Breaking Free from Barriers
Providing shelter access to young adults is a critical mission for ROOTS, which has the lowest barriers of entry in the Seattle area.
“The lowest barrier means we do not require a form of identification to be able to enter shelter,” said Muzyk. “Over 97 percent of our first-time shelter guests here at ROOTS have no form of ID on their person when they arrive. If we were to say, ‘Hey, you actually have to show us something with your name and your date of birth on it,’ we wouldn’t have barely anyone to serve.
“The second kind of barrier that we’ve always removed since we opened in 1999 was that you do not have to prove sobriety to enter the space. We do have some parameters, such as if you have anything that could be mistaken as substances, any device that can be utilized to ingest or engage in substance use and or anything that could be utilized as a weapon, we ask that you hand that into us for the night. That way, we can maintain safety in this space. But again, we really want to ensure that our guests understand we are not here to tell them that what they’re doing is or isn’t wrong.”
Part of maintaining safe spaces at ROOTS is training the staff and volunteers to deal with difficult situations.
“Because we are the lowest-barrier shelter for young adults in Washington, sometimes we see folks with higher needs,” said Riley Pimentel, the aforementioned director of shelter and programs. “So, our staff are trained on verbal de-escalation, mental health crisis, how to intervene in a trauma-informed way.
“For example, a lot of folks who are experiencing a crisis are often met with us saying, ‘We’re not scared, we’ll figure this out with you.’ We can help [the person] calm down without retaliation and being afraid. That’s super important to me. I come from crisis work [in hospitals], so being able to do that in this space has meant a lot.”