelter is not what I thought it would be.

Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.
9 min readApr 24, 2024
people congregating outside a homeless shelter
Keizers, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Toward the end of 2023, I lost the downtown apartment home I’d had for 21 years, no longer able to pay rent. For more than a month, I crashed on friends’ couches when I could. When I could not, I wandered the streets all night in the cold of winter.

I had become homeless.

Friends pleaded with me to go to the local men’s emergency shelter. For weeks, though, I resisted. I feared the shelter was dangerous. I thought of it as a haven for crackheads and the mentally ill. “It’s not for me,” I told myself. “I’d rather take my chances on the streets.”

By early February, I had become so sleep-deprived that I began hallucinating and sleepwalking. I then realized I had no choice but to give the shelter a chance.

What I found there surprised me — and many of the surprises were pleasant ones.

You can access all the shelter’s services for free

“Hey, man,” said a panhandler on the corner. “Let me get about six dollars from you so I can get in the shelter tonight.”

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Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.
Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.

Written by Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.

I write about writing, ideas, creativity, homelessness, intuition, spirituality, life lessons. Ex-college teacher Twitter: @paulryburn

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