Public News Service: 40,000 Illinois students eligible for SNAP

By Veronica Carter

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Thousands of college students in Illinois became eligible to receive SNAP benefits at the first of the year, but many don’t realize it.

So now a campaign is under way to let the students know about their eligibility so they won’t drop out of school because of financial reasons.

New rules issued by the Illinois Department of Human Services allow both full and part-time students to apply for food assistance.

Niya Kelly, state legislative director for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, calls it a victory. She says the old rules were antiquated because they painted a picture of a typical college student as coming from an upper-middle-class family.

“That idea of what a college student looks like is not, in fact, reality,” she stresses. “We have a lot of students who are living in poverty, who are older students, who are returning to school to make a better way for them to be able to support their family.”

Last year, House Bill 3211 got bipartisan support and was approved in the House and Senate, but Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed it, saying the Illinois Student Assistance Commission should not be required to notify students they are eligible for SNAP.

Despite the veto, the Illinois Department of Human Services changed the rules, and students can now apply for benefits.

Kelly says students are going to college so they can get a good job, and that helps the state’s economy.

“These programs are short programs, these are CNA programs, these are automotive programs, these are IT programs where there is a demand in those markets,” she explains. “And we just need to allow these students who just need a little bit of help getting over the hump,” she states.

Kelly says 48 percent of college students report experiencing food insecurity, and one in five say they’ve had to skip meals.

Legislation to make the SNAP rule change permanent, Senate Bill 351, is before state lawmakers this session.

Chicago Reader: Are tiny houses a solution to homelessness in Chicago?

The push for a small answer to a massive problem

 

JAMIE RAMSAY

(Jamie Ramsay graphic)

By Deanna Isaacs

The fetish for upscale tiny houses has been around long enough for some of the novelty to wear off. In the wake of the mortgage meltdown, the micro dwellings flourished as McMansion antidotes. They made a statement about carbon footprints and financial restraint, even if equipped with hot tubs and high-end sound systems. And they tickled our fancy, their peaked roofs and window boxes evoking the whimsical playhouses of childhood. They inspired their own reality television shows, lifestyle websites, and magazines, as well as numerous listings on Airbnb ($138 a night on a lake near downstate Carbondale, for example; $195 in Schaumburg, up a tree).

They turned out to be great for one-night escapes and committed minimalists; not so good longer-term for folks with offspring, an average pile of possessions, or a susceptibility to cabin fever.

But now the mini abodes are finding a new, potentially larger niche at the opposite end of the income spectrum—as the hot topic in discussions about the homeless. Experimental tiny-house communities for the homeless have already been built in at least a half-dozen cities (Madison, Detroit, Dallas, Austin, Portland, and Seattle), and if advocates have their way, one may soon be coming to Chicago.

All it’ll take to get the residential concept here is the will to overcome the likely NIMBY response, money, and—the hardest thing to come by—changes in the zoning law. Chicago, like many cities still leery of the shacks and shantytowns that were the blighted tiny homes of the Great Depression era, stipulates a minimum size for free-standing dwellings of 500 square feet, and forbids multiple free-standing houses on a single lot. Tiny houses range from about 125 to 400 square feet; those envisioned for Chicago would typically be about 325 square feet, or roughly the size of a single-car garage. Chicago Tiny House Inc., the newest of a half-dozen organizations trying to bring the little homes here, held a fund-raiser on January 26 in Uptown. An audience of about 75 people, scattered on folding chairs and looking sparse in the ample auditorium of Wilson Abbey, heard Scott Ingerson, the group’s director of community engagement (and resident balloon sculptor), say that they’re raising money for a pilot cluster of five tiny houses for veterans—and what they need is volunteers, sponsors, and donations.

Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, was the keynote speaker for the event, which included live music (by former Rez band front man Glenn Kaiser and an inspired set by the Jazz Robots), a silent auction, and a raffle. Mills said homelessness “is a choice we make as a society,” and “in Uptown alone, we’ve lost 1,000 affordable housing units in six years.”

According to Mills, if you count all the “double-ups” and couch surfers, there are 100,000 homeless people in Chicago. La Casa Norte, which provides housing and services to homeless youth and families, estimates 125,848 in the Chicago area. “The city’s solution is to criminalize it,” Mills says, referring to the Chicago Police Department’s use of an ordinance intended to keep businesses from storing goods on the public way to confiscate the tents and other possessions of those who are homeless. Meanwhile, “we in Chicago are spending $95 million for a police training facility,” Mills told the audience. “That would build a lot of tiny houses.”

