Vulnerability Index: Poems

Poems from the halls of shelters, courthouses, and soup kitchens

During Elizabeth Robinson’s six years working with chronically unhoused people in Boulder, Colorado, her relationships with the community’s most vulnerable deepened—even as they were filtered through a web of paperwork, systems, and strictures. The Vulnerability Index questionnaire is just one such system. Ubiquitous in shelters across America, it is representative of the endless tasks that people living on the street must com...