Chicago stepped up when the polar vortex hit. The city’s various departments, as well as Chicago’s businesses and concerned citizens, responded to the emergency with money, time and urgency. People experiencing homelessness could be safe in warming centers, buses, shelters and motel rooms generously rented for them by others (“‘Regular people’ move dozens from camp to inn,” Feb. 1).
The weather is returning to normal winter conditions. The added shelter beds and the warming buses and centers have gone away, and the funding for motel rooms is running out. The people who found temporary refuge will be back on the streets. Their homelessness does not end just because the weather emergency does.
Now is the time to focus on long-term, permanent solutions to homelessness. The Bring Chicago Home resolution sits in the City Council Finance Committee, waiting to be heard. This resolution would move forward a proposal to raise the city’s real estate transfer tax on properties worth more than $1 million and would generate millions in new revenue, all dedicated to permanent housing and services for those experiencing homelessness.
With thousands of people in our city experiencing homelessness, the Bring Chicago Home campaign can have meaningful impact on this enormous problem.
Whether it is 25 below zero or a beautiful spring day, no one should be homeless. Let’s move the incredible energy and compassion we saw this past week to bigger solutions.
— Doug Schenkelberg, Executive Director, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless