Common Sense

By Mr. Joseph L. Perry

In 2010 the shelters in the state have become increasingly overcrowded. The shelter system must be ready to make a change. The leaders of the shelter system must be confident and use common sense and experience and have high expectations to resolve their constituents’ personal problems. The shelter system is under pressure because of the increase of clients in the shelters, and they must live up to the pressure and expectations to find solutions for the homeless constituents.

The system must give the homeless community some memorable advice, and the leaders of shelters must be a force in the shelters.  The case managers must have energy and passion and must use their natural ability to make a big difference in the homeless shelters.

The constituents must learn that if they do something they should not do, there will be consequences.

The shelter mangers need to keep doing what they have been doing, and case mangers need to do pretty much the opposite of what they have been doing. Either way there’s something that feels awfully pivotal about respectfully changing their clients’ lives. The shelters leaders must establish change, as the homeless community expects it. In order to do that, no matter how full of question marks the shelter system is, the leaders must look at the past to the different times they have changed to see how those changes translated into improvement.

Case managers have to start with common sense and their experience to change their constituents’ lives, because people come into the shelters depressed, with emotional and mental problems, and some are in need of anger management or are inadequately prepared for life. Some case managers have done a very good job in the past.  As the constituents get more common sense and experience under their belts, their actions and power will become crisper and sharper with change.

One solution for the shelter system might be to take a close look and analyze past mistakes, and to focus on specific problems within the system. The shelter system recently has been going in the wrong direction, as leaders have devoted too much attention on themselves and not on solutions to their constituencies’ problems. They got away from their normal routine by trying to add some things that did not fit.

Even immediately after the increase of people in the shelter system, they worried about themselves, brushing off even the ideas of love, understanding, passion, trust, communication, building relationships, training, and conflict resolution. The leaders in the shelter system should emphasize those ideas and implement them.