Homeless shelter seeing more people since City of Tucson launched encampment reporting website
By Andrew Christiansen
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TUCSON, Arizona (KGUN) — Sitting next to two women at Sister Jose Women’s Center, Olga Navarro reflected on her week at the center.
“I go to sleep crying a lot of times….” she told the women in a soft voice.
At 75 years old, Navarro has been homeless since February. She hit a hard time after not being able to afford rent when her landlord raised it.
With nowhere to go, she turned to the streets, her new home.
“I’ve never been homeless before. I never thought I would be,” Navarro said.
She turned to living in encampments with people she had never met and in a place unfamiliar to her.
“Waking up with no shoes, everything taken. I had a suitcase full of clothes and I had pictures of my grand kids that I cannot replace,” she said when asked about the hardest part about living in the encampments.
The City of Tucson says from when they launched their reporting website in late October of last year to mid July this year, they’ve gotten over 6 thousand reports of encampments. They say over half of those come from one or more people reporting the same one.
They also say over 30 percent of the reports are not an encampment and that they took care of over 560 real encampments, giving housing options to people living in them.
However, Navarro said she didn’t get any assistance from the City.
A few weeks ago, someone told Navarro about Sister Jose Women’s Center.
“I think I was afraid to be turned down because a lot of people look down at the homeless,” she said.
Sister Jose Women’s center says in April they had over one thousand, one hundred and ten women stay overnight and for dinners. In May that number grew to over one thousand one hundred and seventy, and in June, almost 12 hundred women went to the center.
For Navarro, the center is more than just an overnight stay; for now it’s her only hope.
“I used to have everything, but I’ll have it again. I have it now,” she said.
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