When The City Turns Cold: Homeless in Chicago

(New) Featured Video

2011-01-10T13:16:00.004-06:00

A note from Cassandra Clegg, executive producer of this mini-documentary and a senior journalism student at Roosevelt:

     “For the past three years, I’ve passed the homeless on the streets of Chicago as part of my daily routine. I’ve often wondered about what life was like for those nameless individuals before their days of living on the street. Especially in the winter,
I wondered how they manage to survive the cold. Where do they go at night? Do they have a family? What are their hopes? Their desires?
      This mini-documentary provides some answers and offers a glimpse into the lives of four homeless men. By design, there is no outside narrative voice. This is a story that needs to be told, but through the voices of the homeless themselves and scenes of a Chicago winter.
      Ben Scott joined my vision and together we ventured into the Loop to talk with the homeless on the street. For journalistic integrity we did not give anything to the people who agreed to be filmed. This is their story.

2009-09-30T09:15:00.000-05:00

To experience the multimedia presentation below, scroll over any of the photos below for a brief description, then click on any one of them to go inside. Each photo contains a video, which you may start by simply pressing the play button once inside. To return to the main page, simply click HOME button in upper left hand corner. Note: If video player fails to load properly, simply click here

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Featured Video

2009-06-26T14:18:00.000-05:00

For more Multimedia, click on any of the links below:

When the City Turns Cold: Healthcare for the Homeless

When the City Turns Cold: Breakthrough Urban Ministries

When the City Turns Cold: Man on the Streets

About The Project

2009-06-26T14:17:00.000-05:00

Twelve student journalists, 16 weeks, one city. Thousands of people homeless in the Windy City alone. This spring, at Roosevelt University, where we embrace a mission of social justice, students in the capstone undergraduate journalism course, the convergence newsroom, set out to chronicle homelessness in the city of Chicago in a project entitled, “When the City Turns Cold: Homeless in Chicago.”

Against the backdrop of a national mortgage crisis and rising home foreclosures, increasing joblessness and poverty, and the lingering misperception of homelessness in America as being mostly a portrait of indigent men, we examine homelessness in Chicago. The objective over the spring/winter semester was to take a literary and microscopic look at homelessness during the most brutal months of the year here—winter.

Embracing the traditional approach of public affairs reporting and the tools of convergent media, Roosevelt University journalism students took to the streets where the homeless often dwell in the shadows of downtown’s lower Wacker Drive on icy nights and cower in blankets in the darkened doorways of buildings in an effort to seek shelter from the wind; to homeless shelters, among them Pacific Gardens Mission, perhaps Chicago’s most well-known haven for the homeless that has operated for more than 100 years; to a suburban church, where a program known as PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), is seeing a burgeoning number of middle class families turn to them for shelter amid mounting foreclosures and an unforgiving and relentless economic downturn.

In addition to the written narrative, the student journalists also sought to document through the use of digital media, the voices and faces of those most affected and those working on the frontlines to combat homelessness and hunger as well as those who provide a lifeline.

To that end, our stories as presented here, take the form of written narrative, as well as a collective multimedia project. Additionally, posted are podcasts by students on their reflections of covering the story, an American story, one that we cannot afford to ignore, one that is crystalized by the reporting, writing and storytelling of these student journalists.

Professor John W. Fountain

Faces and Voices

2009-06-26T14:16:00.000-05:00

Reflections - "As Might I"

2009-06-26T14:15:00.019-05:00

By Kristin Bivens
I have never been homeless. I’ve always had a warm bed to sleep in and food waiting in my refrigerator for me whenever I want it. But, living in Chicago over the past two years, I’ve seen my fair share of homeless people. People I walk past without giving them a second thought.

Like so many living here in Chicago, I’ve become almost immune to their existence. I walk right past them downtown on my way to and from class, without the courage to look them in the eye as they jingle their paper cups and create the sound of spare change.

I grew up in Niles, Mich., where it’s still very rare to see anyone begging on the streets. I was raised by a single mom since I was eight after my dad died. And despite my mom’s struggles to make ends meet, I have always had a place to call home.

