Dolores Street Community Services

Love it Organized Efficient Safe

This is still in the works, with the case manager that I am supposed to be seeing, disappearing due to illness. Still, opportunities to visit as the limited visiting hours are in conflict with other needed to do priorities in my routines and work scheduling. However the manager for the Homeless Shelter Program is named Myra, and the caseworker for this shelter is Cecilia. The Homeless Shelter at 1050 South Van Ness is shared with a preschool. It is not a fulltime homeless shelter. Getting into the shelter still requires calling 311 to get on the waiting list for a bed reservation, there is no way to get around the rules now that the new mayor is trying to clean up the glitches in the system.

Absolute disaster of an employment website, can’t fix it no one responds to emails and I have talked to two different combat agents I mean what they call receptionists there who don’t listen to one word you say they steer the conversation to deciding themselves what you want why do they ask which employment site you are searching when YOU HAVE ALREADY CLEARLY STATED THE PROBLEM HOW MANY DOLORES STREET EMPLOYMENT WEBSITES ARE THERE?

Amazing team of staff. Very helpful. Providing immigration services, temporary shelter, personal case management regardless of citizen status, gender or gender status.

Gets the job done for why i am there. Talking about the steps and Bill W.

A Very Busy Beautiful Park!

I'm monitor shelter SVO4😃

Great place for comunity assistance

*The Trouble with a "Queer Friendly" Homeless Shelter* "It's unfair to gaykeep but my quality of life is seriously threatened here." i have now come to fully understand why i feel so politically unsafe at Jazzie's Place, the "nation's first LGBTQ inclusive homeless shelter". first of all, they are a *dormitory* amongst 3 others as part of Delores Street Community Services[1]. The other 3 dorms are 100% cishet males who have no idea how to talk respectfully to a womxn, let alone a queer person. The staff will tell you "we are coed" and that is dangerous wishful thinking, because it is used to dismiss my diversity outcries. they came into "lgbtq friendliness" naively during a time when no one else was publicly guaranteeing that. The hype probably scored them some serious dough in 2015 [2]. They later found out in practice that it is unfair to gatekeep who is and isnt a transgender, homosexual, bisexual, queer. however, it remains that there is an obvious spectrum of self identification, willing participation in queer politics, and an ability to get along within the queer community without regularly giving off vibes of closeted homophobia or closeted transphobia. There are people in here who are working extra hard to keep their bed reservations, but they do so with a lack of refined perception that could only be seen by someone who actually does have a gaydar... or a transdar for that matter. and although we can see it clearly, staff cannot, and neither can the imposters. And so, empowered by the dunning-kruger bandwagon [3], the shelter staff is forced to allow fakers to contaminate our space, use our resources, and step on our toes in a most intimate way. Staff seem to have grown now apathetic to the problem, and trying to just be practical about it. most staff percieve my outcries as overdramatic rants. i feel constantly dismissed and devalidated by staff about issues of safety, basic respect, and bodily integrity in that space. i find myself suffering from women's isolation. during times when there is une femme staff, i try to rely on her so that i can ignore les hommes. so there exist gaping misogyny and gaping lgbtq-gatekeeping vulnerabilities in Jazzie's place. By now, they have been far outpaced by orgs like TransThrive, TGIJP, and even the young THC in Berkeley. Those are groups that arent afraid to use the word "radical." Jazzie's Dormitory-Amongst-Hungry-Cishet-Men needs to denounce their LGBTQ-friendly status in public before i write the equivalent of "The Jungle" and put them on center stage as a primary offender. But then who would even bother to self-denounce? in the meantime, the small number of trans women who pass-as-trans have had to form a rather scrutinizing click of "real ones" just for the sake of peer support, if not basic sanity. yes, it's incredibly sad that we have been forced to gaykeep, but i am beginning to accept that this is the reality of the security problem. my 90 day bed reservation ends on august 10. after that, i will be forced to go back to 1-night reservations while i wait on a 1-month queue to get into something closer to Compton's District. Something like "a womxn's place" or the womxn's floor at NextDoor. Shelters' publicly advertised LGBTQ alliance at large, as well as their feminist safety guarantees need to be governed by a third party standards body. That body does not exist. Let's create it. footnotes 1 . https://www.dscs.org/housing 2 . https://www.sfexaminer.com/photo-galleries/grand-opening-of-the-new-lgbt-homeless-shelter-jazzies-place/nggallery/image/lgbt-shelter-24/ 3 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect #LavendarPanthers

In a city filled with homeless people and most neighborhood associations blocking the opening of new homeless services organizations, Dolores Street Community Services stands out to me as one of the most important organizations around. They run a couple of shelters, assist in job placement, make referrals for substance abuse cases, and are on the forefront of the effort to actually help people less advantaged than the rest of us. If you are considering donating or volunteering, please, please, please donate to Dolores Street Community Services. The dedication displayed by the staff (these people are incredible) is...well, incredible. Check them out at www.dscs.org.

The receptionist is the rudest individual I have ever spoken on the phone with. A gentlemen off the street came into my office to see if he could get help from us to call Dolores street community service. All he had was a phone number and needed an address, that is all. When I called I explained the situation to the women on the line not only was she giving attitude the moment she picked up the phone with a simple "hola" she was annoyed to just have to take call! being a receptionist myself I would never answer the phone so rudely and abruptly. After I explained everything in English she seemed super irritated with the fact that I asked if she spoke Spanish to talk to the man directly even though she answered in Spanish. At this point I thought it would be easier for him to explain directly since I was just simply doing him a favor on calling this random place. While I know it was my fault that I missed that She did speak Spanish in the first place, I only asked that to ensure she was comfortable speaking to the man directly through my phone line. It was me being polite and nothing more. She not only gave me a snarky tone but when I responded back with the same tone she didn't seem to like that and verbally made that very clear. Aren't you supposed to want to help people in the field you're in? Especially OUR people as Latinos! I was so upset even more after the call because she did nothing but make this man feel insecure about his way to maneuver himself around a new city he's NEVER been in. It made me really sad for this women. All this man wanted was guidance for his daughter and himself, and it's sad that all you were good for was to push him back to the ground when he was already feeling low. And it's sad that you relayed that to people that tried nothing but to help this man also. I'm sure the organization is great, I've never heard about you all until today, but the women who answered the receptionist phone line, was not the most caring human being, and really made you all look so horrible.