Homeless Shelters Say Indigent Women Left Out in the Cold

Mary Douglas of the YWCA’s Hotel for Women is finding it increasingly difficult to do her job.

As the hotel’s executive director, she is charged with making sure that women without a home and seeking refuge from the winter cold have a roof over their heads for 60 days. But for the last few months, Douglas has had trouble completing her mission.

With temperatures in Orange County already dipping toward 40 degrees, advocates for the homeless said Tuesday that the number of homeless women--some with children--seeking shelter has skyrocketed in recent weeks and warned that increasing numbers may be turned away in the upcoming chilly nights.

“It’s the largest-growing segment of the homeless population,” said Jim Palmer, executive project director of the Orange County Rescue Mission. “It’s much too cold, and women are now starting to come in.”

But the problem, Palmer and others said, is that while the female homeless population is increasing, facilities for them are not.

At his facility, women are referred to other places because it’s not safe for them to be housed with the homeless men, Palmer said.

And at the YWCA hotel, which houses 38 women in a 19-room facility and is consistently filled to capacity, an average of 20 women a day are turned away, Douglas said. With winter making conditions for street people worse, the number of requests has increased, she said.

When rooms are filled, Douglas said, she refers women to other facilities, even though she’s aware that an alternative will not usually be available.

Since opening its doors in March, 1987, the hotel--one of the few places in the county that provides beds for homeless women--has housed about 1,250 women and turned away countless more. Douglas said the bed shortage indicates increasing community resistance to acknowledging that the number of women on the streets has been steadily increasing for the last 10 years.

“It’s the phenomenon of not wanting to accept that women do become homeless,” she said. “There’s a gross inequity in what’s given to women social-service organizations and what’s given to men.”

Douglas estimates that there are 10,000 homeless women in Orange County. However, official figures put the number of total homeless in Orange County at anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000. Susan Oakson, coordinator for the Orange County Homeless Issue Task Force, said it’s difficult to determine a number for homeless people in general and women in particular.

“We just can’t count the total number of people,” she said.

Some of the women who are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time are referred to places such as Hannah’s House, a Huntington Beach shelter, where they can stay six to eight weeks.

Although it’s a welcome and much-needed resource, Hannah’s House only has four bedrooms and can only house eight women at a time. Robert Magluyan, who has worked with the program for five years, said the need for more beds becomes more apparent each year, especially when temperatures dip.

“We’re always full, every night of the year,” said Magluyan. “I usually turn away about six to eight women (a week), but now with winter, about 10 to 14 women a week are turned away.

“For some reason a lot of focus has been made on homeless men. Only in the past 12 months have people started to feel the impact on the women.”

However, Oakson said she believes that the lack of available beds is not an isolated problem for women.

“There are more facilities for homeless families than there are for single men or women,” she said. “However you slice it, there’s not enough shelters for anybody.”