Low-barrier winter shelter for single women opens in Stockton
Stockton Shelter for the Homeless opened a winter shelter for single women this past week. The new low-barrier accommodations is the first of its kind in Stockton.
The shelter has long offered low-barrier beds to men, meaning they don’t have to pass a drug test to check in for the night, as well as separate mediumbarrier accommodations for women and families. But Shelter CEO JoLyn McMillan says they have never been able to offer something like this to single women.
“This is the first for the city and for the shelter,” McMillan said.
Women who live in homeless encampments often have to make tough choices to protect themselves, McMillan said.
“Homeless women on the streets frequently have to trade sex for safety,” McMillan said. “They trade sex so they have a safe place to sleep at night and so they don’t get their items stolen or get beat up by other people “
One employee has even told her that he can sometimes hear women screaming in the encampments while working at the men’s shelter, McMillan said. Just providing a place for women to sleep at night can prevent violence against them.
The new 24-bed shelter was originally a temporary expansion set up last last winter to house an additional 50 men during the colder months of the year, McMillan said. Then when COVID-19 hit, the Stockton Shelter was given federal CARES ACT funding to keep the accommodations up and running through the end of the year.
Over the last year the shelter has been able to transition about a quarter of its men population into permanent housing, McMillan said, which just happened to be roughly the same number of those living in the winter expansion.
McMillan said she saw an opportunity. So they cobbled together existing funding and some creative grants with the city and county in order to keep expansion open for winter through March 31 — only this time for single women instead.
“We just wanted to start with something small, see how many women we could pull off the streets,” McMillan said. “Hopefully provide some safety, some warmth and some caring for these women.”
The reduced number of beds inside the expansion — shrunk from 50 to 24 — also allows the shelter to store personal possessions for the women when they come to shelter, McMillan said.
“They’re not going to leave their items,” McMillan said. “If that’s the difference between them coming off the streets and not, we find a location to store their items.”
The shelter, which is located just south of downtown Stockton, started doing outreach in homeless encampments in the area on Jan. 4 and will soon expand those efforts to north Stockton as well, McMillan said.
For the first few nights the only woman to check in was Antoinette Wilkerson. But shelter worker Kathie Trees said by Friday there were about a half dozen more.
Wilkerson, 62, has been homeless for a longtime, she said. Her 82-year-old husband lives in a longterm care facility but says she hasn’t been able to go and see him since the pandemic began. She came into the shelter after Trees told her she could get warm.
“I’m just happy to get in here,” Wilkerson said. “I’m so tired out in the street, I just don’t know what to do.”