A homeless woman keeps loudly clearing her throat every time that she walks past me.
Physically disabled people are also routinely verbally abused and physically threatened by guests of the Pine Street Inn. Women in wheelchairs are screamed at to get out of the way, told they should only ever use the one handicapped bathroom that is available on the first floor and which has to be unlocked by a staffperson every time someone wants to use it, accused of faking their disabilities, brushed against accidentally-on-purpose, screamed at when they ask for room to sit at the tables during meals, and told that just because they're in wheelchairs doesn't mean that they won't get beaten up.
Last night, I was talking to a woman in a wheelchair, near the front desk. We were quietly talking about abuse at the shelter. A staffperson yelled at us several times that we "couldn't sit there and discuss," that we had to go to the lobby if we wanted to talk. That would have required that she take the elevator into the lobby, and she had also been told by last night's supervisor to stay where she was until that supervisor had time to talk to her. There are benches near the front desk where people usually sit to consolidate the things that they're going to take with them to the dorm upstairs. I told the staffperson that she couldn't tell us not to be where we were or not to talk to each other. She coughed at me and continued to scream at us until we stopped talking and I moved to another bench. The older, male employee who has harassed me and stalked me around the shelter several times over the past few months coughed at me. Another employee who is often a shift supervisor, but who wasn't supervising last night, walked through and coughed at me.
Copyright L. Kochman, July 2, 2015 @ 8:17 a.m.
