In the hope that the story contained in these pages shall not have
been recorded in vain, the author begs to offer a few suggestions in
regard to Municipal Emergency Homes. Unless rightly built and rightly
conducted they may prove worse than useless. That the need is great
none can deny, and the institution should be strictly for the purpose
of filling that need. The suggestions contained in the following
paragraphs may solve some of the perplexities which confront the city
wishing to build an institution such as the situation demands.
THE FIRST STEP.
In every State of the Union, the Legislature should pass a bill giving
cities the right, under home rule, to erect and maintain a Municipal
Emergency Home. Every city ought to pass an ordinance for the creation
and maintenance of such Municipal Emergency Homes, and the budget of
the city should contain an appropriation for its maintenance, based on
the same reasons on which the appropriation is granted for running the
Health Department, Police Department, or any other Department of the
Municipal Government.
The ordinance to be passed by the city council ought to create and
develop a system that will give protection and opportunity to every
honest wandering citizen while sojourning, in search of work, in the
community.
In the cities of New York and Boston, an appropriation is made from
the public treasury for the care and maintenance of their Municipal
Emergency Homes. In Chicago a special budget is created and added to
the appropriation of the Police Department. It should properly have
been added to the Health Department.
THINGS TO AVOID.
A Municipal Emergency Home should not be designed to be a money-making
institution, but merely to provide shelter and food for men and women
who appear _temporarily_ destitute. If it should appear that those
demanding shelter in the Municipal Emergency Home should be afflicted
with any physical illness, it should be the duty of its superintendent
to transfer such individuals to a hospital ward, which may be a part of
the Municipal Emergency Home, or to the city or county hospital where
each man or woman may be thoroughly cured of any illness which has put
them into destitute circumstances or is unfitting them to perform any
kind of labor to make existence possible. The mind of the community is
being educated to see that the adjustment of individuals to a suitable
environment must be quickly but scientifically attempted. If unfit
they must, if possible, be made fit. The idea seems to be dawning that
permanent unfitness must be met with permanent adjustment.
A PROTECTION TO SOCIETY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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