REVIEWS of 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 25(1/2): 210. Full review.
Nancy Janovicek. 2005. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women. Labour/Le Travail 54: 282-284. Full review.
Daphne Spain. 2005. Safe Haven: the Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women; Book Review. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13(2): 378-380. Full review.
Amy Hosier, 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. Read Full review.
Novac, Sylvia. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless women. Women & Environments 62/63: 59. Full review.
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.
Brown, Karin Elliott. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women. Cities 21(3): 267-268. Full review
Flynn, Karen Coen. 2004. Book Review. Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women. Association for Feminist Anthropology.
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, 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 54: 282-284. Full review.
- 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.
- The work both addresses many of the research gaps and is a welcome reference on why the research 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.
Daphne Spain. 2005. Safe Haven: the Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women; Book Review. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13(2): 378-380. Full review.
- 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.
Amy Hosier, 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. Read Full review.
- 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 62/63: 59. 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.
- 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. 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.
- 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.