Harrington House

Great place with local resources.

This shelter is horrible. They deny you food that's sitting in the deep freeze (full of 10-20 yrs of food, getting freezer burnt). Treat you like sub par humans. Mgmt Staff is rude and condescending. The food in the cabinets is 2-3 yrs old, and open to the air. Loaves of bread is dated to expire by July 16th, today is Aug 2. Peanut butter in cabinet is old and stinks. Week-old, cooked corn dogs lay open in the fridge, no wrapping, attacked by air. The milk in the fridge was curdled sat night, my first night. The whole place stinks. No open windows for fresh air. As a shelter for domestic violence, they allowed a drunk man to stay last night, where he shared the common area with a female who is here for domestic violence. The night staff advocate locked himself out last night and pounded on the window to be let back in. Scary. My 1st hour here, in the office, still not aware of what lay ahead, the staff Judith asked me to sign a positive review. I had no idea what was to come in this mismanaged place. I would never have given a good review if I not been falsely led to do so. There are numerous negative secrets in this place. The old, rotten food and the drunk guy staying in the DV living/sleeping area with an unknown female are top of the list of dangers here. I'm sure the donors have no clue what's really going on here. Rotting food is unacceptable in any DV shelter. Being told you look horrible by a staff member is totally unacceptable. Being told to eat the food or go hungry, is totally unacceptable. Being offered no recourse accept to go out and buy your own food is unacceptable. Being ridiculed is absolutely unnacceptable. Women who come here are battered mentally and physically, and are down and out financially, and then mentality abused more, upon their stay! No financial or counseling help is available at all. There is no excuse for the treatment here. There are 4-6 female staff members working up front, M-F, daytime hours, & men at night usually, yet I was the only person living in a 30+-bed facility, alone, except for the drunk male (they had to make leave after he stayed here intoxicated in a drug-free, alcohol-free facility), and after risking my safety & being verbally abusive to me. I am a lone sexually abused woman here seeking refuge, and this strange man ate my food & drank my sodas, that I had personally brought in to eat after discovering the rotting food. I felt unsafe, nervous, and scared being forced to share the very back part of the facility with this drunk man. I couldn't sleep, felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. Also the male staff who allowed the drunk man in, introduced him to me without my permission. I had no desire for this man to know my name or share a common living area with, late at night in a deserted shelter, where no staff is in sight and Im secluded away from them. Very dangerous & unprofessional. That intoxicated man could have raped me, or even killed me. He was not searched for weapons or drugs. This place needs serious investigation into their grants received and the salaries paid to excessive staff members. Especially when there are no people for days on end in the shelter. I believe staff takes first pick of the food, gets paid very well, and are, in fact, ripping off the churches and people who donate money. The shelter does not give any financial assistance and if there's no one living here, what is happening with all their grants & who is eating the food that is stored outside in a locked deep freeze, if the clients here are not allowed to consume it? These are all very legitimate concerns, and it should be mandatory that the staff here show an accounting to EVERYONE, concerning the expenses & why their salaries are excessive, just like our corrupt government. No battered, abused person should be told to eat the old, rotting food or go hungry. Unbelievable. INVESTIGATION DEMANDED BY SOCIETY & CLIENTS WHO ARE, INTERESTINGLY GONE, IN A SMALL CALIFORNIA TOWN THAT HAS A LARGE AMOUNT OF HOMELESSNESS. ???