I have visited, volunteered and even considered employment at The INN Between. As a certified nursing assistant, I respect and honor those who fight for The INN Between and directly provide health care for those in need. I recognize the stigma surrounding homelessness and those who experience it, but now is not the time to push people away.

Does financial situation make you less of a person? By advocating for the closure of The INN Between, these “neighbors” are asserting and employing their classist beliefs that health care should remain inaccessible to those who are unable to afford it, while rejecting the real enemy: indifference to the human condition.

A month at an average long-term care facility can cost around $5,000, with many people staying more than a year before they pass away. The growing cost of these necessary facilities has the ability to create more homeless and terminal patients.

The INN Between may be the first of its kind, but many more homes like this will follow. I would be proud to have a facility that so blatantly disrupts our ideas of cost in health care in my community.