Residents of three single-room occupancy hotels on the North Side have been informed the properties are for sale in what shapes up as the first major test of the city’s new SRO preservation ordinance.
The Dolins family, owners of the vintage Marshall Hotel, 1232 N. LaSalle, Carling Hotel, 1512 N. LaSalle and Darlington Hotel, 4700 N. Racine, gave official notice to the city Jan. 28 of their intent to sell and followed up with letters to the tenants.
The notices triggered a six-month window in which not-for-profit developers can to try to negotiate the purchase of the buildings to keep them as affordable housing.
If they can’t reach a deal, the owners would then be allowed to negotiate a sale to market-rate developers.
The outcome of those negotiations should go far toward showing us whether the ordinance pushed through the City Council last fall by Mayor Rahm Emanuel Administration will help preserve Chicago’s affordable housing stock as intended — or serve as little more than a speed bump to buyers eager to upgrade such properties to appeal to more affluent renters.
The Dolins’ three residential hotels account for nearly 400 housing units, although more than half of those are currently unoccupied because they stopped accepting new long-term tenants in anticipation of a sale.
The sale notices have caused alarm among building residents concerned they may lose their homes in a continuation of the displacement pattern that has decimated the housing options for North Side low-income renters in recent years.
With help from community organizers, residents of the three buildings have formed a tenants association to try to protect themselves during the sales process.
We feel insecure. We feel afraid. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Cynthia Gaines, 52, leader of the tenants at the Darlington in Uptown.
“We are hoping a low-income developer will buy the property and let us stay here,” said Gaines, who works as a certified nursing assistant.
Most of the building’s 42 remaining residents are on fixed incomes, she said. They include veterans, senior citizens and people with physical and mental disabilities.
A room at the Darlington with a bathroom rents for $475 a month.
The story is similar at the Marshall and Carling, which I would expect to be particular plums for developers because of their attractive locations just west of the Gold Coast.
Nicole Bell, 43, who has lived at the Marshall nearly four years since a divorce forced her to “start over,” has taken a lead in organizing the 61 residents who remain in the 173-unit building.
Bell said she just wants to “make sure no one loses their housing and is left out on the bricks.”
The nearly century-old hotels have been owned by the Dolins family for more than 50 years and have been better maintained than many similar properties, although less so since the decision to sell.
Why sell now?
“I’m in my 90’s. It’s time to retire, isn’t it?” owner Max Dolins told me Friday.
Dolins said his company has yet to identify a buyer.
“Brokers have been calling us, but nothing’s happened,” he said.
Lawrence Adelson, a lawyer for the Dolins, said his clients had decided to put the properties on the market before the SRO ordinance was adopted. The family was rebuffed in an attempt to get a special exemption in the ordinance, Adelson confirmed.
The lawyer said it’s “too early to say” whether the hotels will end up in the hands of non-profit or for-profit developers. Both have made inquiries, he said.
“Ideally, there will be something for all the different constituencies, but the economics have to work as well,” Adelson said.
“I think there’s a lot of will on the part of the city to make this happen in a positive way,” he added. A spokesman for the city said it has not been approached yet by any potential buyer seeking city financial assistance to help preserve the SROs.
I have to say that even the letters sent to the tenants — factual and non-threatening — were a big improvement on the typical process we have seen in other SRO buildings where the residents were kept in the dark before being bullied to move.
Leon Irby, 65, a retiree who has lived at the Marshall for 10 years, told me he doesn’t blame the Dolins for trying to get full value for their property and gives them “credit for being on the humane side.”
“Ain’t been no palace of luxury, but it’s been a place you could lay your head, call your own,” Irby said.
The question is where Irby and others will be laying their heads a year from now.
Steve Ruffin listens to Nicole Bell talk of living conditions in the Marshall Hotel Friday, Feb.13, 2015 in Chicago.| Kevin Tanaka/For Sun-Times Media
Maybe the most common complaint of any homeless person living on the streets of Chicago is about losing their possessions in a city sweep.
The sweeps — partly a cleaning effort, partly an old-fashioned roust — have long been used by city officials to control homeless encampments.
In the process, though, homeless people often end up losing blankets, clothing, medicine and important documents critical to both their short-term survival and long-term chances of regaining a footing in society.
Every time they lose their stuff, they have to start all over again to rebuild their meager lives, even to obtain proof of their identity.
OPINION
But for Ivory Parks, 56, it was the loss of something that couldn’t be replaced that led him to join a group of complainants organized by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to seek redress from the city.
One morning while Parks was away from his spot on Lower Wacker Drive to keep an appointment, city cleaning crews threw out his family photos — mostly pictures of him with his mom and dad when he was a child.
“It kind of ticked me off,” said the soft-spoken Parks, a recovering heroin addict who spent 13 years living on Chicago’s streets in between trips to prison and jail. “I had those photos for as long as I can remember.”
