News

By Bridget O’Shea

The North Shore-based Student Alliance for Homeless Youth hopes to make the transition back to school easier for dozens of children, ages 3 to 16, who are currently living at the Madonna House, a Chicago shelter for homeless women and children.

On Aug. 15, members of the SAHY, which includes students from New Trier and Maine South high schools, completed a school supply drive that filled 31 backpacks with pencils, erasers, pens, notebooks and other school supplies, organizers said.

New Trier senior Olivia O’Bryan said she and other SAHY members encouraged shoppers at an Office Depot store in Evanston and a Walgreens in Glencoe to buy supplies or give cash donations for the cause.

“We had a basic list of things for people who were going into Office Depot and Walgreens,” she said.

Lauren Miller, another New Trier senior and member of SAHY, said after researching several Chicago-area shelters, the alliance chose the Madonna House, which gives women and children a place to stay for up to six months.

“They have about 15 families and it provides a stable place for them,” she said.

When collecting the supplies, Miller said, the alliance wanted to be as mindful as possible of all the age groups they were serving.

“Our main focus was that we don’t want to give a 16-year old the same supplies as a 5-year old,” she said. “We wanted to get things that would serve their specific needs.”

The alliance collected cartoon-themed backpacks and colorful pencils and notebooks for younger students, while high school students received sturdier backpacks and supplies like calculators, Miller said.
O’Bryan and Miller explained that SAHY utilizes a three-pronged approach that includes raising awareness for homeless youth, reducing barriers to education for this population, and providing them with services.

To increase awareness, Miller said, the alliance brings people who have experienced homelessness to Hubbard Woods Park every fall.

“To raise awareness and understanding, we have a vigil and we invite people who have experienced homelessness to come and share their story,” she said. “For example, a lot of people don’t know that technically you’re homeless if you’re living with a grandparent because your parents cannot afford housing.”

To provide services for homeless youth, the alliance, which has previously included students from Loyola Academy and North Shore Country Day School, hosts fundraisers and parties throughout the year for homeless youth, members said. Fundraisers and events include Halloween and holiday parties at places such as the Kelly Hall YMCA in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, they said.

“It’s mostly drives, fundraisers and parties for homeless children,” said O’Bryan.

“We try to do something every month,” Miller added.

Miller said the alliance, which was started about five years ago, has also raised funds for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and the Greater Bethlehem Healing Temple in Chicago, where members hold a Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless every year.

By Chuck Goudie & Barb Markoff

CHICAGO (WLS) — The new face of homelessness is families. An estimated 140,000 homeless people live in the city including thousands of public school students in shelters, in tents, in parks or just in whatever place they can find across Chicago.

For one month, the I-Team asked city officials to appear in this report and discuss what you are about to see. They said no.

Kaleyah Wesley, 16, her mother and siblings spent two years living in a Rogers Park shelter.

“It was really tough,” Kaleyah says. “It was really heartbreaking.”

Thousands of others live in small tent villages, spanning the city from in the shadow of North Lake Shore Drive to one on Columbus Drive near downtown. Still others sleep on park benches and on the banks of the Chicago River.

For months, the I-Team watched as these encampments popped up across the city, where people struggle to be respected and understood, wanting only to be treated like human beings.

“All we’re asking is to be treated like human beings,” says one homeless man named Meechie.

The challenge may be as ancient as the Old Testament, but the new face of homelessness is far younger.

“Chicago Public Schools keeps track of how many students are homeless,” says Ed Shurna, Executive Director of Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “Last year there were over 22,000 homeless students.”

The I-Team found that’s up nearly 20-percent from the year before. Shurna is a longtime homeless advocate in Chicago.

“Last year there were 2,500 students who have no adult in their life and still go to school. Those numbers, to me, have changed over the past 20 years,” he says.

For Kaleyah Wesley, that translated to a four-hour commute to North Lawndale with her brother and sisters to attend William Penn Elementary School located near the apartment where they lived before becoming homeless. For a student in a shelter, the new normal was a challenge.

“I would have to go in the bathroom at maybe 3 o’clock in the morning to do my homework because I still wanted to be that student I knew I could be,” Kaleyah says.

Kaleyah’s mother, Marilyn Escoe, says losing her apartment was devastating but that the support she received from others in the shelter helped.

“They became like a second family because we embraced each other’s struggles,” Escoe says.

The I-Team found sometimes those struggles clash with political reality. Under this agreement between the city and the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, people are supposed to be notified of street sweeping so they can take down their tents, move their bicycles and bags of clothing and then return once cleaning is finished.

“But recently we found out that the system didn’t work when there was a concert at Montrose Beach in the city,” Shurna says. “They very haphazardly came in and moved people.”

Attorneys from the Coalition say they are working with the city to make sure that doesn’t happen in the future.

“I think the mayor cares about this, but the problem is pretty awesome, pretty big. It’s really an affordable housing and jobs problem. It’s a problem of disparity in terms of wealth,” Shurna says. “He’s created some of the first youth shelters, overnight shelters and drop-in shelters that didn’t exist before.”

Kaleyah and her family say the city’s Students in Temporary Living Situations program helped her become salutatorian of her 8th grade class.

“I really appreciate everything that I went through. It really opened up my heart so much,” she says.

Watch the I-TEAM report here.

Since 2003 Chicago has spent $50 million dollars on homeless prevention and there are numerous homeless aid programs. But neither the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services nor Mayor Rahm Emanual would talk about them for this report.

A mayoral spokesperson said there is no single city official capable of addressing our questions about the new face of homelessness.

City of Chicago officials refused repeated invitations from the I-Team to discuss a burgeoning homeless problem, the growth of tent cities or the programs on which they spend millions of taxpayer funds. Instead, after a month of requests, they sent the following two-sentence statement:

“The City of Chicago is committed to a compassionate and consistent approach to providing homeless services and outreach that will ensure public safety, while respecting the legal rights of this vulnerable population. In addition ongoing outreach efforts to offer shelter and social services to homeless individuals on a daily basis, we remain engaged in an ongoing dialogue with homeless advocates about how to best address the special needs and challenges of our homeless citizens, and to assist every Chicagoan in having a place to call home.”

Background from city on homelessness:

HOMELESS EFFORTS:
– Mayor Rahm Emanuel has increased funding for homeless services by more than 10 percent and invested in new programs targeting veterans, youth, families, and victims of domestic violence. With the support of the Mayor, DFSS continues its work with non-profits, advocacy groups, and service providers to establish funding priorities for homeless populations via the community-driven Plan to End Homelessness 2.0.
– Worked to pass the Affordable Requirements Ordinance in March 2015, which expanded the City’s commitment to providing affordable housing in Chicago. The City estimates the revised ordinance will create 1,200 units of housing and generate $90 million in funding by 2020.
– Launch a campaign to end homelessness among veterans in Chicago (with the federal and local partners). Over the past year, a team of more than 25 non-profit organizations and public funders designed and implemented a coordinated entry system for veterans that will ultimately lead to providing permanent housing to veterans and ending veteran homelessness. Since the inception of the initiative we have housed more than 800 veterans.

HOMELESS FAMILIES
– Placed nearly 300 households into housing through its Rapid Rehousing Program.
– Funded and broke ground on the first new domestic violence shelter in more than a decade which will have 40 beds and serve more than 100 families annually. It is expected to open late 2015.
– Added a new facility with 75 beds for homeless families that has come online since a 2015 survey.

HOMELESS YOUTH
– Increased shelter beds for homeless youth by 33%.
– Established three regional drop-in centers that serve 1,400 homeless youth annually .

OUTREACH AND CLEAN UP
– DFSS conducts outreach and cleaning efforts while abiding by joint terms with homeless advocates, which set clear parameters for how cleanings take place and the types of personal property permitted. These routine cleanings include an advance notification period so that our homeless residents have ample time to prepare and remove their possessions from the area being cleaned. Residents are not permitted to erect tents, or other structures, on the public way, and the City has been working to address tent cities throughout the city as part of these coordinated cleanup efforts.
– DFSS HOP teams encounter close to 7,000 homeless individuals per year with a primary focus to build rapport with homeless individuals and try to engage them in services.
– City engages in periodic cleaning efforts in advance of large-scale events in order to ensure that the public way is kept safe and accessible.
– In 2014, the Human Services Mobile Outreach Program, which is operated by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, responded to over 39,000 requests for shelter placement and transportation, well-being checks, emergency food assistance requests as well as providing assistance to victims of fires and natural disasters.
– The City conducts mandated counts using federal criteria and guidelines to secure a comprehensive count/survey of Chicago’s homeless population in both shelters and living out on the street. The needs identified in previous counts have helped us with the development of Chicago’s recently updated Plan to End Homelessness – Plan 2.0. Each year, the City of Chicago establishes funding priorities that align with the priorities of this community plan.
– According to our surveys, the homeless population has been relatively stable over past five years.

By Nancy Cambria

Summer is one of the trickiest times to run a profitable small child-care business.

On average, about a quarter of a child-care center’s children move on to kindergarten. Ideally those empty slots are filled by a new crop of infants and toddlers, so business — and revenue — can continue as usual.

But in Illinois, this summer is shaping up to be particularly cruel for the child-care providers who serve the working poor and the children and parents who need their care.

A $4 billion deficit and a political stalemate surrounding the state budget has prompted Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to order an emergency freeze on most new child-care subsidy enrollment. Under it, the vast majority of families earning a little more than $10,000 year will not qualify.

As a result, independent child cares in low-income communities are shutting down or are nearing the end, fearing they will not have nearly enough children to fill those August slots with needed younger children.

They and child-care advocates say working, low-income parents will not be able to afford child care without the subsidies, and the expected closures will severely damage the state’s child-care supply for the poor.

Some child-care providers consider the freeze the end of the line after years of dealing with a state subsidy system that more than once has run out of money because of budget shortfalls and delayed state budgets. As recently as March, child-care providers scrambled to operate for several weeks without being paid.

This month, Leonard Richie, the 17-year owner of Leonard Bo Peep Preschool Academy in Brooklyn, decided to let go staff and clients and shutter his child care licensed for 50 children.

He said the state could not guarantee that it could pay him for the summer.