Chicago Tiny House founder and president Brien Cron said the event raised “a little over $1,000” of the $125,000 the organization will need to build five houses for veterans. But the group will start with a prototype, of 320 square feet or less, and it won’t be doing it in Uptown. Cron says that—in spite of a recent starring role in a video in which he advocated for tiny houses to combat homelessness—46th Ward alderman James Cappleman has made it clear that Uptown, which for decades has been home to the city’s most visible homeless populations, “has no space for them.” The Chicago Tiny House Inc. cluster would be built in the Humboldt Park area, where First Ward alderman Joe Moreno says he’s working with them to find a location. Cappleman’s chief of staff, Tressa Feher, says the alderman definitely would support tiny houses for homeless people in Uptown, but he hasn’t been presented with a proposal for them.

Cron’s group launched last fall, after the cops’ removal of tent dwellers who’d been living under Lake Shore Drive bridges at Wilson and Lawrence attracted a lot of media coverage. Chicago Tiny House meets at 7 PM every Monday at 920 W. Wilson—across the street from the Abbey—in the long-standing communal home of Jesus People USA (JPUSA). “We’re a group of Christians, out of Jesus People USA, and we’re dedicated to helping our city with homelessness,” Cron told me. “Our basic need right now is public awareness of who we are and what we’re trying to do.”

Cron had no comment on a 2014 documentary film, No Place to Call Home, made by former JPUSA resident Jaime Prater, that included allegations of child sexual abuse decades ago at the commune, or on lawsuits filed against JPUSA over the same issues.

The 2015-2016 Tiny Homes Competition was won by three Chicago architects: Terry Howell, Marty Sandberg, and Lon Stousland. Their design is a 336-square-foot, brick-walled, shed-roofed home with loft, porch, and fully functioning bathroom and kitchen.

The 2015-2016 Tiny Homes Competition was won by three Chicago architects: Terry Howell, Marty Sandberg, and Lon Stousland. Their design is a 336-square-foot, brick-walled, shed-roofed home with loft, porch, and fully functioning bathroom and kitchen.

If that’s enough to give you pause, rest assured that Chicago Tiny House Inc. isn’t alone in its enthusiasm for this approach to the problem of homelessness. Besides the predictable interest of companies manufacturing some of the little structures, organizations such as the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and All Chicago (a nonprofit providing emergency funds, research, training, and more to “make homelessness history”)—which estimates that close to 6,000 homeless people are on the streets of Chicago on any given night—welcome tiny houses as a part of the solution. CCH executive director Douglas Schenkelberg says the tiny houses, while not the sole solution, “can play an important role.” And All Chicago CEO Nonie Brennan says the tiny houses are especially valuable for “their ability to bring attention to the issue of homelessness.” But talking to any of the people in the field about tiny houses and homelessness leads pretty quickly to a surprising expert on the subject: Tracy Baim, editor and publisher of the Windy City Times.

Baim traces much of the current activity to a summit Windy City Times sponsored on youth homelessness in the LGBTQ community four years ago. One of the ideas that came out of the summit was that a community of tiny homes could work for homeless college students; another was the launch of a new nonprofit, Pride Action Tank, dedicated to “inquiry, advocacy, and action,” on LGBTQIA issues. In 2015, Pride Action Tank teamed up with AIA Chicago, Landon Bone Baker Architects, and the Alphawood Foundation to conduct a tiny-homes design competition that drew more than 250 entrants from around the world. The contest was won by three architects who met as students at Notre Dame and now live and practice in Chicago: Terry Howell, Marty Sandberg, and Lon Stousland.

Their winning design—a 336-square-foot, brick-walled, shed-roofed home with loft, porch, and fully functioning bathroom and kitchen—was built during a tiny-homes summit on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in 2016, and was subsequently moved to Back of the Yards, where it was open for tours until last fall.

“Having that model was hugely part of our goal, because once people stepped inside of it, they understood what we were talking about”—separate structures, more like real homes, as opposed to warehousing, Baim said. “They have a little plot of land. They’re lower cost and quicker to build. They’re also lower cost to operate in the long term, because you’re just air-conditioning this one unit—no hallways or elevators. And you can build them on one lot or on a whole city block.”