The Florida-born Parks, now clean and sober for one year and living in a West Side studio apartment for five months, says he must rely these days on the pictures in his head to keep the memories alive.
On Wednesday, the Coalition for the Homeless honored Parks and 16 other homeless individuals for volunteering to be part of a threatened — but never filed — lawsuit that recently resulted in a settlement that adds improved protections for the personal property of some homeless individuals during what the city calls “off-street cleanings.”
For now, the policy applies only to the Lower Wacker Drive area and to the Wilson Avenue viaduct beneath Lake Shore Drive. But the agreement allows the homeless coalition to work with the city to identify other areas that should receive the same treatment.
The agreement with the Emanuel Administration requires city workers to give more notice before cleaning operations and sets detailed rules for discarding of items.
All homeless people are allowed to keep only “portable personal possessions” defined as a “sleeping bag or bedroll, not more than two coats, not more than two pairs of shoes or boots, not more than five blankets, and not more than three bags or suitcases, and such contents as may be contained in said bags or suitcases.”
In the winter months, they can have five more blankets and another sleeping bag.
One of the big changes is that the city will now tag unattended belongings and come back for them a week later instead of tossing them in the trash immediately.
And city crews are now under specific orders not to discard personal documents such as identification, birth certificates, legal papers and personal photographs “if readily visible.”
“We believe these updated policies and procedures respect the rights of the homeless while protecting the public’s right to a clean and safe public way,” said a city spokesman.
I’m not sure how well that provision will work considering that homeless people usually try to keep such items hidden, but lawyers for the group told me early indications are that city workers are making an honest effort to be more respectful of all the belongings they find.
It’s also significant the new policy clarifies that the Department of Family and Support Services is in charge of any cleaning operations involving homeless people, not the Police Department or Streets and Sanitation workers. Switching from a law enforcement to a social service approach should go a long ways toward improving the situation.
A previous federal lawsuit on behalf of Lower Wacker’s homeless resulted in a settlement agreement with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, but advocates say the city long ago stopped abiding by it.
Bob McMahon, a 55-year-old Marine Corps veteran who camped out three years in a tent along the Chicago River near the River City development, choked up as he thanked the lawyers who took the case.
McMahon said he lost all his belongings four times while homeless, and each time was forced to start all over.
“You have what you’re wearing. That’s all,” McMahon told me.
Last month, McMahon got an apartment in North Riverside with a federal housing voucher obtained through the Veterans Administration.
The moral here, as one of the lawyers put it, is that your things are your things, and the government can’t just come and take them, even if you’re homeless.
Ivory Parks was one of 17 homeless people whose threatened lawsuit against the city resulted in a revised policy for handling personal possessions during cleaning operations. | Mark Brown/Sun-Times
Homeless youth unaccompanied by adult guardians are one of the country’s most vulnerable populations, and also some of the toughest for advocates and service providers to reach. On Thursday, the Hartford, CT-based Center for Children’s Advocacy (CCA) will start taking legal aid services directly to these kids using a new law office on wheels.
The new mobile legal aid clinic will seek to connect hundreds of homeless youth in the Hartford area with attorneys who can help them exercise the various rights that federal law provides unaccompanied homeless youth. Legal aid workers can help these kids enroll in school immediately even if they cannot readily obtain a comprehensive education record and access federal college aid money or health insurance systems without being able to furnish information on their parents’ finances.
“Most of these students who move around a lot, tracking down their full educational record is difficult. But federal law says they’re able to get immediate enrollment, even without proof of immunizations,” Stacy Violante Cote, the CCA staffer in charge of the new $50,000 mobile clinic, told ThinkProgress. She explained how the group recently helped one 17-year-old in the Hartford area who was referred to CCA by staffers at a youth development agency who were unsure how she could get enrolled in the high school nearest to where she was then staying. The group hopes the mobile lab will help them to make more of those kinds of connections between young people, other aid organizations, and legal resources.
“The mobile legal office really came from some of the limitations in the way that we had been getting cases,” Violante Cote said. “The difficulty we’ve found in getting cases referred to us for homeless youth is number one, most people don’t know these kids have these legal rights. They wouldn’t think there’s a legal remedy for their school problems. The kids don’t consider themselves homeless, and the staff don’t know about their rights.”
Violante Cote and her colleagues have to contend with young people’s resistance to the “homeless” label that triggers their expanded federal rights under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. That law also requires school districts to designate a homeless liaison to help eligible students from the institutional end, but while many of those liaisons are highly competent, well-informed, and attentive, they are often doing double-duty in jobs that leave little room to monitor and work with such students. The clients CCA and groups like it serve tend to think of themselves as couch-surfing or house-hopping, she said, “but the law talks about not having a permanent place to live, and many of them qualify for legal remedies they would never know they can access.”