“This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. Every time it’s time for a new budget, come July the first thing they stop paying is the child-care subsidy,” he said. “It punishes the poor.”

Richie said he was getting out of day care for good and going into the gourmet hot beverage vending machine business.

Children’s Home and Aid, an Illinois agency contracted to administer the subsidies in Southern Illinois, knows of three centers that have closed and one more that will close in the fall. It expects dozens of smaller child cares to shutter in the Metro East area as the legislative problem moves into the fall.

“It’s just only a matter of time as the state budget crisis continues and centers are not paid,” said Renae Storey, of the agency in Granite City, who said parents would be forced to leave their children in unsafe or questionable child-care situations or quit their jobs.

“This is just a giant step backwards in families’ achieving self sufficiency,” she said.

Last year, about 600 providers in the southern region received about $36 million in subsidies to care for 15,000 low-income children.

The new income qualifying rules — 50 percent of the poverty level — have, for now, put Illinois dead last in the nation for access to the Federal Child Care Assistance Program, which gives states the right to set its income thresholds for participation.

A family of three can earn no more than $10,045 a year to qualify even though the federal poverty level for that family is $20,090. Previously, Illinois families of three could earn up to $37,166 annually to qualify. In Missouri, lawmakers recently approved an increase in income eligibility. A family of three can get a full subsidy if they earn less than $27,724 — 138 percent of the poverty level.

Families in Illinois essentially have to be poorer than anywhere else in the country to apply and qualify, said Dan Lesser, director for the office on Economic Justice at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, based in Chicago. Even holding a minimum-wage, part-time job at Walmart would bump most of them out of the program, he said.

The Center on Poverty Law anticipates the new income threshold, along with other restrictions, will weed out 90 percent of the working families that would previously qualify for the subsidy and force parents — most of them single mothers — out of the job sector.

“This is a program for working parents, and they’ve just eliminated working parents as an eligible category,” Lesser said. “They’ve undermined the whole purpose of the program with these changes.”

Under the freeze, parents on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, teen mothers in school and parents with disabled children would still qualify for the program under the previous standards. The terms of the freeze also enable parents with higher incomes who were previously qualified to keep the assistance if they drop off and need to re-enroll within the year.

On July 1, dealing with a state budget that has yet to gain legislative approval and massive budget shortfalls, Rauner looked to the state-funded match of the federal Child Care Assistance Program for cuts and savings and ordered the freeze.

Historically, the state has funded about $355 million annually to the state’s nearly $1 billion annual subsidy program, with the federal Department of Health and Human Services funding the rest.

Though the state has not given child-care advocates an actual estimate as to how many children they expect to shed from the subsidy rolls, Samir Tanna of Illinois Action for Children said that state had indicated it could save about $5.3 million per month and an additional $47 million annually from other changes to co-pay and background check standard.

Illinois could ultimately opt at any time to reverse the income thresholds, but when and if that will happen remains unknown. In an email, a state spokesman with the Illinois Department of Human Services could not discuss whether it would be lifted at all, “until there is a balanced budget in place.”

Tanna said the temporary freeze — regardless of duration — would affect thousands of child cares and dismantle the supply chain of providers who cater to poor families, leaving poor areas with a dearth of licensed providers.

Lesser, of the Shriver Center, is worried about the worst-case scenario: Even though child-care subsidies had broad support in Congress during their federal reauthorization last year, Illinois, on its own, may be setting an example for other cash-strapped states in the country to follow.

“I think it does have national implication to dismantle a state’s child-care program,” he said of Illinois.

ILLINOIS CHILD CARE CRISIS

Child care subsidies help low-income, working parents and students afford day care. In Illinois they:

• Support about 155,000 children annually.

• Cost about $1 billion annually: 40 percent state money, 60 percent federal.

To save money, the state has temporarily changed its family income qualifications:

• Prior to July 1, income capped at 185 percent of the poverty level or $37,166 for a family of three.

• After July 1, income capped at 50 percent of the poverty level: $10,045 for a family of three.

While college is already a huge transition for young adults, some college students face an entirely different hardship — homelessness.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) reported that there are 58,000 homeless students on campuses nationwide. FAFSA is the only reliable source for these statistics since colleges are not technically required to keep track of their homeless students.

Barbara Duffield — policy director at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) — believes that the number of homeless college students has increased over the years.

“Parents tend to start focusing resources on younger kids, and sometimes that can lead to abuse and neglect,” Duffield says.

“Sometimes they just can’t take care of them anymore. But for most students, they haven’t had that support their whole lives.”

– Barbara Duffield

According to the NAEHCY, many homeless young adults who are trying to go to college don’t receive enough financial aid money because they are unable to fill out parental or guardian-related information on the forms.

Tina Giarla — a student at Salem State in Salem, Mass. — understands this all too well. Her father passed away in 2007 and her mother was constantly in and out of jail, so she classified as an “unaccompanied youth”. She initially lived on campus, but eventually, her resources ran out and she could no longer afford housing.

Giarla worked two-and-a-half jobs and went to school full-time. “I had to save extra money to rent a hotel in the case of an emergency so I wouldn’t have to go to a shelter,” she said. “It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.”