But tonight, walking the streets around Michigan Avenue, I wondered—what would I do if I was homeless? How would it feel to be homeless in one of the biggest cities of the world?

The whizzing by of cars and the smell of exhaust are something you can’t escape on the streets of Chicago—unless you have a home. When you hear that sound, and smell that smell all the time, I imagine, the city loses its charm.

I imagine as a person living on the street, you see business person after business person who know nothing about you, walking past, but I’m sure they look at you with disgust as they pass by you, knowing they have a place to sleep for the night. I imagine that living on the streets of Chicago, with its huge buildings and shiny lights, creates bitterness.

I know I would be bitter if I had to continually stare into the eyes of the skyscraper giants and know that thousands have jobs in those buildings, but you can’t get one. How that must feel. It must feel like 10,000 people staring at you in the face, taunting you in this city of dreams, where you’ve become just another statistic that everyone counts out of the game.

I imagine you’d feel like no one wanted you. Like no one believes in you. Like no one thinks of you as a person anymore.

When you’re digging through a dumpster or lingering nearby, like one man I saw tonight, I know everyone thinks you’re simply disgusting, as if there is no need for you to be digging in that dumpster. But, I wonder, what would the man in the business suit do if his job was gone, his house foreclosed upon and his pride to high to ask for help?

He’d be digging in that very same dumpster looking for anything edible. As might I.

Reflections - "Makes Me Feel Good Inside"

2009-06-09T16:00:00.002-05:00

By Morgan Amos
The change in a homeless man’s cup clicks back and forth as he says “hey, pretty lady, can you spare some change?”

The sun blares down on individuals' faces as they pass him by as he sits on a square and gravel stoop that is filled with cigarette butts, soil, and dirt along Michigan and Congress.

The aroma of hazel nut coffee and an array of baked goods drift from the Dunkin Doughnuts shop right along Michigan Avenue. The smell is suddenly over shadowed by the smell of cigarette smoke, thanks to a man that walks past me as I passed the Dunkin Doughnuts.

On this day, people are out and about. Making coffee stops and checking out the latest clothes' sales. Some walk along Michigan listening to their iPods, while others over in Millennium Park seem to be enjoying the weather.

As I watch this, I am on my way to class at the Gage building. What amazes me about what I am seeing is that everybody around me does not seem to pay attention to what is going on around them. It is as if they are in their own world. I guess I pay close attention to detail. For me this is like any other day.

As I continue my stroll, I noticed two guys standing a few feet apart from one another with the color green on, trying to get people as they walked by them interested in donating to Green Peace. The two men seem to get a few people to stop, but none are willing to donate. I try my best to get pass them as I don’t feel right giving out my information to a stranger, but I feel bad because it is supposed to be for a good cause.

What was the homeless man's reason for asking for change, I wonder.

Was it to buy some food?

Whatever it was this much I know, few seem to not want to donate, but I do. I feel that if it was me I would want someone to help me. Knowing that I can make a homeless person feel a little bit better if even for a second by giving them change makes me feel good inside.

Reflections - "Seeing the Invisible"

2009-06-01T16:11:00.002-05:00

By Robert O’Connor
When Studs Terkel passed away last October, I attended a memorial service put on by his friends at the Community Media Workshop. Rick Kogan, who wrote the obituary for Terkel that appeared in the Tribune, spoke about what Studs taught him.

“Because of him,” he said, “I remember the bus driver who takes me to work, or the kid that delivers the papers.” At Kogan’s job, he would talk to politicians and business leaders, but because of Studs, he would remember ordinary people’s concerns and consider their own thoughts as equal to those in the moneyed halls.

Homeless people are the sort that people would prefer to not pay attention to. They see them, standing on street corners, or kneeling on slabs of cardboard by parking lot exits, or sitting in a wheelchair with a McDonald’s large cup in one hand, singing the blues to no one in particular.

When people pass, the homeless speak, but aren’t heard. When people pass, a homeless woman underneath an El station, she’ll ask, “Help the homeless, sir,” and only a few will put change in her cup. Or the man on Michigan and Monroe who mumbles “God bless yuh,” to everyone who passes—whether they give him change or not.