“What our clients say is, ‘I’m not homeless, I’m not sleeping on the street.’ They have some vision of what they expect homelessness to look like,” Violante Cote said, and think of themselves as “just staying with someone for a short period of time.” Convincing someone to go see the “homeless liaison” in their school is tough given that resistance to the label. By relying on social media and traveling out to meet kids where they already are, the group hopes to shrink some of those hurdles.
Youth homelessness in general has exploded in recent years. There were over 1.25 million homeless students in public schools in the 2012-2013 school year, an 85 percent increase from prior to the Great Recession. Another recent estimate found that one in every 30 American children were homeless at some point in 2013. It is difficult to tease out a count of unaccompanied young homeless people from these broader numbers, but both Violante Cote and other experts reported seeing a steady rise in that population as well.
The CCA rolling aid unit will be the second of its kind in the country, according to the Hartford Courant. The first is in Chicago, where the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless has sought out homeless kids for over a decade in what CCH’s Beth Cunningham called “basically an off-brand minivan.”
Cunningham has overseen the project for the Chicago group for seven years, since taking the reins from another CCH legal fellow who got the mobile legal center off the ground in 2004. “We don’t have any crazy state of the art equipment. It’s more of a philosophy I think for us,” Cunningham said, stressing the same key attributes of mobile legal outreach that her Connecticut counterparts emphasized. “Youth, especially unaccompanied youth, have sort of different help-seeking mechanisms than adults,” Cunningham said, which means she and her colleagues rely on partner organizations where kids “already have a sense of safety and of trust with an organization.”
The special care and additional energy that groups like Cunningham’s and Violante Cote’s bring to unaccompanied homeless youth is vital given the basic differences in the causes of homeless for such kids. While many chronically homeless adults lost their grip on a formerly stable life, many homeless minors who aren’t under the care of an adult guardian “are fleeing dangerous situations or have been kicked out because of sexual orientation or other reasons, so they are concerned about interaction w authorities and potentially being sent back to an abusive or unsafe family situation,” Eric Tars of the National Law Center on Homeless and Poverty told ThinkProgress.
Roughly 20 percent of unaccompanied homeless youths left home over a conflict about their sexual orientation, Tars said, and 43 percent report fleeing physical abuse at the hands of a caretaker. One in four left home after a caretaker requested sexual activity. Mobile legal clinics circumvent the fear of being put back into the system that naturally comes with walking into a building to seek assistance, and provide “a feeling of security that they aren’t going to be turned over to authorities or detained against their will.”
With just two mobile legal aid clinics targeting this vulnerable population in a pair of cities, and thousands more young homeless people in harder-to-reach rural areas, there is still a long way to go to connect the country’s ballooning homeless youth population to key services. But seeing the idea begin to spread was heartening to CCH’s Cunningham. “It’s great that people are taking it up and thinking more about it,” she said. “It’s a good example of community lawyering, and catering the delivery of legal services to the needs of the population you’re trying to serve.”
Kasey, one of the subjects of The Homestretch (Kartemquin Films/The Atlantic )
Caught between two equally undesirable alternatives—remaining in a difficult situation at home or going out into the city on her own—Kasey was forced into a decision no teen should ever have to make.
“It was because of the way that I am that my mother, you know … got rid of me—because I’m a lesbian,” said Kasey, then 19. Kasey’s grandmother took her in for some time, but even that was short-lived: The emotional abuse she experienced there became too much. “I can’t be here because it’s really tearing me apart … I would rather sleep outside than be here with my family.”
Roque’s story is different but in many ways the same. And if not for his teacher, Maria Rivera, 17-year-old Roque would likely be out on the streets, too—or worse. “He would say, ‘Drop me off at this place,’ and it wouldn’t be the place they were living the day before,” said Rivera, who took it upon herself to look after him. “Then I would start to see him circling—so then I started circling, and I was like, ‘He’s not going home.'”
“When we offered [a] room he took it immediately, and in front of me he called both parents,” Rivera continued. “There was no ‘No Roque! Come here [from the parents].’ That was heart breaking.”
Finally, there’s Anthony, who was driven to the streets by an abusive stepfather when he was just 14. “When I came home, [my stepfather] would just take the phone and smack me and be like, ‘If you don’t like how it is in my house then you can get the fuck out. You don’t have to be here,'” recalled Anthony, 18. “Then I would just leave.”
The stories of and interviews with these three Chicago teenagers are the centerpieces ofThe Homestretch, a recent documentary created by filmmakers Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly that aims to challenge stereotypes about youth homelessness. The documentary demonstrates the complexity of the issue—a problem that’s often hidden from the public eye.