Efforts are being made to change this, though. Specifically, the recently passed Higher Education Act allows students to apply for federal aid without having parental information or a signature.

Additionally, some universities — such as UCLA — are implementing economic crisis response programs to help homeless college students stay in school.

Giarla plans on using her situations and experiences to spread the word and raise awareness about the growing population of homeless college students nationwide.

Editor’s Note: Chicago Coalition for the Homeless co-leads the organizing for the Westside Community Benefits Coalition.

By LaRisa Lynch

A coalition of churches, community groups and residents is urging West Side political leaders, particularly Chicago Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), to require that a community benefits agreement (CBA) be tied to any public tax dollars requested by Gateway Development Partners (GDP) LLC.

The firm is spearheading the Illinois Medical District Commission’s (IMDC) $300 million mixed-use retail and commercial development project, which is estimated to create 1,000 permanent jobs and 1,000 temporary construction jobs.

Called the Gateway Real Estate Development Project, the 9.5 acre project is set to be located between Odgen and Damen Avenues and consists of 1 million square feet of retail and office space. The site will include a 225-room hotel, young professional housing, parking facility, conference center, green space and multi-family housing.

GDP has yet to ask for any public dollars for the project. But the coalition held a rally last week at the First Baptist Congregational Church, 1613 West Washington Blvd., to put the developer and local aldermen on notice. Community residents say any use of public land or dollars should be tied to a community benefits agreement. The coalition also wants to secure a CBA for the proposed redevelopment of the former Cook County Hospital building.

“We know that they are going to ask and we felt that this was important because a lot of these communities are right in the area where they are building. So we figure why not [give] the people who live there [an opportunity] to work there,” said Christina Rice, of the Community Renewal Society, one of 20 groups involved in the Westside Community Benefits Coalition (WCBC).

Communities like North Lawndale and East and West Garfield Park have high unemployment rates and residents often leave their communities in search of jobs, Rice added. New housing developments that have cropped up in the area have traditionally focused on market rate housing, not affordable housing, she noted.

In additional to affordable housing, the WCBC would like the CBA to mandate that new businesses prioritize the hiring of local residents, including those with criminal backgrounds and the long-term unemployed, and offer jobs that pay at least $15 an hour. The coalition also wants a new hiring referral service to be created as a means to connect local employment agencies, like the North Lawndale Employment Network, with hiring managers for construction and retail jobs.

The coalition met with the developers and IMDC in September, and Rice said the parties were less than receptive to the idea of a CBA. Led by developer Jack Higgins, Gateway Development Partners LLC is a partnership between Thomas Samuels Enterprises, East Lake Management & Development Corp., Higgins Development Partners and Isiah Real Estate, LLC, which is headed by NBA legend Isiah Thomas.

“They’re like, ‘Just trust us. We are going to do the right thing.’ But they said right then and there [that] they are not looking to sign the CBA,” Rice said.

IMDC signed a lease agreement with Gateway Development Partners LLC in October 2014 to develop the site. The agreement includes minority recruitment goals and support for local hiring, according to an undated press release on IMDC’s website. However an IMDC spokesperson said it is under the contractors’ “sole discretion” to hire local residents.

“There is a community hiring provision under which the developer is required to work with the IMDC to introduce local employee candidates to contractors’ hiring managers who may, in their sole discretion, consider interviewing such candidates,” Heather Tarczan, IMDC’s director of communications and administration, said in an email.

As a result, the coalition is pressuring Ervin, whose ward includes the medical district, to get behind the push for a CBA “because we realize that he has the power to make them do this.” He has the authority to grant or reject tax increment financing dollars or zoning changes, all of which will be needed for the project, according to Rice.

Ervin was among several aldermen invited to the packed standing-room-only rally. Event organizers sought to get aldermen on the record as to whether they will advocate for a CBA as part of any request for public dollars from the developer.

The coalition got commitments from Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), and a representative for Ald. Michael Scott (24th) pledged his support. Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), who was invited, did not attend.

“I would not be surprised if they asked for TIF dollars, [but] my stance has always been the same. We want to see permanent jobs and construction-related opportunities for residents in these communities. That is something that I am committed to 100 percent,” Ervin said.

Burnett said it is “an uphill battle” to get contractors and developers to be responsive to the community. A lot of developers placate aldermen by hiring a few neighborhood people, according to Burnett.

“A lot of us have been bamboozled by developers and contractors in the past, so this is definitely needed,” Burnett added. “We need this kind of help when we are trying to get jobs for our folk. It is even hard for us by ourselves trying to get contractors and developers to hire our people from the community … So when you have people power, it is harder for you to be denied.”

IMDC Commissioner Blake Sercye is confident that some middle ground can be reached. He said many of the investors that are part of Gateway Development Partners have ties to and have worked on the West Side.

“We have a labor agreement in the lease agreement. We were very cognizant to try to be sure it was inclusive as possible to people from the West Side of Chicago,” Sercye said, adding the project will bring jobs and boost the area’s economy.

The hiring and job component is essential for North Lawndale resident Teleza Rodgers. She knows all too well the struggle to find employment. She has been sporadically employed since her release from jail 16 years ago. Her background, she noted, is a barrier to finding a job even though she’s certified in medical billing and coding.

