ABSTRACT
Starting out with a brief description of Respite Center, a typical homeless shelter with a faith background but little active religiosity, this chapter describes its background and structure. Individual biographies—the results of the narrative interviews—show that religion is—with some exceptions—not a large part of the residents’ narratives and does not get tied to the way they talk about their journey into homelessness, or their plans to take steps to overcome it. Many see the shelter only as a play to stay. In that sense it serves a more diverse and larger clientele than the other shelters. We also end up highlighting reasons why some residents can take advantage of the program whereas others don’t.
