A homeless man Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, sleeps at the Chicago Transit Authority's Clark & Dearborn bus station, the morning after a snowstorm dumped up to 18 inches in the greater Chicago area. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Chicago activists are urging the city to develop a more comprehensive emergency action plan to protect its homeless population ahead of upcoming winter storms, as extreme weather conditions sweeping the country have been lethal to those living on the streets.

The Midwest is bracing itself for an unpredictable winter. Gino Izzi, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service, told Heartland Signal that the powerful storm that flooded the West Coast — causing President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency in California earlier this month — is responsible for January’s spring-like start in the Windy City. 

Chicago has seen unusually heavy rain, thunderstorms and above-average temperatures that are expected to continue through the next few weeks. But Izzi said meteorologists are now “seeing a lot of signs” that suggest the winter could return to its typical frigid temperatures come February, which is usually a “very rough” time for the city. 

The cold can be lethal to those living in tents that are not built to retain heat or stand up to brutal winds, or wearing clothes that are soiled or damp. A 2010 National Coalition for the Homeless study concluded hypothermia kills approximately 700 people experiencing or at risk of homelessness every year in the U.S. Extreme weather conditions can also exacerbate chronic illnesses like heart disease, which homeless adults are 40%-50% more likely to die from than adults with stable housing, a 2017 National Library of Medicine study found. 

Jackie Edens, CEO of the Chicago nonprofit Inner Voice, told Heartland Signal that she gets frustrated every year at the city’s last-minute preparations to provide emergency services for its approximately 65,000 unhoused residents through winter storms. 

“They start talking about an emergency plan in December,” she said. “Those plans should start in June, July and August.”

Just last month, Chicagoans struggled through blizzard-like conditions, facing bone-chilling winds, heavy snowfall and plunging temperatures from an Arctic storm that CNN reported left over a million people without power and caused at least nine deaths across the U.S.  

While the Chicago Police Department did not respond to requests for information about incidents involving the homeless during that time, activists say December’s storm was brutal for the city’s unhoused population. Shelters and warming centers became quickly overwhelmed as temperatures plunged 20-30 degrees in just two to three hours. 

Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, told Heartland Signal he thinks it’s problematic that out of the city’s six warming centers, only one operates 24/7. The rest are open for traditional business hours. The warming centers also don’t open until temperatures reach below 35 degrees, even though the CDC says hypothermia can still pose a fatal threat when temperatures are above freezing.  

Tedd Peso, director of Strategic Partnerships for the nonprofit Night Ministry, told Heartland Signal that he applauds the city for extending the hours of their overnight shelters for young people ages 18-24 and covering costs for nonprofits to keep their own shelters open 24 hours during December’s storm. But he wants the city to create its own system of warming centers that are more easily accessible, so that “we are not asking people to go to police centers or an emergency room to seek warmth.” 

Peso is also not sure if Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) followed through with some of Night Ministry’s other requests last December, such as bringing warming buses to areas with larger encampments. Schenkelberg said the city has done so in the past. During 2019’s polar vortex — which was known for “producing the state’s coldest temperature ever,” the Chicago Tribune reported — the city positioned Chicago Transit Authority buses near encampment sites to provide refuge for those who could not get to shelter.

Edens said she wants DFSS to make these shelters and warming centers more hospitable to people, like “having warm refreshments like coffee or tea, the same kind of comforts you and I would be seeking if we’d been out in the cold and needed to warm up.”

Edens, who worked for the city for 29 years and at one point served as the director of Homeless Services, said DFSS used to purchase socks, underwear and other necessities in bulk and make sure their emergency services team had those supplies to give out during weather crises. Now, those efforts have mostly been outsourced to nonprofits.

During December’s storm, volunteers from nonprofits like Night Ministry and the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless came together to distribute winter clothes, sleeping bags and blankets, hand and foot warmers, medicine, tents, transit cards and portable heaters among the homeless. Community-level efforts, Peso said, “helps supplement a lot of the services that the city is providing.” But Edens thinks the city can play a larger role in taking donations and supporting the agencies doing this work.

Peso also hopes the city will work on coordinating outreach services before the next storm, to make sure unhoused folks have access to proper information about what the weather emergency is and how they can access the resources available to them, an effort that has been mostly activist-led. Volunteers during December’s storm made an effort to educate people on signs of weather-related health conditions like frostbite and hypothermia.

Other activists took it to themselves to bring individuals to safety. Jermaine Jordan, founder of a Chicago restaurant that gives the homeless free healthy hot meals, scoured tent cities and train platforms during December’s storm to check at-risk people into hotel rooms using money he raised online, CBS reported. 

Peso hopes Chicago will adopt similar but more permanent solutions for sheltering the unhoused, following the lead of cities like Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass (D) said her administration would start a program to move homeless people from tent encampments into hotels and motels. 

“We could recreate our system so that these kind of crisis responses are no longer needed,” Peso said. 

Schenkelberg agreed that the city should see providing shelter for the unhoused as a year-round priority. Being homeless isn’t just dangerous during extreme weather events; unhoused people are at greater risk of premature death, having a life expectancy of almost 20 years lower than people who are housed, a 2017 study published in the National Library of Medicine found.

“What proactive things are we doing outside of emergency situations to ensure people aren’t on the street to begin with?” Schenkelberg said. “How are we investing in permanent housing? How are we investing in social services?”

He said the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless has been working on the Bring Chicago Home campaign alongside other nonprofits for over four years now, an effort to get dedicated funding in place to build permanent housing and provide financial relief for the unhoused. The ordinance, which failed to make it onto the ballot for this February’s municipal election, proposes getting this funding through increasing the state’s real estate transfer taxes on high-value properties worth $1 million or more. 

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) did not respond to a request for comment about whether she supports seeing this ordinance on future ballots.

Edens said that while she thinks the state is making an effort to increase funding for emergency shelter and permanent housing programs, she wants people on an individual level to refrain from passing judgment on those living on the streets. Edens keeps a stash of cash in her car that she refers to as her “intersection people money,” and she urges people to do the same.

“How about we not worry about what they’re gonna do with the money?” she said. “How about we worry about them getting through the night? What do we do to get through the night?”

(1/23 CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that Jackie Edens worked for the city for 19 years. She has actually worked for the city for 29 years. This has been corrected.)