“The purpose of a community benefits agreement is it specifies in the language that people with records will be hired [as well as the] long-term unemployed,” said Rodgers. “And many people who are long-term unemployed are [in that position] because they have a record. People have worked hard to turn their lives around and [the CBA] would give them a chance to provide for their families. It must happen. It is a necessity.”

Burnett is optimistic about the CBA. He said if all the elected officials, including the Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and the IDMC commissioners get on board, “then I think we can put [the developer’s] feet to the fire.”

“We need to demand jobs whether they ask for TIFs or not,” Burnett said.

By Eleanor Goldberg

The thing that often stands in the way of a homeless person and housing is just a state-issued identification. But a new law in California is making sure that its residents are no longer stranded on the streets because of that issue.

In order for a homeless person to do something as simple as apply for a job, enroll in public school or access homeless shelters and food stamps, they need to provide official identification. But those IDs often get lost or stolen and homeless people lack the funds and resources to obtain new driver’s licenses or birth certificates.

“If you’re living on the street it’s very difficult to keep ahold and keep your documents safe,” Janet Kelly, a senior attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, told Hawaii News Now.

But a new California law, which went into effect this month, is making the process of obtaining identification much easier by requiring state recorders to hand them out for free, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Davida Gomez, who has been homeless for five months, felt particularly heartened by the new law.

Gomez has three kids and each birth certificate would’ve previously cost her $28. The DMV charges $26 for a new ID card and $8 for certain people living on low-income salaries.

Those were expenses Gomez simply couldn’t afford before on her monthly $785 public assistance checks, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Now, that she can get those IDs for free, she’ll be able to transition her children from a local charity school to public school and move out from friends’ houses and into their own place.

The bill was inspired by Kelly Thomas, a homeless man who lived on the streets of Fullerton, California, and had schizophrenia, according to KCET. Thomas was beaten by three police officers in 2011 and died five days later.

“We are making sure they have IDs to access the services to get back on feet — either social services or mental health services,” Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva told KCET. “This is a simple step. Let’s just get these IDs in their hands.”

California’s government officials have stepped in where nonprofits often have to pick up the slack in other states.

In Central Florida, for example, IDignity –- a group formed by five churches –- helps homeless people navigate the bureaucratic process of obtaining identification.

Since 2008, the organization has held monthly events to help clients in need and typically serves about 225 people each time. The demand is so great that IDignity often has to turn people away, according to the group’s website.

In Hawaii, Waikiki Health and Legal Aid Society typically pitch in to help homeless people gather the documents they need so that they can move on with their lives.

But while homeless shelters, and other programs, require identification so that they can perform background checks and other safety measures, advocates say that the system is flawed and inherently preclusive.

“We’ve created a system that keeps the barriers up for people. It’s not an easy system to access,” Joy Rucker, director for community services at Waikiki Health, told Hawaii News Now. “If people don’t have a place to live and all their stuff organized — it’s a nightmare. It’s just a nightmare.”

To the Editor:

Columnist Greg Hinz claims no one is feeling the pain of the state budget impasse (“Why Springfield’s budget crisis is more talk than real,” July 8), but the uncertainty of the budget outcome already is forcing organizations to make tough decisions.

My organization serves homeless youth on Chicago’s South Side, providing a basic safety net of shelter, meals and connections to health care, employment and education. I am faced with the decision of whether to sign a new lease to keep our shelter open without knowing if funding will be there. While my organization received a contract from the state, it is unclear when payments will be received or whether the terms of the contract may change.

This budget uncertainty asks organizations to provide services and pay staff without being able to rely on when or if the human services provider will be paid for those services. Gov. Bruce Rauner has stated that he is applying needed business principles to state governance, yet his agencies are asking service providers to accept risky business decisions.

We recently held a meeting with our youth clients where we talked to them about the state budget crisis. I was impressed by how aware they are of the budget situation and the uncertainty of funding for services they depend on for survival. The young people whom we serve are accustomed to uncertainty, having experienced family dysfunction, fear of violence and not knowing where they will sleep at night. My organization’s purpose is to counter this uncertainty by providing a stable environment from which youth can reach goals that allow them to enter a self-sufficient adulthood.

It is hard for these young and vulnerable people to understand why even the little that they have to depend upon is threatened by this budget crisis. At the meeting they asked me, “Why us?” That’s another tough question to answer.

–Flora Koppel, Executive Director, Unity Parenting and Counseling & Chair of the CCH Youth Committee

By Stephanie Lulay

WEST LOOP — After fielding complaints about new rental developments in the West Loop for months, one alderman has a new word to describe neighbors’ opposition to renters: “discrimination.”

At a Tuesday night meeting to consider a proposed 80-unit apartment building near the Morgan ‘L’ station, Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) said that renters have just as much of a right to live in the West Loop as condo owners and homeowners do.

“Quite frankly, the [opposition to rentals] in this neighborhood is a bunch of bunk,” Burnett said. “Most people in this neighborhood have been renting out their condos for a long time.”

