The stories were varied. There was the formerly homeless woman who said she had become ill from shelter food; the social worker who felt that without sufficient resources, she was being set up to fail; the youth who asked for more drop-in services; the mother who lost her job and then her home; and the man who was told he was ineligible for certain services because he was neither an addict nor mentally ill.
They, along with national experts on homelessness, social workers and community activists, gathered at the Chicago Temple last week for a candid discussion about Chicago’s homeless problem and new ways for the city to address it.
Some wanted answers. Many wanted help. But most simply wanted to be heard.
As they spoke, the familiar faces of homelessness — addicts, the disabled and the chronically homeless — seemed to fade into the background, giving way to a much more complex group: youths, families and recent casualties of a difficult economy.
“We need to relearn our population,” said Ellen Ray, program director at Humboldt Park Social Services, a nonprofit group that serves the homeless. Instead of seeing people with traditional family crises, “joblessness and insufficient incomes are the main reasons we see” for homelessness these days, she said. The unprecedented conference, organized by the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit agency that works with the city to help nongovernmental service providers, was an attempt to get the creative juices flowing before the city revamps its 10-year plan to end homelessness.
That plan, set in motion by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2003, has not accomplished its goal, but it was hailed for moving many of the homeless from temporary shelters to longer-term “supportive” housing, with access to a wide range of social services.
But while the number of supportive housing units in Chicago has increased by 88 percent, from 3,598 in 2002 to 6,779 last year, there are still not nearly enough of them to house the city’s estimated 94,000 homeless.
Conference sessions, each consisting of an hourlong panel discussion and an hour of public comment, focused on various groups of homeless people — the unemployed, the elderly, veterans and youths — and issues they face, like inadequate housing, access to services and prevention.
Participants offered suggestions on what the city should include in its second plan to end homelessness, named Plan 2.0, which is set to be unveiled this spring.
A consistent theme in the conference was the complexity of factors underlying the problem. “If homelessness were the only problem, it would be simple,” said Marguerite Brown, a program manager at Cornerstone Community Outreach, a nonprofit organization serving the homeless.
Speakers agreed that the main challenge was coordinating the work of multiple agencies, providers and sources of financing to create a comprehensive, navigable system of care that moves people from the shelter system into permanent housing, regardless of their situations. “What is clear is that we need to focus on permanent supportive housing and affordable housing,” said John Pfeiffer, the deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services. Housing for youth will be a prime concern of the new plan, he said. The city currently has only 209 beds for homeless young people.
Many experts were in favor of creating a standard application and a centralized waiting list for supportive housing that would be used by nongovernmental providers that maintain permanent housing and city agencies like the Chicago Housing Authority. Supporters of that step also said that a universal entry point to the housing system would do a better job of identifying clients from the start and deciding on the types of social services they might need — like housing vouchers, mental health aid, education or family counseling.
Many of those who attended the conference said that the city’s response to the homeless was hampered by what they called an inadequate 311 phone line for directing people to resources.
Jim LoBianco, the executive director of StreetWise Inc., a local social service agency serving the homeless, wants to scrap 311 in favor of a dedicated social-service line. “311 is a failed model, and since that’s our ostensible front door, it’s clear that it needs to be stopped,” said LoBianco, a former deputy commissioner in charge of the Office of Homeless Services under Daley.
Chicago is one of the few major cities without a dedicated social-services call center. Pfeiffer said that the city would either install one in the next three months or train existing 311 operators to better handle calls from homeless people needing help.
One of the most heated discussions dealt with interim housing, in which people are supposed to stay for only 120 days — though many end up staying longer. Interim-housing providers said that it was unrealistic to expect to be able to move clients out so quickly.
Some advocates hesitate to eliminate interim housing entirely because of a lack of alternatives. Since 2002, shorter-term beds have declined by 17 percent.
“A few years ago, it was ‘scrap emergency beds.’ Now it’s ‘scrap interim,’ ” LoBianco said. “We should do absolutely nothing to put our inventory at risk.”