Last fall, after Catholic Charities expressed an interest in tiny houses, 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke introduced a City Council resolution calling for consideration of them, and a joint committee hearing was held. “They approved the concept of tiny homes being added to the tool kit of responses to homelessness in Chicago,” Baim says. Her group is now working on plans for a pilot project and (with the other interested groups) facilitating the policy changes that’ll make it possible to build in Chicago.

“There are other cities where tiny homes don’t make sense—it’s a density issue,” Baim says. “But Chicago and Detroit [with plenty of vacant lots] have great opportunity in this area. The heavy lifting will be about the minimum size and the issue of multiple free-standing buildings on a single lot.”

Pride Action Tank has partnered with La Casa Norte for the pilot, which will consist of ten tiny homes for homeless college students in the West Englewood area, about a mile from Kennedy-King College. The wood frame houses of about 350 square feet are being designed by Landon Bone Baker Architects, and will be attached in pairs. The cluster will include two slightly larger ADA-accessible homes and a common house for group events. Casa Norte will operate the finished cluster.

After months of planning and meetings, Baim says the project is now in the money-raising phase and is offering naming rights for $50,000 per house. (Baim has committed to raising that amount in order to name one house after her deceased mother.) The project already has some foundation support (from the Polk Bros., Alphawood, and Pierce Family Foundations), but organizers will be looking to more foundations, individual supporters, and the city for the remaining funding. They aim to raise between $1.5 and $2 million, the projected total budget for the project.

That’s definitely not cheap, but Baim says the houses themselves will each cost about $70,000 for construction and a possible additional $20,000 if environmental mitigation is necessary. And a pilot is always more expensive than subsequent building on a larger scale. Still, she says, it’s a relative bargain. “Typical affordable housing in Chicago, believe it or not,” she says, “is about $400,000 a unit.” Chicago could address the need for more affordable housing for the working poor if major entities like CHA “got on board” with this idea, Baim says. “CHA could be building, on a for-profit basis, for people who could afford a mortgage on a $50,000 to $70,000 tiny home that’s brand-new, versus spending all the money they do on inadequate housing. They’re subsidizing slumlords out there and landlords in general, but they’re not building anything new.

img_5346a.jpg
The winning Tiny Homes Competition design was built during a tiny-homes summit on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in April 2016 and was subsequently moved to the Back of the Yards, where it was open for tours until last fall.

“I believe tiny homes can solve a lot of different types of needs out there—not just youth homelessness, which we’re focused on, but also some of the working poor, and seniors and veterans who are just getting warehoused,” she adds.

“We’ve lost tens of thousands of units in this city in the last 20 to 30 years, and there’s vacant land everywhere, including lots near the Green Line. We don’t need towers, but we could build tiny homes that people could get mortgages on and own, and CHA could get their money back because most of the people out there who are struggling are people who, with help on housing, could make it. And then you could concentrate all the rest of the money on people who need the supportive services—substance abuse treatment, mental health services, medical support.

“We’re talking about a city with excellent land and transportation. The ‘housing first’ model has proven itself in most cities that have tried it. It’s lower cost to house someone than to have them on the streets, utilizing services like Streets and San, police, jails, emergency rooms, not to mention their own physical and mental stress.

“We’re not saying that anything that’s currently being done should not be done. [The tiny houses] are not for everybody, and they won’t all be the same. What we’re saying is that this should be added to the tool kit for those who it’s appropriate for.”

Finally, Baim said, she’s often asked if the tiny houses will be on wheels (as they are in some locations). Her answer to that is a firm no. “It’s not meant to be portable. It’s meant to be a smaller-footprint home. Like studio apartments, but with a plot of land.

“People should think about this as ‘Honey, I shrunk the house.’ ”

Alderman Burke’s office says he’s “waiting for someone to come to us with a solid plan and a clear ask.” Chicago deputy commissioner of planning and development Peter Strazzabosco says that “pending community input and other standard review and approval processes,” the city “is encouraging financially viable [tiny house] proposals and think[s] they can have a positive role within the city’s housing market.” The zoning changes that will make them possible for homeless Chicagoans will likely also open the door for anyone who still wants to live the upscale downsized fantasy.   v

Chicago Tribune: Saving lives, saving money: Hospitals set up homeless patients with permanent housing

By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

When Latesha Holman was homeless, she was a regular in Chicago’s emergency rooms. Sometimes she’d go four times in a single week, battling asthma and a raft of other health problems, though often she just sought refuge from the cold.