From now on, the alderman said all developers who want to build in the West Loop neighborhood located in the 27th Ward will be required to dedicate 10 percent of units built on site for affordable housing.

“If this project is approved, they are going to have to do some affordable housing in the building. I’m not going to let any [other developer] buy out of affordable housing in this neighborhood because I am feeling so much discrimination, tension in this neighborhood,” Burnett said. “It’s going to have to be a mixed neighborhood. Don’t no one group own no neighborhood in the City of Chicago. This is America.”

Under the city’s current Affordable Requirements Ordinance rules, developers are required to put affordable apartments in all new developments of 10 or more units that seek zoning changes from the city or use city land or subsidies. But developers can skirt those rules by opting to make an “in lieu” payment.

In the West Loop, developers almost always make the “in lieu” payment, Burnett said.

Burnett’s new affordable housing rules come after another recent meeting where many longtime West Loop residents said they opposed a proposed development at 111 S. Peoria because it would bring more renters to the area. Burnett said the reaction made him think that the West Loop was starting to become “a bigot neighborhood.”

“When I left that meeting, I felt that [some residents] were very discriminatory against [renters]. I felt bad that there was people sitting in that room that rent. You don’t actually recognize that you are talking about people in the meetings. I thought it was wrong, I thought it was bad, and I tell you… it turned me off,” Burnett said.

On Tuesday night, resident Mike Samson, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, said that his neighbors are very concerned about the “stampede” of rental buildings being developed in the neighborhood.

“Rental buildings tend to attract people who come and go quite quickly. The turnover is rapid. They don’t help to stabilize the neighborhood,” Samson said. “They don’t contribute in the long term to the neighborhood. Owners contribute in the long term to the neighborhood.”

The alderman said that all sorts of people choose to rent apartments, and that he doesn’t make decisions “based on how some people feel about other people.”

“Just because people are renting, don’t mean that they’re slouches. It don’t mean that they can’t contribute to the community. They’re no different than anybody else,” Burnett said. “Some people don’t want to rent, some people don’t want to buy. Some people don’t want to get married, do a lot of things. You know, everybody’s not the same.”

A 15-year resident who lives near Mary Bartelme Park said that neighbors aren’t discriminating against renters. They just want to protect what they’ve built, she said.

“I think we want to create our home and keep it that way, and I really resent everyone calling us bigots because we want owners [in the neighborhood],” the woman said.

West Loop developers seeking to build rental units have previously said that it difficult to finance a large condo building project.

Architect Patrick FitzGerald plans to develop a 10-story building at 922 W. Lake St. just west of the existing Lake Street Lofts rental building in the West Loop.

Fitzgerald said that Lake Street Lofts does not experience high turnover. Nearly 70 percent of tenants living in the building have resided there for four years or more, according to Property Manager Marc Koronkiewicz.

“Rental housing is a lifestyle choice that a lot of people make, and there ought to be an option available for them, too, particularly with all of the new businesses coming to the area,” FitzGerald said.

Groups split on Lake Street development

If approved, FitzGerald’s Lake Street project would have 80 units, about 66 parking spaces and 2,415 square feet of commercial space at the site, according to Richard Whitney, principal at FitzGerald Associates.The loft apartments would be a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom units.

The proposed site, currently zoned C1-1 and C1-2, now houses a parking lot. The property’s owner seeks to change the zoning to C1-5.

The landlord currently holds 89 parking spaces for each of the 89 units in the existing Lake Street Lofts building. If the second building is approved and built on the parking lot, the two buildings containing 169 units would share about 66 parking units, Whitney said.

After the Morgan ‘L’ station opened, Lake Street Lofts tenants required less and less parking, FitzGerald said. Today, less than 50 percent of the existing parking spots are leased to tenants, he said.

Two of five West Loop groups have made a recommendation to Burnett concerning the project.

Ben Spies, director of economic development at the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago, said the group opposes the Lake Street plan because it does not comply with the Fulton Market Innovation Plan.

The Fulton Market Innovation Plan calls for new residential buildings to only be developed south of Lake Street.

“Our concern is that everybody in the Fulton Market area will ask for their pass,” Spies said.

The West Central Association will likely support the project, said association president Armando Chacon.

“By Department of Planning’s own words, the Land Use Plan is a guide,” Chacon said. “The city does want to bring life to Lake Street, and we agree with that.”

FitzGerald said that the Lake Street block has been residential since the property was first developed in 2000.

“This little piece of Lake Street has been residential for quite some time,” FitzGerald said. “We’re not looking to introduce a new use here. We’re simply looking to expand a use that we already have on land that we already own.”

The West Loop Community Organization and Neighbors of the West Loop plan to make formal recommendations to the alderman next week, leaders said. The Randolph Fulton Market Association has not weighed in on the project, Burnett said.

During an informal poll, a majority of the 50 people in attendance Tuesday night supported the plan.

The 922 W. Lake St. property is owned by Lake Street Lofts LLC, an LLC managed by FitzGerald, according to state records. FitzGerald and his family own the parking lot, according to city zoning documents.

Lake Street Lofts, a historic six-story building built in 1886, was converted into 89 apartments about 15 years ago.