“We were searching for subjects that hit us in the heart,” Kelly told me, reflecting on how she and de Mare developed the documentary, which debuts on PBS in April but is already being featured in public screenings across the country. “We found this kid was basically kicked out because he had come out as gay in high school … We started researching and learning over time that there were over 15,000 kids registered in the Chicago public school system classified as homeless and no one was really talking about it.”
Since embarking on the project, Kelly and de Mare have realized that the problem isn’t only prevalent—it’s also growing. By the close of the 2013-14 academic year, Chicago Public Schools had identified more than 22,000 homeless students, which are defined by the U.S. Department of Education as those “who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” These kids account for roughly 5 percent of Chicago’s total public-school student population.
And Chicago’s young homeless population is by no means an isolated one. The DOE’s latest national survey, which was conducted during the 2012-13 school year, showed that there were 1.2 million homeless students across the country. Moreover, the statistic only includes children officially classified as homeless; the number of students living without a fixed residence is likely much higher.
Where The Homestretch most succeeds as a film lies squarely in its authentic, no-frills portrayal of what it means to be young and homeless in America. It doesn’t overload the screen with tear-jerking montages of young panhandlers tethered to street corners, begging cup in tow. Instead, it reveals that, in the U.S., youth homelessness is as subtle as it is insidious—and that disagreements over what “homelessness” looks and feels like, and over the role schools should play in conquering it, have perhaps been the greatest obstacle to finding a solution.
Being homeless as an adolescent or young adult entails more than simply lacking a reliable place to resort to after school. It’s compounded by the absence of stability, both physical and mental, at a time when a person is most vulnerable. It’s not easy to focus on algebra homework when your nights are spent curled up on a friend’s couch counting down the days until you wear out your welcome; imagine cramming for a history test in an overcrowded shelter surrounded by strangers.
Kelly and de Mare wanted to portray the reality of the problem without superficially pandering to viewers’ sentiments. “We really wanted to try to show what we were seeing in terms of how much these kids have to move in order to survive,” Kelly said. “We were not interested in perpetuating this image of the kid on the sidewalk. That’s not what we were seeing.”
The Homestretch also delves into the basic logistical challenges faced by homeless high school students. In the film, a local shelter for young people known as “The Crib” is shown turning away the hoards of kids waiting outside nightly simply because it lacks adequate beds. The caretakers call out the names on the list—a homeless draft of sorts—as the teens listen attentively, hoping they are lucky enough to hear their names called. At least half of the kids waiting are turned away, forced to spend the night at a friend’s or curled up in a cold city corner. The reality is that there just simply isn’t enough space to house all of America’s homeless youth: On any given night in the U.S., fewer than 5,000 emergency and transitional-living beds are available for young homeless people to crash on.
* * *
Homelessness rarely exists in a vacuum; it’s typically just one of the many challenges plaguing an individual, particularly when that individual is still growing up. On top of showcasing the day-to-day experiences of group of homeless teens, The Homestretch explores issues ranging from immigration to growing up lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)—experiences that serve as clues to why certain children end up on the streets.
It also demonstrates that being homeless makes young people much more vulnerable to additional dangers: A 2014 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless showed that, the longer a kid is homeless, the greater the likelihood that child will be physically assaulted, raped, or trafficked. A widely cited 2002 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Services—one of the only reliable data sources for such information—suggests that as many as four in 10 homeless youth have experienced sexual abuse. “One of the things that no one really talks about is that very often when young people run away from home—they are running away from abuse,” de Mare told me.
Still, statistics delineating youth homelessness in the U.S. are either hard to track down or narrow in scope, significantly handicapping efforts to address the problem. And the data is sparse in large part because homeless kids often become very adept at dealing with—and hiding—their situations. “Everyone was so engaged in moving forward because that’s all they could do,” de Mare said. “A lot of these kids, because they have been through so much, know how to process their experiences. It comes out of being a survivor.” In other words, these kids’ ability to mask their predicaments unfortunately makes it more difficult to alleviate that suffering.
And, as The Homestretch demonstrates, this is where the public school system plays an important role. Every school district in the country is legally required to designate so-called “homeless liaisons” for their campuses. But, as the film reveals, these liaisons are often overworked, meaning it’s up to the teachers who go above and beyond their duties in the classroom, filling in as de facto social workers.
“When we started having these conversations with teachers, they said, ‘We’re in this crisis situation and nobody is talking about it. We are scrambling to try to figure out what to do, there are no resources to really support us,'” Kelly said. “Schools really became the kind of replacement home in these situations … because it’s a place where you have shelter, food, and a bathroom so you can have that kind of consistency.”
“But also it’s also a place where you go every day, and the teachers were probably the only ones in your life asking, ‘Where are you going?'”
Barbara Duffield, a director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, touted the documentary for exhibiting how integral educators are to helping get their students into stable living situations. “I have [the documentary] ingrained in my mind. I say that because you would think having seen it that often that it would lose its impact, but it never has,” said Duffield, who’s worked with homeless children for 20 years and saw the movie six times. “Teachers like Maria who are savvy. They really have to be the eyes and ears because otherwise this is population that tries to blend in.”