Not anymore. Holman, 45, has spent this nasty winter tucked in her cozy basement apartment, kept warm by a space heater, her morning mug of coffee and the joy of babysitting her infant granddaughter.

Her symptoms have improved. Her depression has eased. Her hospital visits — and the high costs they incur — have plunged.

“Since I’ve been here I have never felt this good, really,” Holman said as she sat in her tidy living room, still adorned with a white plastic Christmas tree she bought for the holidays.

Holman owes the roof over her head to University of Illinois Hospital, among a handful of local hospitals starting to invest in permanent housing for chronically homeless patients in order to improve their health and reduce their costly emergency room visits.

Link to video interview of Latesha Holman

The idea is that providing the homeless with stable housing in the long run costs less than leaving them to fend for themselves on the streets, where they are more vulnerable to illness, violence and desperation that ultimately drive up health care costs. U. of I. Hospital, in partnership with the nonprofit Center for Housing and Health, is leading an effort locally to get health care providers to put money toward getting the homeless housed.

“The solution is cheaper than the problem,” said Stephen Brown, director of preventive emergency medicine at the hospital and of its Better Health Through Housing initiative.

U. of I. Hospital, in the Illinois Medical District on the Near West Side, this week announced it will extend a pilot program it launched in 2015, committing an additional $250,000 to place 25 more chronically homeless patients into permanent homes. 

While the housing itself, in scattered sites throughout the city and suburbs, is funded by grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the hospital pays $1,000 per month for each patient in the program to cover supportive services, including a case manager who helps participants get on their feet. That’s far less than the $3,000-per-day bill some chronically homeless patients ring up in the ER, the hospital said.

Results from the pilot suggest it is worth the investment. The average monthly health care cost per client in the pilot dropped 18 percent after they were provided with permanent housing, to $4,785 from $5,879, the hospital said.

The individual effort won’t help the hospital’s bottom line, Brown said. But he calculates that if every hospital in the area agrees to help house 10 chronically homeless patients, it could make a major dent in homelessness in the city and save money systemwide.

Cost reduction is not the only motivation for the investment. The core driver is health equity, Brown said, and the recognition that homelessness itself is a dangerous health condition that hospitals should help alleviate.

“If someone came in with cancer, we would do extraordinary things to keep them alive,” Brown said. “The irony is that if someone with a dangerous condition like homelessness comes in, we dismiss them.”

Homeless people are at high risk of pulmonary disease, traumatic brain injury, HIV/AIDS and head and neck cancers, possibly because of higher rates of smoking and alcohol use. Their expected lifespans are 25 years shorter than average, according to some studies.

Most of the major hospital systems in the area, including Northwestern Memorial and University of Chicago Medicine, are at the table on the homeless housing issue, Brown said, and a handful have programs underway.

Swedish Covenant Hospital, in the Ravenswood neighborhood, recently agreed to invest $75,000 to provide 10 chronically homeless patients with permanent housing and support services for a year.

Rush University Medical Center, in the Illinois Medical District, plans to launch a pilot program this spring to provide housing and support services for up to five chronically homeless patients.

Both programs are modeled after the one at U. of I. Hospital and partner with the Center for Housing and Health, a subsidiary of the AIDS Foundation, to identify available apartments via 28 supportive housing providers with HUD grants. Presence Health plans to launch a similar pilot this year.

Separately, the Cook County Health and Hospitals System in August partnered with the nonprofit Housing Forward to connect homeless patients with 33 permanent supportive housing units in west and south suburban Cook County. The system has committed to spending $400,000 for the first 12 months.

“You have to spend money to ultimately save money, or better use the resources you have,” said Mary Sajdak, senior director of integrated care at the county health system. Some homeless patients eager to get out of the cold have gotten good at describing a set of symptoms that they know will land them in a bed for a few days, she said.

Julie Dworkin, director of policy for the Chicago Coalition of the Homeless, said tapping local and private funding sources for housing the homeless is critical given uncertain federal funding.

“There is really great evidence that if you get people into permanent housing and they have intensive support services, that can resolve homelessness for them permanently,” she said.

There were about 5,657 homeless people living on Chicago’s streets or in shelters on a given night last year, according to a city count, down 4 percent from 2016. But most homeless people stay with friends or family, and if you count them the city’s homeless population is upward of 82,200, said Dworkin, whose estimate is based on Census data.

One lesson U. of I. Hospital learned from its pilot is that it sees far more homeless patients than it realized. It initially identified 48 homeless patients in the emergency room, based on staff observations, but as it scrutinized admissions data it found many more people list homeless shelters or hospitals as their home addresses, Brown said.

The hospital now has 616 people in its system who are likely homeless and estimates it has seen more than 3,000 homeless patients since 2010. It reviewed the hospital usage of a sample of homeless patients and found 32 percent were in the highest cost classification, which means their care cost seven to 70 times more than the typical patient.

While many are sick, and their health problems are exacerbated by homelessness, those just seeking warmth are getting the priciest bed in town. It costs about $1,500 a night for a bed in the emergency room, Brown said.

“If we got them a place in the Four Seasons, it would be cheaper,” he said.

While most of the patients invited to participate in the housing program are “superutilizers” — meaning they visit the emergency room more than eight times are year — that’s not the only criteria. A team that includes staff from the ER, social work, psychiatry, oncology and other departments convenes to discuss which patients’ health would be most helped by having housing, such as those with multiple diseases that require frequent outpatient visits.

All participants must meet HUD’s definition of being chronically homeless, which means they have been homeless for at least a year or on four separate occasions over the last three years.

Picking the right people to thrive is a challenge. Of the 26 participants in U. of I. Hospital’s initial pilot, just 11 remain in their housing units. Four people died, one entered hospice, two could not live independently and eight left the program for various reasons.

Going forward, it may be better recruit patients who aren’t so severely ill, so that they can continue to improve, and put the sicker people in more appropriate environments like skilled nursing homes, said Peter Toepfer, executive director of the Center for Housing and Health.

The transition to housing isn’t easy. Holman, who moved into her cozy basement apartment in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood a year ago, said it was difficult to live by herself after being on the street, off and on, for 15 years, often sleeping in abandoned houses or in shelters surrounded by other homeless people. She didn’t know how to go food shopping or stay on top of her medications or many doctors’ appointments: liver, heart, dentist, foot, psychiatrist. Alone in her apartment, she felt afraid.

She credits her improvement to the help of her case manager and her children, with whom she has reconnected since moving into her new home. Now, she said, it’s “a piece of cake,” though she still feels lonely.

Larry Haynes, Holman’s case manager, said Holman was nervous at first about the program, and a key challenge was building trust and rapport to help her understand the importance of seeing doctors for preventive care. While some participants may be steered toward job training or education to become more independent, the priority for Holman is to stabilize her health, said Haynes, housing case manager at Christian Community Health Center, which subleases the apartment to Holman. He has been encouraging her to join a local church to make friends.

Holman said she feels better since gaining a stable home and regular medical care. She has an asthma pump for the first time. Her biggest goal for 2018 is to stop smoking.

The mother of four also has been able to sit down with her children — aged 17 through 26 — and clarify misconceptions they had about her life. Earlier this month, she cooked up a feast in her spacious kitchen to surprise her youngest daughter on her birthday, an emotional moment for all.

Her daughter later told her, “Mom, I want to be like you when I grow up, have my own place,” Holman recalled. She’d never heard that before.

WBEZ: Homeless couple sues city, claims targeted harassment

Editor’s Note: The CCH Law Project is co-counseling this case with the law firm of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd.

A homeless couple is suing the city of Chicago and some of its employees over what they claim is repeated harassment over the last three years.

WBEZ’s Odette Yousef reports.

Amie Smith and Shawn Moore claim that city workers threw away at least eight tents they’ve lived in. WBEZ reported on one of those incidents late last year.

Diane O’Connell, their attorney from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, says that’s not even the half of it.

“By destroying their property, forcing them to move repeated times, and by other conduct, the city of Chicago has violated their right to equal treatment, their right to privacy in their possessions, and their right to use public space.”
O’Connell says they have those rights under the Illinois Bill of Rights for the Homeless Act. The city’s law department did not immediately respond.