FitzGerald Associates Architects leases office space in the Lake Street Lofts building.

By Jasper Craven

Among the tall towers and tourists crowding Chicago’s Magnificent Mile is an often overlooked population: homeless people with signs asking for change.

While many of the cardboard signs seem hastily scribbled, over the past months many of them have been revamped and replaced, a project from a Chicago art student who hoped that beautiful lettering would stand out amid the hustle and bustle of Michigan Avenue.

“My hope was that the Chicago project would create some awareness around the homeless,” said Ian Todd, the man behind the hand-lettered signs. “And also that people would be more inclined to talk when they walk by, and more willing to give.”

When Ian Todd moved to Chicago from a small town, the first thing that struck him was the amount of homeless people on the city’s streets. In an effort to help, he began redesigning their signs as an art project. June 30, 2015. (WGN TV)

Todd, 23, said Wednesday that he was struck by the vast number of Chicago’s homeless when he moved to the city from California to study at the Chicago Portfolio School, which focuses on advertising and design.

“It was a bit shocking seeing all the homelessness,” he said. “I was taking a class on expressive type, and after seeing someone hold a cardboard sign I thought a well-designed one could grab people’s attention.”

Todd first approached homeless people in April, asking whether they wanted new signs. Some refused, but others acquiesced and Todd got to work. He finished about 20 signs in two months and said that the complexity of the lettering meant one sign took anywhere from five to 10 hours to complete. He started a blog called “The Urban Type Experiment” documenting his experience making the signs, which quickly went viral.

The signs, all of which are photographed on his blog, tell varying stories of turmoil, from a single father struggling to support three children to a woman offering work so that she can afford a bus ticket home. Todd kept in touch with many of the sign recipients and said while some had success, not all of the signs brought an uptick in charity.

Mike Droney, 54, was holding one of Todd’s signs on Michigan Avenue on a recent sunny afternoon. The aging piece of cardboard read: “I lost my leg for my country. Please help, you will be blessed.”

Droney, who has been homeless for six years, said he lost his leg fighting in Somalia. He sits in front of a Starbucks coffee shop most days asking for money, and said the only real assistance he gets is medical care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Droney said he often gets accolades about the sign, but it is hard to quantify whether the lettering is really doing much.

“People compliment me on it, you know, so it might help, in a way,” he said. “I can’t really say.”

Ulysses White, 54, also has one of Todd’s signs and said it has resulted in more charity. White said he served two tours in Iraq, and his sign makes mention of his service before saying: “Anything is appreciated. Thank you for your generosity.”

White got his customized piece of cardboard after being introduced to Todd by one of his homeless friends who already had a sign.

“The new sign has helped, most definitely, a whole lot,” White said. “He made signs for a whole bunch of people along Michigan Avenue.”

Todd’s project is not the first of its kind; in 2011 the Tribune profiled Christopher Devine, who was printing and laminating signs for the homeless. Devine’s signs were much simpler than Todd’s, printed on white paper in bold Helvetica font with text declaring “Homeless” or “Please Help.”

Devine, 32, said Thursday that he printed nearly 700 signs over the past four years of the project and just stopped distributing signs a few months ago. He said he has seen Todd’s artwork on the street and was happy to see another project aimed at increasing the visibility of the homeless population.

“They are far more elaborate and intricate than the plain Helvetica signs, they are eye-catching,” he said. “The important part of both projects is that the signs are different aesthetically than your typical homeless sign.”

While Devine’s project got mixed reactions, including some who said the signs denigrated the homeless, Devine said the project was successful in his eyes. He said a flood of donations came in following the story to help cover his laminating costs.

“There were a number of people who were against the concept of the project,” he said. “The point is, yesterday they weren’t talking about homelessness, and today they are.”

Ed Shurna, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said that while the revamped signs may help some in the homeless community, Chicago’s homeless problem requires systematic action. He said the homeless population is the largest in recent memory, adding that 6,000 people fill the city’s shelters each night.

“It’s getting worse, is all I can say,” Shurna said. “You see more people on Lower Wacker, more people on the lakefront, it’s escalating.”

Shurna said that Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget priorities would reduce care services for poor people and exacerbate the problem of homelessness throughout Illinois.

“If the cuts being proposed at the state level continue, you are going to see shelters closing,” Shurna said. “There is going to be a big increase in homelessness, and even now the shelters aren’t sufficient.”

Todd, who just graduated from the Chicago design school in May, moved to Los Angeles a few weeks ago to begin an advertising internship. He said he notified his homeless friends before he left that he would no longer be able to make signs for them. While he said his new job keeps him busier than when he was in school, he didn’t rule out making signs for California’s homeless.

“Homelessness is definitely here,” Todd said. “I wouldn’t mind getting something started.”

Aja Lowrey knows what it means to struggle.

The 18-year-old Chicagoan has endured homelessness twice during critical junctures of her young life.

After receiving most of her schooling at Leslie Lewis Elementary School in the North Austin neighborhood, an institution on probation most of her educational career, she became homeless after a dispute between her mother and their landlord. Lowrey, who was applying to prestigious Walter Payton College Prep at the time, stayed with relatives and friends for roughly a year while her mother worked multiple jobs and sought shelter wherever she could.