Most teachers probably know the warning signs: A kid starts dropping grades, acting out, wearing dingy clothes, or, perhaps most telling, putting his or her head on the desk first thing in the morning. Still, teachers must tread lightly, even when asking the simple question: ‘Is everything alright?’ “Adolescents don’t want to be different for any reason, especially if it’s because they didn’t have shoes,” Duffield said.
Other advocates, however, worry about the country’s over-reliance on teachers to address homelessness. One of them is Daniel Cardinali, who runs Communities in Schools, a national program focused on creating formal support systems for students to ensure that they don’t drop out. The organization for its part employs a team of coordinators who work within the schools. They are trained to identify and address homelessness, theoretically taking some of the onus off of classroom educators.
“Teachers are with the kids all day, but they are not trained to understand what’s going on, and they are dealing with 30 other students. We don’t think it should be left to chance,” Cardinali said. “When schools are places of holistic support, we have a really good chance of catching kids when they are in distress. You have a much higher probability of getting to a problem before it becomes really disastrous.”
The greatest obstacle, however, isn’t necessarily that there aren’t enough resources and caring adults to dedicate to these children. It could be the ideological disagreements among federal policymakers about what defines homelessness and what method is most effective in eradicating it.
Absent manpower and resources, state and local governments have largely used a triage approach to address homelessness, ranking people based on their needs. The people in immediate danger—essentially those on the streets who are on the verge of death—are typically deemed “most important.” While some believe this is the most effective approach, others fear that there isn’t enough attention being paid to the root causes of homelessness; this often translates into a political battle between the reactive advocates and proactive ones.
A new bipartisan bill attempts to bring everyone on the same page, but while some advocates believe it could help, others aren’t so sure. The Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2015 would “amend the definition of a “homeless person” under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act to include certain homeless children. The McKinney-Vento law was originally passed in 1987 under President Ronald Reagan, and Congress has reauthorized the act a number of times since then, most recently in 2009. The new proposal essentially aims to broaden the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s current view of homelessness—one that focuses on the homeless facing particularly imminent risks. Proponents of the bill claim that the department’s narrow focus often means that the kids who go from house to house—the floaters and runaways, for example—don’t necessarily get the support they need.
But the bill has already garnered a good deal of pushback. Among its critics is Nan Roman, who oversees the National Alliance to End Homelessness and describes the legislation as misguided. Roman and others worry that widening the door could take away resources from the homeless individuals who are most in need of support. “It will include a lot of people who aren’t homeless; they would then be competing with people who are homeless for resources,” Roman said.
Yet others disagree, and at last week’s briefing at the U.S. Capitol, no one was more earnest about the bill’s promise than Stephanie Van Housen, a DOE-designated “homeless liaison” in Iowa. In her testimony she told stories of young people in her school district, some of whom are forced to sleep in motels next door to sex offenders.”I cannot stress to you enough the importance of [expanding how we identify] who is homeless,” she said. “I do not want to have to tell one of my students, ‘If you really want help just go sleep under the bridge at the Iowa River.'” In order for many of these struggling teens to qualify for assistance, she emphasized, they would have to be “homeless” in the most literal definition of the word.
The unintended consequence of these debates is that government agencies end up playing a game of hot-potato with homeless teens. Is it a housing-department problem? Or is it a wake-up call for those managing the child-welfare system? Should resources be concentrated among the older homeless people dying on the streets? Or should they instead focus on the younger generations so kids can’t get out of the cycle before it’s too late?
As Duffield put it: “We need to keep people alive. But I think the bigger issue is that in the last 10 years children and youth haven’t been a priority of federal efforts, period.”
At the end of the 2013-2014 school year, Chicago Public Schools identified 22,144 homeless students. The total marked an 18.6 percent jump from the previous year and won’t make getting proper assistance to homeless teens any easier.
Now, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is partnering with other local groups to try to get necessary resources into the hands of the teens who need it most.
The Homeless Youth Handbook released Wednesday seeks to assist homeless youth in Illinois with information on a variety of legal issues common for the city’s homeless teens. A collaboration between the CCH, Baker & McKenzie LLP and United Airlines, the handbook is available both online and at a reception for local organizations hosted by Baker & McKenzie.
“Homeless youth face so many different barriers and have so many different struggles,” said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Coalition’s Law Project. “These are just issues that young people who are on their own without a home face.”
The 17-chapter book covers an array of topics, from LGBTQ resources to credit reports – and was compiled by more than 50 pro bono lawyers from Baker & McKenzie and United Airlines. The Law Project, a group of attorneys who specialize on issues of homeless youth, trained the volunteers on the big issues of youth homelessness before sitting down to tackle the handbook.
