Often shelter can be helpful even just for a night or two to let tempers calm down. But Dunne also characterizes shelters as prisons for women, with strict rules and curfews, and says that children, removed from the familiarity of home and friends, can emerge from them traumatized. Even in the best shelters, like the one I saw in Massachusetts, you’re housing traumatized people with other traumatized people. Families are most often allotted a single large bedroom.
