Crain’s Chicago Business, Doug Schenkelberg: Chicago, let’s be a leader on solving homelessness

By Doug Schenkelberg, CCH Executive Director

On any given day, you can walk through the Loop or under viaducts throughout our city and see people struggling with homelessness. However upsetting it is to witness their suffering, it is more heartbreaking to know that these people reflect the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chicago’s homelessness problem.

More than 86,000 people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2017, according to the most recent census data. And nearly 80 percent are hidden from public view because their homelessness is experienced by staying doubled-up (if not tripled or quadrupled) with friends, family or strangers.

Too little affordable housing, insufficient living-wage work, physical and mental health ailments, and struggles with substance use are some of the reasons people face housing instability. Few realize that 1 in 5 Chicago adults who are homeless are employed. And 1 in 4 have some level of college education. More than 20,000 Chicago children strive to stay in school while couch-hopping night to night.

Moreover, homelessness has a disparate impact on people of color, with 4 out of 5 people experiencing homelessness being black or brown.

The reasons people become homeless are complex, but the solution is straightforward — permanent housing with supportive services. It is a proven model that brings people out of homelessness and keeps them out.

But inadequate resources and a historic lack of political will to secure sufficient resources keep us from moving forward. Chicago ranks near the bottom in both total and per capita spending on homelessness when compared to our peer cities. Moreover, the federal funding that Chicago receives to stem homelessness cannot be used to help the largest share of people who are homeless in our city—those who live doubled-up.

What Chicago needs is dedicated funding at a scale that can have a measurable impact on reducing homelessness. Fortunately, there is an ordinance pending in the City Council that would do just that. Backed by the Bring Chicago Home coalition of over 80 community advocates and civic groups, this measure would dramatically increase funding to combat homelessness through an increase in the city’s one-time real estate transfer tax applied exclusively to properties sold for more than $1 million.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot should fully embrace this progressive revenue increase, both because she included this proposal in her platform as a candidate and because a poll conducted for my organization showed that two-thirds of likely Chicago voters say they would support a referendum authorizing it.

Too often the refrain is, “We know homelessness is a problem, but we will get to it after dealing with these other issues.” Continually deferring solutions to homelessness only lets the problem fester. Mayor Lightfoot can take a different path. Make Chicago the shining example of how a major city tackles homelessness. The time is now.

Also in the Crain’s series on Homelessness

Christine Achre, Primo Center for Women and Children: Homeless children should remain front-and-center in fight to end homelessness

Janet L. Smith, Vorhees Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago: When it comes to homelessness, prevention is the best policy