Some homeless people don’t speak at all, but shake their cups of change and let the intersection they sit at ring with the sound of tossed coins. It’s no Salvation Army bell that clangs just one note loudly and clearly. But it is the same call to help those in need. And most people don’t listen.

In India, beggars need not make a sound. Most of the ones I encountered in Bangalore where I studied abroad in summer 2007, many of them children, came up to me and put their hands to their mouths and then stretched them out for rupees. They’d look at me and communicate their need without saying a word, without making a sound.

Here, those in need make a sound, and they still aren’t heard by those with a little to spare.

“They’ll spend it on addictions,” they say.

“I give to charity,” they say.

“They should just get a job like the rest of us,” they say.

There are more important immediate concerns for them, their own job, or their own home. But seeing the invisible and hearing the voiceless are abilities that anyone can possess.

Reflections - "From One Mother and Daughter to Another"

2009-06-01T16:10:00.001-05:00

By Kristen Strobbe
At the corner of Madison and Dearborn, a mother and a daughter stood asking for money. A yellowed Starbucks coffee cup held outstretched, two small voices spilled out into the brisk evening air.

“Please spare some change to help me and my daughter,” the older woman said as her eyes moved to look a few inches to her left and at least four inches below.

The eyes finally settled on the young girl whose head reached her mother’s elbow. The girl didn’t respond and she didn’t look forward, she kept her head down and stared deep into the sidewalk at her feet, as if her shoes could somehow persuade the concrete to transport her to another time and place.

At the corner of Madison and Dearborn, a mother and daughter stopped mid-stride and took out their wallets. Balancing Macy’s bags and hefty purses on each arm, two small voices spilled out into the brisk evening air.

“Here you go,” the daughter said as she handed their money over to the homeless mother.

“God bless you,” the older woman said. “Thank you.”

There was a meek “You’re welcome” and the mother and daughter made a hasty retreat to the blue line subway station.

As my mother and I descended the stairs to the station, the sound of the street faded and the sound of the train leaving blocked out all secondary noise. But as the train moved farther and farther away, two small voices could still be heard.

“Please spare some change to help me and my daughter.”

Goldie’s Place: Giving some homeless a reason to smile

2009-05-27T19:18:00.000-05:00

By Kristen Strobbe
The muffled sound of a hand-drill hitting the gums and the soft hum of a buffer vibrating against enamel fills a sterile office on a February morning, where Dr. Esther Lopez is on duty.

These are the common sounds of an everyday dentist’s office. Except this wasn’t just another dentist’s office, and the patients are not your average clean-teeth seekers.

In fact, the doctor running the show is far from a veteran of the dental profession.

Dr. Lopez is director of the dental clinic at Goldie’s Place, a support center committed to helping homeless people find employment and creating healthy smiles that they say can make all the difference.“Having a good smile is like putting your best foot forward,” said Lopez, of Goldie’s Place, at 5705 North Lincoln Ave. “People who need that support can find it at Goldie’s Place.”

On a Saturday morning in the middle of February, Lopez is helping to do just that for people who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity.

While working on her doctorate in dentistry and master’s degree in public health at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC), Lopez, who graduated in May, was approached by her mentor and associate dean for Prevention and Public Health Sciences, Dr. Caswell Evans, to help start a student-run dental clinic.

“Esther was excited from the beginning,” said Evans, 65, a practicing public health dentist for over 35 years.

So, in 2007, Lopez and fellow student, Chernara Baker held town hall meetings to gauge the interest of dental students in starting a clinic that is staffed and managed by students. The response was overwhelming.

"When we saw how many students wanted to sharpen their skills and use their public health background, we immediately began to do research,” Lopez recalled.

Lopez said the biggest challenge she faced was the lack of dental clinics like the one created at Goldie’s Place. Lopez had little to base her research simply because there are very few public dental clinics.

"There are medical clinics out there, numerous ones,” Lopez said. “But dental clinics are rare because they require more than just one-on-one consultation; they require procedures and extensive equipment for nearly every visit.”

In October, just five months after graduating from dental school, Lopez was named director of the dental clinic. She spends about 15 hours a week working on the clinic from Goldie’s Place’s Lincoln Square location. That doesn’t include the Saturday sessions she spends with students and patients.