Listen to the radio report

WMAQ Channel 5: Chicago official calls displacement of homeless during frigid temperatures ‘unfortunate’

By Mary Ann Ahern

WATCH the Channel 5 report here

The city of Chicago admitted Thursday cleaning out a viaduct in freezing temperatures, where the homeless had taken shelter, was a mistake.

The city threw out all of their belongings and now says the incident was “unfortunate.”

Ryan from Woodridge, just 10 years old, had brought backpacks to the homeless at the viaduct at Belmont and Kedzie–many of those gifts thrown out as garbage.

NBC 5 went back to that viaduct Thursday and spoke to a woman who has lived on the streets for more than a year.

Blanca is back at Belmont and Kedzie, where she lives under this viaduct when she’s not riding the “El” train to stay warm.

She lost all of her belongings when the city cleaned this viaduct Wednesday — even the backpacks donated by young Ryan.

“And my blanket, all my Christmas stuff… they took everything,” she said.

Chicago’s Coalition for the Homeless and Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa are critical of the city’s cleanup–when the temperatures are hovering near zero.

“I’m very upset that this is the way the city went about this, they didn’t provide my office with notification, and they didn’t go about this the right way, I think that it was a mistake,” Rosa said.

Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the CCH, says the homeless just want housing.

“How do we provide real resources and support to people who are homeless and have to live in this situation?” he asked.

Another question posited is whether the city will continue with the viaduct cleanups or wait until it’s not quite so frigid.

“What happened yesterday was unfortunate,” Alisa Rodriguez, of the city’s Homeless Services. “We definitely want to make sure that it does not happen again like that.”

Rodriguez, who is the city’s point person for the homeless, notes while the clean up was clearly posted — when the weather turned as cold as it did adjustments should have been made.

“When it’s single digits the utmost important things to remember is the safety of these individuals and to make sure cleaning becomes secondary,” she said.

Blanca is grateful for coats left for the homeless Thursday, trying on several before she heads off to ride the “El” during the coldest hours of the evening.

The city says it will work with all of its partners in communicating how to better balance the issues of cleaning up the viaducts at the same time being aware of how cold it is outside.

Chicago Reader: Mistreatment of the homeless

Chicago police commonly confiscate and throw away the tents of the homeless

CPD’s policy seems more concerned with optics than with law and order.

JAMIE RAMSAY

 

From Chicago Reader’s “Worst of Chicago 2017” edition

It’s important for me as a progressive stereotype to listen to public radio while driving and to get outraged at the news. If my hackles are especially raised, I will even tweet about it. (Like I said, progressive stereotype.) This is what transpired in October after I heard a report from WBEZ’s Odette Yousef about the common Chicago policing practice of confiscating and throwing away the tents of the homeless. According to Yousef’s story, one explanation the Chicago Police Department gives to defend the practice is a law that says it’s illegal to block a public thoroughfare. CPD cites a provision of the city’s municipal code: “No person shall use any public way for the storage of personal property, goods, wares or merchandise of any kind. Nor shall any person place or cause to be placed in or upon any public way, any barrel, box, hogshead, crate, package or other obstruction of any kind, or permit the same to remain thereon longer than is necessary to convey such article to or from the premises abutting on such sidewalk.”

OK, let’s say I park my car on a sidewalk. A cop would write me a ticket and tell me to move along, but I think we’d all be shocked if he told me to get out of the car, proceeded to smash my vehicle into a cube in front of me, and then wouldn’t even let me keep the cube. (Would he throw my hogshead of mead into the trash too?)

Regardless of the laws human beings who are homeless may or may not be breaking by setting up a tent in public, the CPD seems more concerned with optics than with law and order. The logic of the policy to a progressive stereotype such as myself seems to be: homeless people should not be publicly visible and they will be intimidated and destabilized until they’re made invisible. Never mind that there isn’t room enough in all of Chicago’s shelters to accommodate the thousands who are homeless. Even if there was, shelters are often not stable, safe places to stay.

What would help create more stability for these folks? I can think of a dozen things off the top of my head, many of which are a part of the ongoing work of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, none of which are stealing and destroying the property, shelter, privacy, and peace of our fellow Chicagoans most in need.   

ABC7: Chance the Rapper hosts party at Field Museum to help the homeless

By Stacy Baca and Cheryl Burton

“We get our people involved, we get our merchandise involved…every resource we have. And when we partner with a group like SocialWorks, we go all in,” said Bradley Nardick, Bargains in a Box.

