City Ending Overnight Aid for Homeless

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration will shut down its overnight emergency services shift for the homeless and lay off 24 employees in the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.

The moves were necessary after a 49 percent reduction in state funding, Family and Support Services spokeswoman Anne Sheahan said Tuesday.

Emanuel also recently announced that he would fire as many as 625 employees whose jobs will be privatized and also eliminate 97 traffic-control aide positions.

Most of the Family and Support Services employees who are going to be laid off worked to help homeless people find shelter between midnight and 8 a.m. Currently, the city offers that help 24 hours a day.

“In this economy, we should not cut back on the safety nets for people who are on the streets,” said Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31, the union that represents 18 human services workers who received layoff notices. “The revenue needed to support these service workers isn’t daunting in the larger context of the city budget.”

City officials project a core budget deficit of about $635 million next year, but most of the funding for Family and Support Services comes from grants.

Sheahan said the state slashed its funding for the human services program from $4.7 million in the last fiscal year to $2.3 million for the fiscal year that began July 1.

“Although we are continuing to advocate for the restoration of these funds, the city has been examining our resources and trying to determine where we can reduce services with the least impact on the people we serve,” Sheahan said.

She added that 80 percent of requests for help come in between 8 a.m. and midnight. Requests made overnight will be recorded and held until workers arrive for the shift that begins at 8 a.m. And at times of greater demand for services, such as in the winter, workers from daytime shifts will be assigned to work overnight.

Besides the human services workers, the laid-off employees include an assistant commissioner as well as other managers. The department also recently eliminated one deputy commissioner’s position, Sheahan said, as part of Emanuel’s directive to cut senior management payroll by 10 percent in all branches of city government.

A report commissioned by city employee union leaders and released last week cited Family and Support Services among the city departments where there are too many managers supervising too few front-line workers.

“Without the outreach to the homeless individuals in the population that’s at risk and hard to reach, all of the risk factors are going to be heightened, whether it’s health, whether it’s safety, whether it’s substance abuse,” Lindall said, adding that many homeless people suffer from mental illnesses or grapple with drug addiction.

One of the human services workers who received a layoff notice said she and her colleagues on the overnight shift often help the homeless as well as women and children left without shelter by domestic violence.

“How is that something that is not vital?” said the worker, who asked not to be identified for fear that it would harm her chances of averting dismissal.

She added, “We will have children out in the street in the middle of the night. I don’t see how they can wait until 7, 8 o’clock. How fair is that to them?”