This is Baker & McKenzie’s third youth handbook, having previously released editions in Washington and Minnesota. With each edition, the firm partnered with both a nonprofit and a corporate client. In Minnesota, that client was the water, hygiene and energy company Ecolab. In Washington, it was Starbucks.
“If we could do all 50 states that would be great, but we obviously knew we would have to start small,” said Adrienne Pitts, a litigation partner at Baker & McKenzie. “Chicago is such an important hub in having so many terrific non-profit organizations around the city of Chicago invested in assisting homeless youth.”
According to Pitts, the “footprint” of the handbook doesn’t change much between states. But to properly adapt the Illinois edition, Baker & McKenzie knew they would need a local non-profit like CCH who was familiar with the needs of and resources for local youth, traditionally one of the most difficult homeless populations to track..
Still, with the breadth of material, CCH wanted to make sure the research was airtight.
“We, internally, were a small legal staff, so there’s some types of cases we would not have as much expertise in as, say, an organization that specifically focuses on criminal issues,” Nix-Hodes said. “In many cases when we felt that it would benefit from review from an outside expert, we arranged for that to happen.”
Helping homeless teens through legal advice is rare – Nix-Hodes says hers is the only Chicago organization which focuses on it. According to Pitts, it’s still an unmet need. She cites the common occurrence of calls to her firm asking for guidance on homeless students in schools as an example.
“Some of our homeless youth may need social services, may need mental health services. They may need to better understand the laws related to domestic violence,” Pitts said. “These are all things that impact all of our youth, but can – to a much harsher degree – impact our homeless youth whose resources simply are just limited.”
To help expand these resources, hardcopies of the handbook will be sent to leaders of youth outreach and homeless organizations. Nix-Hodes also said a poster campaign will compliment this, appearing in the offices of counselors and organization leaders with the hopes of catching the eyes of those who may need it.
For Pitts, it’s the handbook’s web presence that will ultimately prove the most valuable, especially with a younger generation.
“Truthfully our youth today – with technology advancements – tend to be a lot more enterprising and can go out and get information,” Pitts said. “And we thought ‘why not provide it one place…to assist them in their transition.’”
A new handbook out by a collaboration with homeless groups, law and airline firms seeks help homeless youth deal with the complications of life on the streets/Web image
Equal Voice News: For the more than 59,000 homeless youth in Illinois, the question has likely surfaced at one point in their lives: If a police officer detains me, where can I be taken?
In other words, what are the rights of homeless youth in Illinois?
Now, there are answers. In fact, there are many for homeless youth in the state on topics such as employment, health care, civil rights, finding housing and life without permanent shelter.
A 17-chapter guidebook – the “Homeless Youth Handbook” – produced by Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), Baker & McKenzie law firm and United Airlines was released on Wednesday in digital and print formats.
The guide also answers questions about general safety, domestic violence, seeking identification and issues that homeless LGBTQ youth might face.
“This is a valuable guide for homeless youth, including unaccompanied youth living without the support of a parent or guardian, as well as those who work with them,” Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project at CCH, said in a statement.
In Chicago alone, there are more than 21,400 homeless in the public schools, she said.
The guidebook is not intended as legal advice. Instead, the authors say, it is meant to provide general information and answers.
The book marks the third of its kind in the United States. Already, there is a handbook for homeless youth in Minnesota and Washington state.
“The guide offers practical answers to the varied and complex legal issues faced by homeless youth,” Adrienne Pitts, a Baker & McKenzie partner, said in a statement.
A total of more than 50 attorneys from the law firm, United Airlines and CCH contributed to writing the handbook. Chicago-based United Airlines said it was important to contribute to the project and help people in the state.
“It was a privilege for United’s legal team to play a role in developing such a valuable resource for our local youth” Steve Fus, assistant general counsel for United Airlines, said.
In addition to answering questions homeless youth might have, the handbook offers tools to deal with or address issues that might cause a person to lose shelter. Those issues include: Domestic violence, mental health issues, substance abuse and sexual exploitation.
The handbook, which is available online, can be requested in print by sending an email to: youthhandbook@chicagohomeless.org.
So exactly where can a police officer take a homeless youth in Illinois if stopped?
The guidebook says the officer can accompany the young person to that youth’s home to be reunited with his or her parents. The officer also can take the young person to a parent’s place of employment.
Another option: The officer can take the young person to a licensed youth shelter, especially if there is reason to believe that abuse or neglect would occur at home.
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit organization, works on public policies that seek to end homelessness.
Illinois Radio Network, via WGBZ Radio & the Alton Daily News
Perhaps this will be the year that the Illinois General Assembly approves money for a homeless education program.
“The superintendent’s recommending $3 million,” chief financial officer Robert Wolfe told the Illinois State Board of Education. “This is a request that the board’s put in for the last two or three fiscal years, and it hasn’t been funded.”
One board member said all you have to do is learn a little about the problem to want to get involved.
“They put faces on those boys and girls,” said Melinda LaBarre, remembering a presentation by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “They had them there, and they talked to us and told us about the challenges that they have. And if there was one person without tears in their eyes when they met those children, I don’t know who it would be.”
The board’s financial committee chairman, Jim Baumann, said there are perhaps 60,000 school-age children among Illinois’ homeless.
On a snowy evening, Brianna Tong gathered more than 50 students in a classroom at the University of Chicago to meet and dine with aldermanic candidates. The smell of curry filled the air as Tong told the audience that before becoming a campaign volunteer, she didn’t connect with public officials.
“(They) did not look like me … did not represent people who looked like me,” said Tong, 20, whose father is Asian and mother is African-American.
Now she’s spreading the word about candidates who share her views. Jobs, she said, should pay wages that at least keep up with the cost of living and tax breaks should not be given to corporations that pay low wages.
“Does that sound exciting to y’all,” Tong asked at the end of a six-minute speech.
“Yeah” students exclaimed, cheering and clapping.
The faces of political, labor and community organizing campaigns in Chicago are getting younger. The groups are gaining the support of more millennials, who now are roughly ages 15-35, who are increasingly frustrated with everything from police profiling to the state’s budget deficit to the lack of well-paying jobs, especially in fields that match their college educations.
Last year, the average student-loan debt of a college graduate rose 6 percent to $33,000. And while the unemployment rate for college graduates is the lowest since the recession, many are squeaking by in jobs that historically have been filled by high school students. In December, there were more than 1.4 million unemployed people in the U.S. older than 25 with a bachelor’s degree.
“Everyone tells you, work hard, go to college, do well, and get a job and your life will be great and that’s clearly not how it is for a lot of people,” said Tong, a college senior set to graduate this year with a bachelor’s degree in English and comparative race and ethnic studies.
Tong’s organizing work has been unpaid, but now she’s looking for entry-level positions with nonprofits and community groups, which pay about $30,000 a year. She committed herself to organizing when she realized its similarity to the civil rights movement.
“That’s something I heard about growing up from my mom,” said Tong, whose grandmother participated in the 1963 march in Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.
Youth involvement in community organizing gained national attention during the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, himself a former community organizer in Chicago. Now millennials are a force in efforts to increase the minimum wage, transform immigration policy and improve economic conditions for some.
Ed Shurna, executive director for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said millennials’ engagement is reminiscent of the rallies and protests of the 1960s. “It’s really exciting when I go to meetings and meet people who are doing this who have the same spirit that attracted me (to organizing),” said Shurna, 69. “It’s exciting because it didn’t happen for like 20 years.”
As recently as six years ago David Hatch, director of The People’s Lobby, a political advocacy group , recalls looking around a room filled with organizers and realizing that, while in his 50s, he was the youngest person in attendance.
“Here is where I think bad (economic) conditions helped,” said Hatch, noting his group now has vibrant campus organizations. Since The People’s Lobby began organizing students in 2011, it has sent about 100 to a weeklong training program.
Those who have become organizers say the work gives them a sense of purpose.
Wayne Hayer, 22, who says organizing saved him from a life of drugs and crime, was 19 when he met an organizer who offered him a job working with at-risk youth in a summer program. He said he took the job only because it offered a little money, but then organizers began mentoring him and sent him to the Midwest Academy, a Chicago-based organizing school.
Hayer said he attended workshops with college graduates and, to his surprise, kept up with them. “It was pretty amazing,” he said.
The experience helped him gain self-confidence, and he later became an organizer for a community group. He quit because he grew tired of knocking on doors and making phone calls, but after another job and some time off, Hayer said, he realized how much he missed organizing. Now he’s in school and wants to expand on the organizing skills he learned.
“The goal is to save the world. If you can save one life, it’s a life well-lived,” Hayer said.
Jennifer Ritter, executive director of One Northside, said other young organizers have come from movements such as Occupy Wall Street, which helped open their eyes to how the country’s slow recovery from the recession has dampened job opportunities. Most recently, Ritter said, young people have been fired up by the marches in Ferguson, Mo., after an unarmed black teenager was fatally shot by a white police officer.
Some organizers say the work has helped them develop a voice.
“Every single day I get to work toward my own values and vision for the world,” said Melissa Rubio, a soft-spoken 24-year-old. “I believe that we can live in a country that values people that don’t have money. I believe that we could live in a country that takes care of our people better.”
Despite a degree in peace, justice and conflict resolution that has left her with $60,000 in student debt, Rubio said the only kind of job she could find upon graduation was waiting tables, work she did in high school.
As an organizer, she spends her week working for an Illinois lawmaker and a local political organization.
Rubio said one of her first assignments was soliciting neighborhood support for a bus route that was slated to be eliminated, depriving residents of their lifeline to jobs.
“My heart was beating and I was so incredibly nervous,” Rubio said, recalling a visit to the home of an elderly woman. Rubio explained why she was there and was stunned when the woman wrote a check for the campaign and pledged to speak with her alderman.
Rubio said she didn’t think women could be powerful, but she is now leading groups and organizing people twice her age to help get people out to vote for progressive candidates.
Jeff Halm, president of the Chicago Young Republicans, said he started knocking on doors and making phone calls after he grew tired of people cracking jokes about how Illinois couldn’t pay its bills. He started attending a monthly happy hour sponsored by the group, which has 800 members ages 18 to 41.
During November’s election, Halm, 27, was among volunteers calling potential voters to encourage them to back Bruce Rauner for governor. Halm said he was proud to see Rauner win in a state that’s often written off as blue.
Halm added, “I wanted to feel like I was doing something instead of being an armchair activist.”
“America’s Next Leaders 2015” is an Equal Voice News special series that highlights young people who are making a difference in their communities.
By Alex Ashley
Photograph by Matthew Ryan Williams for Marguerite Casey Foundation/Equal Voice News
On the surface, Crystal Sahler’s upbringing wasn’t extraordinary: She went to school. She played with friends at the park. She built snowmen.
Then in 2008, when Crystal was only 17, her mother unexpectedly passed away from a brain aneurism, leaving her grieving, homeless and alone on the streets of Joliet, Illinois.
A year later, through a homeless shelter in Chicago, Crystal found out about the H.E.L.L.O. Homeless Youth Activism Group, a weekly, youth-led gathering where homeless and formerly homeless young people discuss, share and advocate on issues affecting their lives. She had lived on Chicago’s streets during the bitter winter, where she found community with others who lacked permanent housing. She swiftly became one of H.E.L.L.O.’s strongest advocates.
She lent her voice to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless speakers bureau and traveled to the suburbs to help people understand the issue of youth homelessness in suburban areas. Her work afforded her the opportunity to meet state lawmakers to successfully advocate for an increase in money for homeless youth programs.
The Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness also asked her to appear as an expert on a national panel on youth homelessness.
Crystal is no longer homeless, but she continues to fight for a better life for youth faced with a life on the streets. “She truly believes that children and youth should not have to face the struggles and challenges she has overcome,” says Ed Shurna, executive director of Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
She has saved her Shriver Award to support her dream of going to college to study social work and community organizing.
“A co-speaker once said, ‘We turn our pain into power,’” Crystal relates. “It is so true….We have a chance to change someone’s life.”
“I was speaking to a group of students from a middle school, and after I was done, a young girl came up to me crying, saying she didn’t want to end up homeless and that she needed to change her ways. In that moment, I knew what I was doing felt right and I needed to keep going.”
CHICAGO — People living under the Wilson Avenue viaduct at Lake Shore Drive and on Lower Wacker Drive will be given enough notice to clear their possessions ahead of street cleaning operations under a new city policy.
The policy, approved earlier this month, came after negotiations between the city and the nonprofit Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
“We have had a lot of complaints from people in those areas about having their property destroyed by Streets and Sanitation and the Chicago Police,” said Chicago Coalition for the Homeless attorney Diane O’Connell.
On Tuesday, people living under the Wilson Avenue viaduct said the new arrangement gives them some peace of mind.
“I’ve lost my stuff twice,” said Dorothy Gardner, a 50-year-old woman who said she has lived with her husband there for the past year. “Two tents, a bunch of blankets, clothes, personal papers. I just need to start over every time.”
The agreement only applies to the area under the Lake Shore Drive viaduct at Wilson Avenue and Lower Wacker Drive — both areas with sizable homeless populations — but could be expanded to other parts of the city as necessary, O’Connell said.
Under the policy, weekly cleanings will generally take place at a specific time with at least 24 hours notice posted on signs in the affected areas.
“The goal of this policy is to maintain public areas in a clean and sanitary condition, protect the public health and safety, and ensure the accessibility of public areas to all,” said Matt Smith, spokesman for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.
The policy also outlines what items people may have while living in these areas: a sleeping bag or bedroll, not more than two coats, not more than two pairs of shoes or boots, not more than five blankets and not more than three bags or suitcases.
From October to April, up to 10 blankets and two sleeping bags or bedrolls are allowed.
In addition, some people living in the affected area have other possessions such as tents. The notice gives them enough time to move their stuff while the area is cleaned, Wilson Avenue residents said.
“I came back and literally had nothing,” said Thomas Stephen, 61, who said he lost all of his stuff while he went to church one October morning.
The three agencies involved in the street cleaning — Family & Support Services, Streets and Sanitation and the Police — will begin implementing the new policies in the coming weeks, Smith said.