There was music and dancing and free goodies among the dinosaurs.

While the party was free for needy students, those who can afford it were asked to donate $15 to SocialWorks and winter gear for the homeless. The effort was not lost on even Chance’s youngest fans.

“It means to me very a lot, because he gives people things to those in need and all of that, and it’s pretty good,” Shaylah Clay said.

In Chicago, 82,000 people are homeless, 82 percent of them are doubling up, like couch surfing or staying in a shelter.

“We know that a lot of homelessness isn’t seen, it’s hidden. It’s really important for people to recognize when you see someone on the street that’s just a sliver of the problem,” said Doug Schenkelberg, executive director, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

In fact, 18,000 CPS students are homeless. Statewide, that number jumps to 50,000.

LINK to VIEW THE VIDEO

Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Brown: Homeless memorial service honors anonymous lives

Benjamin Soto Ramirez was a late entry to the program for Tuesday’s Chicago Homeless Persons Memorial service at Old St. Patrick’s Church.

Ramirez, 67, was beaten to death over the weekend, his body discovered on the sidewalk near the doorway where he usually slept in East Ukrainian Village. 

Most homeless people don’t die quite so dramatically.

They pass quietly, often out of sight, their deaths more likely an unconfirmed rumor to those who knew them on the street than the basis for a news story.

Many never get a funeral. Some of their bodies go unclaimed at the morgue.

It was with that in mind that the annual memorial service was first organized in 2010 by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Ignatian Spirituality Project and Old St. Pat’s.

The service provides an opportunity to both pay respects to the dead and call attention to those who remain homeless.

The highlight of the program is the reading of the names of homeless people known to have died in the past year.

As each name is read aloud, a student carries a candle in honor of that individual to the front of the church. It can be an emotional experience.

I say “known” to have died because it’s not as if there is any official list. The names are submitted by homeless shelters familiar with the program.

It is understood that the list is not complete, which is why the candle procession always ends with a nod to “those whose names are known only to God.”

There are 33 names on this year’s list. Where possible, the organizers try to include at least a sentence about each person.

Marcus Faleti, an alcoholic who froze to death at age 58 in Wicker Park in early January, will be remembered as someone who “loved reading the Sun-Times and Wall Street Journal.”

Moriah Ishmael will be honored as “someone who was very respectful and a joy to be around. All Moriah wanted was a place to call his own.”

Will Kelly “was a good friend who helped many people.”

Wesley Sharp “was a kind, respectful and patient man” who will be “missed dearly by friends.”

William Carter died of cancer.

Durell Thomas “was hardworking and just looking for a safe place to stay.” Rhonda died of MRSA. Stanislaw Gal “left behind a wife and kids.”

But sadly even that scant information is often unavailable.

In some cases, all that’s known is when the person died: Ray W. and Nancy in January, Yacob G. in May, Leonard S. in July, C. Glover in August, John G. in September, Christina Kostoff and Patrick S. in October, Tommy Irby in December.

Then there are those who will be recognized only by name: Timothy Griffin, Henry Hartage, Terry King, Andre Perry, Larry Singleton, Angela Williams, Lewis Frost, Bethelynne Johnson, Michael Erl, Rick Berry, Barbara McHenry, Renard Parrish, Claude Michaelis and Kevin Lawson.

As someone who believes every person has a story to tell, that always bothers me.

There’s a common perception of homeless people as dangerous. Some can be, of course, but more often they are victims.

“Our guests are vulnerable. They are vulnerable in so many ways,” said Ed Jacob of Franciscan Outreach, one of the city’s leading providers of homeless services and a sponsor of the memorial service.

“It’s not just exposure to the elements. It’s not just the cold. They don’t have the stability. They don’t have the sense of security that you and I would have,” Jacob said.

Tonight’s memorial at Old St. Pat’s, 700 W. Adams, is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.

I learned late Monday of another dead homeless man, Perry Brisby, 49, who was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Dec. 4 in the 2000 block of South Emerald. He died Sunday at Stroger Hospital.

They’ll need to light another candle.

Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Brown: Report says homeless counts miss the mark

By Mark Brown, columnist

One night each January, hundreds of volunteers spread out across Chicago in an effort to count the city’s homeless population.

This task, known as the annual Point-In-Time Count, is replicated in communities across the country under guidelines proscribed by the federal government.

The count is then used to apportion federal dollars for programs benefiting the homeless.

That process is deeply flawed, resulting in a significant undercount of America’s homeless population and in poorly informed public policy, according to a report issued Wednesday by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

The national findings echo concerns often raised here by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless — and occasionally amplified by me — regarding how the extent of homelessness in Chicago is greatly understated.

The problem is the Point-In-Time Count recognizes only homeless people who can be found that particular night, either living on the street or staying in a homeless shelter.

One obvious shortcoming: Many homeless people on the street try to avoid being seen, either out of personal safety concerns or fear they will be forced to leave their hidden place of shelter.

Less obvious is that the federal count also leaves out the much larger number of homeless families and individuals who live “doubled up” with relatives or friends because they have nowhere else to go, often creating unstable situations that are worse than being in a homeless shelter.

Last year’s Point-In-Time Count for Chicago yielded a tally of 5,657 homeless persons.

But as I reported in April, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless analyzed U.S. Census data to better calculate the “doubled up” households and concluded that 82,212 people were homeless in Chicago at some point during 2015. The coalition is currently updating its estimate.

The report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty also notes federal guidelines fail to take into account that homelessness is often transitory, with people going in and out of homelessness, meaning that many more individuals will become homeless over the course of a year than on any given night.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the annual count, announced Wednesday a national homeless population of 553,742 in 2017.

That’s an increase of less than 1 percent over 2016, but the first increase since 2010, HUD officials said. Most of the increase was attributed to unsheltered homeless people living on the West Coast.

I’ve always made peace with the Point-In-Time Count on the basis that it is what it is.

There is value to a physical count, even one that is flawed. Tangible results are preferable to estimates. If you understand the annual street count is only showing you the tip of the iceberg, then you’re good to go.

Where it can go wrong is if public officials make decisions on the basis of the count, declaring homelessness to be down, when a lower count actually may have been due to other factors such as changes in the weather from one year to the next.

The city of Chicago reported that its 2017 homeless count was a 4 percent reduction from the 5,889 homeless individuals tallied in 2016. But a closer reading revealed the city used a more stringent methodology in 2017 for counting homeless people sleeping overnight on the CTA, which accounted for much of the drop. The weather was also milder on the night of the 2017 count.

A national homeless advocacy group reported Wednesday that the federal government’s method of counting homeless people results in a serious undercount. | Mitch Dudek/Sun-Times

A city spokesperson said Chicago complies with HUD’s requirements for the Point-In-Time Count, but “also embraces different methodologies to ensure we have the most comprehensive data on this vulnerable population.”

Those extra steps have included participating in a national research and policy initiative focused on runaway, homeless and unstably housed youth, she said.

Chicago’s 2018 homeless count is scheduled for the night of Jan. 25. Results are made public months later.

When they are released, keep in mind you’re only seeing part of the picture.

MediaPost.com: Marc USA supports Chicago homeless with pro bono campaign

By Larissa Faw

Marc USA is seeking to help Chicago homeless this holiday season with its pro bono advocacy campaign that raises awareness and urges financial support for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Launching this week to coincide with the national Homeless Awareness Week, the creative proclaims, “Let’s make Chicago a 4-star city for everyone” by leveraging Chicago’s 4-star flag that symbolizes for most residents the city’s top quality of life.

Ads show well-known Chicago neighborhoods that would likely rate “four stars” are contrasted with the “half-star rated” viaducts and street corners that serve as homes for thousands of Chicagoans. The spot ends with a call-to-action seeking donations.

Reel Chicago names Marc USA 4-star city video its “Reel Ad of the Week”

The integrated campaign includes 30- and 60-second videos running as broadcast and digital PSAs as well as print and outdoor versions.

A mobile donation platform supports a text-to-donate message on outdoor, print and TV components.  There’s also a link in the digital executions.

The goal is to make it easy for people to act when they see the campaign, says the agency. It’s about small donations from many people.

This work was driven inside the agency by several Chicago-based MARCers who were deeply affected by the sights of homelessness in the city during last year’s colder than usual winter. Similar to last year’s Know No about sexual consent that evolved in Chicago, associates in each office are encouraged to take on causes that matter to them.

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