Lowrey tested among the top applicants and celebrated with relatives when admitted to a class of about 250 people. But shortly after obtaining stable housing, Lowrey and her mother slipped back into homelessness in her junior year while she was juggling ACT prep, college applications and routine schoolwork.

“This last time, I was breaking down crying because I had nowhere to go,” Lowrey said. “I ended up staying with an uncle … and the next day we worked out an agreement with (my mom’s) friends, but my mom still had nowhere to go. She was working in the hospital and staying in Walgreens all night and things like that. I was literally crying every night, trying to get through.”

There were no tears last week after Lowrey — who commuted three hours to Indianapolis to work two overnight shifts every other weekend at a Steak ‘n Shake during her senior year — was one of five high school graduates to accept a $2,500 a year scholarship for current and former homeless students from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

“It honestly meant a lot with them giving me the CCH scholarship because I was planning on taking out loans, but this will mean I will be without debt,” Lowrey said. She is pairing the coalition scholarship with a $30,000 scholarship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she will enroll this fall.

Lowrey’s mother, Sherita Scott, is a medical assistant, and her late grandmother was a Cook County nurse for 30 years. The scholarships will help launch Lowrey on a path to becoming a physical therapist — a fitting end for the girl who used to play with her grandmother’s stethoscope, Scott said.

“I’m very proud of her,” said Scott, who still wore her work scrubs at a recent ceremony for scholarship recipients at Loyola Law School in River North. “It really touched me because we had a lot of obstacles with the homeless stuff, me not having a job, getting a job, going through an agency only to get laid off. But when it was time for graduation, it was like we made it, through all the trials and tribulations.”

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’ Law Project, a legal aid program focused on the homeless, started the scholarships in 2004 after an analysis of their services revealed more than 94 percent of their clients were homeless students or youths. Since then, $240,000 from private donors has helped finance up to five years of college for 50 students, 10 of whom have obtained their bachelor degrees and 13 others who are rising sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Though the graduation rate remains around one-third, coalition officials are encouraged by the numbers. The coalition cited a 2015 report from University of Pennsylvania and Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education that found only 9 percent of students in the lowest income bracket obtained degrees by age 24.

Daihana Estrada, a 2010 scholarship recipient, beat those odds. Estrada became homeless at 17 after her parents were deported to Mexico after working 20 years in the U.S. and applying for legal residency in Utah. A judge gave her parents two months to sell their home and sent Estrada and her younger brother, who were born in the U.S., to live with their older brother in Chicago.

Estrada finished her senior year at John Hancock College Prep High School with a 3.9 GPA and went on to study political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago with help from a homeless coalition scholarship. But she encountered more hardships when her older brother kicked her and her brother out during her sophomore year of college.

Estrada addressed the scholarship recipients at the ceremony, telling them the road ahead may be tough, but the outcome is worth the wait. “I worked full time at Best Buy, full time at school, went to class at like 8 in the morning till 4, then go straight to work until 10 at night, and still, you know, do homework and stay up till 4 in the morning. Red Bulls were like my best friends at that time.

“But I want to let you know that it is possible. Each person goes through a different obstacle, but it’s up to that person to look at it in a positive or in a negative way.”

Estrada’s parents watched their daughter walk across the stage via Skype in May. Estrada, who works as a paralegal and plans to attend law school within a year, hopes to become an immigration attorney.

“I want other families to stay together and not go through what I went through,” she said. “Because it is hard, but at the end of the day, you have to move forward.”

As Estrada leaves UIC, T’Prinn Ingram of Aurora, the first suburban homeless coalition scholarship winner, is preparing to begin her studies at the university. She hopes to become an emergency room physician.

A graduate of West Aurora High School, Ingram lived in a shelter with her mother, father and two older brothers for six years, from first through sixth grade.

“I was confused,” Ingram said. “In my mind, it was something very temporary. I didn’t know I would be homeless that long. I thought it was an adventure, but it became a new way of life.”

“Me, my two brothers and mother stayed in the women’s and children section, and my father lived separately with the men,” Ingram said. “At 6 a.m. we would pack up our mattresses. We had lockers for stuff, but we had to figure out everything you wanted to carry around for the day. We had a half hour to eat … and then you had to find something to do all day.”

For Ingram and her family, they frequented Aurora Public Library, where she learned to love reading after she was surrounded by books almost daily. Ingram later served six years on the library’s Teen Advisory Board and four years on its Citizen Advisory Panel.

“The library holds a very dear place in my heart,” she said. “I would spend so much time there, everyone there knows me. It was another part of me being given so much and wanting to give back in return.”

Upward Bound, a college-oriented program aimed at low-income youths, was another significant influence on Ingram. As an eighth-grader, Ingram knew little about college other than it was a place she had been told that she needed to go. In the first year of Upward Bound, she visited a number of East Coast universities, including St. John’s University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgetown University.

“It was a little overwhelming,” Ingram said. “I was like ‘Holy cow! I can live here and study?'”

Now, with both older brothers attending college, one at Northern Illinois University and the other at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, it appears Ingram has found a home, too, at least for the next four years.