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REVIEWS
Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for
Homeless Women
Sharon
Ferguson-Hood and Marie Tovell Walker. 2006. Book
Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women.
Canadian Woman Studies. Read full
review.
Bridgman,
by her absence of political posturing, challenges us to look at
our assumptions and questions our complicity in all kinds of systemic
oppression.
Nancy
Janovicek. 2005. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter
for Homeless Women. Labour/Le Travail. Available on-line.
Bridgman
insists that the baseline question for research about homelessness
is "How does the research challenge the conditions it describes?"
(14) Safe Haven achieves this goal by documenting the inaugural
years of Savard's Place so that other organizations can gain insights
from its strengths and weaknesses. Bridgman's self-reflexivity about
the ethical questions that residents and workers at Savard's raised
demonstrates her empathy for their anxieties as well as her deep
respect for their knowledge and experience. Bridgman identifies
the key shortcomings of current strategies to address homelessness
and recommends more empowering and hopeful ways forward. I highly
recommend this book to those who want to learn more about the challenges
of serving homeless women with mental illnesses. It is also a valuable
tool for front-line workers who are struggling to work against oppressive
bureaucratic systems that meet government agendas rather than women's
needs.
Tracey Braun. 2005. Book Review.
Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women.
the viec review 5(5):1, 6. Available on-line.
The
work both addresses many of the research haps and is a welcome reference
on why the esearch must reflect the political reality of homelessness
for Canadian women. In addition, by highlighting service delivery
issues, Bridgman offers discussion points on creative and political
solutions for ending women's homelessness.
Spain,
Daphne. 2005. Bridgman, Rae: Safe Haven: the Story of a Shelter
for Homeless Women; Book Review. Canadian Journal of Urban
Research (March). Available on-line.
Safe
Haven is more than an account of a shelter for homeless women.
It is the chronicle of a feminist project in Toronto that sought
to design a flexible and compassionate facility for chronically
homeless women who were also mentally ill. It was a challenging
task. Their clientele were the most marginal of a marginalized
population. Women who might rant and scream, hoard rotting food,
or physically threaten others were often evicted from traditional
shelters. How could space meet their needs, instead of making
them adapt to an existing space? Bridgman explores why, and
how, such an alternative was attempted.
Hosier, Amy, John F. Watkins and Graham D. Rowles.
2005. Homeless Women at Home? Review of Safe
Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women. Journal
of Architectural and Planning Research 22(3): 268-270.
Bridgman's
ethnographic focus moves beyond classical methods of research
on the homeless that describe and prescribe solutions to the
quandary. Instead, she seeks to describe how an innovative
project evolves through multiple phases of development and
implementation and proves to be successful. Bridgma's story
informs readers about "home, homelessness, new visions,
places of strength and a way forward" for chronically
homeless women (p. 15). She employs a wide arrange of sources
to characterize the homeless epidemic among women in Toronto,
to explain ties between mental illness and homelessness, and
to critique homeless shelters and related initiatives that
address chronic homelessness. The strength of Bridgman's contribution
comes from the comprehensiveness of her perspective and her
ability to sensitively relay the chronology of the creation
and implementation of Savard's in a manner providing intimate
insight into the lifestyles of women street survivors. This
volume should appeal to scholars and practitioners from many
different disciplines as it recounts the lived experiences
of those who developed the 'Safe Haven' vision, those who
made it happen, and those who worked and lived there.
Novac,
Sylvia. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter
for Homeless women. Women & Environments. Read full
review.
Bridgman
masterfully reveals the complexity of translating a feminist
service philosophy into a reality and documents the pressures
and shifts that tempered the service during its first few
years of existence. Her use of ethnographic techniques provides
the reader with a sense of immediacy, of almost being there
oneself to experience critical and revealing moments as
she witnessed them.
Marton,
Christine. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a
Shelter for Homeless women. The Canadian Review of
Sociology and Anthropology/ Revue canadienne de sociologie et
d'anthropologie. Available on-line.
Rae
Bridgman was invited to document the design and development of
this innovative housing project in 1994. This work represents
an extension of her previous research on homelessness in Toronto;
the development of the pilot housing project, StreetCity. Data
collection was extensive and meticulous: participant observation;
field notes of meetings; minutes of staff meetings; daily logbooks,
and interviews with administrative staff. Conducting anthropological
research in this unstable environment clearly presented challenges.
How does one unobtrusively observe and record the day-to-day activities
of vulnerable and mistrustful residents, the dynamics between
staff and residents, and the challenges faced by staff in implementing
this utopian model of housing while dealing with funding uncertainties
and burnout? Bridgman skillfully manages to present a sensitively
written account of a unique housing project and the research conducted
during its initial development. She inspires us to conduct innovative
research that can change the society we live in for the better.
Brown,
Karin Elliott. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a
Shelter for Homeless Women. Cities 21(3): 267-268. Read full
review.
This
book is recommended for students of sociology, anthropology and
social work, as well as beginning ethnographic researchers, who
are interested in glimpsing the challenges and excitement of long-term
fieldwork and qualitative research. The author successfully captures
“ethnography in action” as she describes the process
of discovery in the field and creatively reports what
happens when fieldwork is done. As noted by the author, Safe
Haven is also “written for those who want to learn
more about the work being done to help homeless women and to inspire
other initiatives to help women street survivors”.
Flynn,
Karen Coen. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter
for Homeless Women. Association for Feminist Anthropology.
Available on-line.
Bridgman's
"Safe Haven" is an excellent contribution to the literature
on both homelessness and the development of NGOs and will be appreciated
by scholars and activists alike. It will very likely spark productive
debates among outreach workers on the streets and frontline shelter
staff. It should be required reading for anyone involved with
welfare, housing and health and human services policymaking.
Wolfer,
L. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for
Homeless Women. CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries
41(9)[May]:1746. [Highly recommended]
Bridgman...conducts
a thorough and enlightening study of how a women's homeless shelter
works. While not really its main intent, the book reads like a
how-to book for organizing a homeless shelter....This very readable
and informative book gives not only a face to a frequently faceless
population, but also a very detailed example of how one program
is trying to help alleviate the problem of homelessness.
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