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Get to Know Us
Fix Our Shelters is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2023 with a focus on creating a more humane experience for all animals, but especially those in, entering & exiting shelters, particularly municipal shelters.
Our journey in shelter animal advocacy began in 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Our goal at that time was to reopen our local city shelter, which had closed completely for intake & adoptions. We have multiple municipal shelters in our area & our city shelter was an outlier in its director's decision for complete closure. Given that the governor of our state had deemed animal shelters as an essential service, there was no reason for the shut-down & we knew the devastation the closure could (and did) bring to our local community for both the people & animals. That began our quest to Reopen Front Street.
It took a while for us to get the city shelter to fully reopen, but we were eventually successful. During the process of engaging with city staff, city leaders & other animal advocates to get the shelter open, we began to realize that there were other obstacles. Many of the policies being set for the city animal shelter, by it's director, were dangerous to the local community & animals within. Locally, these policies seemed to only be perpetuated by our city shelter & it's "leadership". We began hearing terms like "community sheltering" & "capacity for care", which we quickly realized were code words for, "whatever you do, do NOT let stray animals into the city shelter". The city shelter did not seem to care that in a large portion of outcomes, when stray animals were not being allowed inside the shelter walls, it meant these animals were left to fend for themselves & suffer, alone on the streets, with no shelter at all. At the time, thinking that this was an incompetent, misguided director & having accomplished the reopening of Front Street Shelter, we pivoted in November of 2021 and began Fix Front Street.
Once we began working on the issues that seemed to plague our local city shelter, it quickly became our realization that it was not at all JUST our local city shelter that was the problem. This was a much bigger issue of "managed intake" being perpetuated by groups that have seemed to come to the conclusion that there was money & influence to be made in municipal shelters. These entities go into municipalities and promise them that they will make their shelters no kill. What they fail to mention is they will do this by simply not allowing the animals to come through the shelter doors. They say this is "progressive sheltering", make no mistake, it is not, it is as regressive as it gets. They are removing decades of work the agents of true animal welfare have put forth to create actual sheltering. Leaving animals on the street & forcing communities to figure out the problems of strays on their own, is EXACTLY the reason why there was an effort to change POUNDS into SHELTERS. What the cities, states & nation has now is a few overzealous, overfunded, agents pushing their own agendas and the problem is we are reverting back to a pound mentality & a sense of hopelessness for the animals in our communities. The Bakersfield Strays & El Paso, TX are the warnings! Those communities are the metaphoric canaries in the coalmine. This is a crisis, which can & has quickly spread & will continue to do so, if not stopped soon.
Fix Our Shelters is dedicated to getting back to common sense animal sheltering & will continue to battle back against those who place their own agendas above animals. We would love for you to join our coalition and work with us in this fight. If interested, please send us a message in the form below.
Join Our Coalition!
If you're experiencing more strays in your neighborhood, if it's more difficult to get help for a found animal in your area, if you are a part of the rescue community & feel that all of the work & pressure has been stacked on your shoulders, without the benefit of tax-payer funding, if you are a shelter volunteer who has been retaliated against because you have spoken out on an issue with your local shelter and anyone else that believes in a common-sense approach to sheltering, we not only want to hear from you, we want to help where we can! There is strength in numbers, join us & TOGETHER we can bring forth positive changes for the sake of the animals!
*If you are with an organization, please make sure to indicate that in the sign-up below. For organizations, we will have additional opportunities for you to help.