Shelters are often worse than being outside in my past experience. People in shelters use lots of hard hard drug and fight or sexually assault each other, shel

Shelters are often worse than being outside in my past experience. People in shelters use lots of hard hard drug and fight or sexually assault each other, shelters are full of tons of illness (physical and mental), rampant theft, you'll end up with awful pests like bedbugs, body lice, scabies, fleas... and you aren't even guaranteed to be let in, after hours of waiting in line, due to lack of availability. They aren't well funded enough, aren't taken care of, don't have enough staff to keep you safe, and have too many troubled people in too close quarters. The ones sponsored by religious organizations are usually just as bad and add an extra layer of judgement and religious propaganda on top of it all, rudely implying that all your problems are because you don't follow their faith. I'm not saying I have a good alternative in mind; being outside can also (obviously) suck for different reasons, but there are tons of legitimate reasons to avoid shelters even when you're homeless.