The student-run clinic is still in its pilot program. There have been five student sessions since Lopez was named director.

The birth of inspiration

Raised in Stone Park, Ill., Lopez did her undergraduate work at DePaul University before attending UIC for dentistry and public health. She initially wanted to pursue a medical degree, but says she changed her mind after seeing the lack of options available for people needing affordable dental care.

“From early on, I knew my passion was public health,” Lopez said. “I just didn’t know in what capacity.”

When Lopez was 11, her mother was diagnosed with leukemia and she subsequently lost her father to cardiovascular disease while in dentistry school.

“When my parents were ill, I had to interpret,” Lopez said. “Seeing them struggle with finding care and finding the funds to pay for that care was traumatizing.”

Lopez calls her experience caring for her ill parents as inspiration for working in public health and helping to “eliminate medical care disparity.”

Her passion for helping others is what Dr. Evans said is key in her role as a public health leader.

“She [Esther] is young, but she has fresh ideas to bring to the table,” Evans said. “There’s not just a concern for dental health there, but a concern for medical and dental care to be a right, not a privilege.”

As Lopez smilingly greets the student dentists and patients huddled into the workspace, one might never guess that she’s new to being a dentist, new to being a clinic director and new to being a mom.

Lopez is mom to five-month-old Nathaniel.

Nathaniel’s presence at the dental clinic is not an uncommon sight. Neither is Lopez’s brother-in-law, Christian Lopez, an undergraduate student at Harold Washington College.

“Christian has been helping me out since we started the pilot program,” Lopez said. Sometimes he is helping out by talking to the clinic’s Spanish-speaking patients and at other times is “helping take care of Nathaniel while he’s here,” Lopez said.

Christian Lopez said he’s grown accustomed to what Lopez calls her “wackiness” for helping others.

“I think she’s [Esther] been helping people and volunteering since I met her,” he added. “Not just at Goldie’s Place, but everywhere.”

Standing nearby, Lopez blushed, adding that she’s been known to rope people into helping with the clinic and doing community service.

“It’s about doing something for those that are less fortunate— and that can range from doing dental work to donating food to a family,” she said.

A calling

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the patients she’s treating are homeless because none fit the Hollywood” stereotype of homelessness, Lopez said. Some do suffer from mental illness, she said, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are all there to receive oral health care.

"Most the time people just want you to listen to them and it’s important that we be patient with our patients,” Lopez said. “Sometimes we have to think out of the box and see how we can help the patients when they – and us – don’t have the money.”
Johanna Dalton, 62, executive director of Goldie’s Place, cited Lopez’s poise under pressure as one of the reasons behind asking her to step up as clinical director.

“She’s so eloquent in all circumstances, whether she’s with a patient or at a fundraising event trying to raise money for the clinic,” Dalton said.

Dalton said that only most of the money, around 65 percent, for the clinic and other services offered at Goldie’s Place come from fundraising, grants, donations and corporate sponsorship.

“There has never been a moment when Esther has said ‘we can’t afford this,’” Dalton said.

“When she sees that a patient may need a procedure that we can’t do, she finds a way to get it done and finds funding for it.”

Lopez said it can take months and even a year to get the money needed to help a patient with a specific problem.

Dr. William Bjork, 53, the founding dentist at Goldie’s Place, was instrumental in getting UIC students involved in the clinic. After practicing dentistry for 15 years, Bjork decided to follow through on his dream to practice dentistry without profit. He opened Goldie’s Place’s clinic in 1997. And Dr. Lopez has become a key to their success.

“She’s [Esther] helping make a difference in a way that I haven’t seen before – at least in dentistry,” Bjork said.

Food Not Bombs: One group’s aim to stamp out hunger

2009-05-27T19:17:00.002-05:00

By Kristin Bivens
Inside a third-floor apartment, tucked in the back, a group of volunteers gather every Saturday in a kitchen to cook donated food. The food is later moved to a different location and served to anyone who wants some. It is not a soup kitchen, nor is it a Meals on Wheels program.

The group, at its core, is the coming together of people with common beliefs and heart to use their time to make both a tangible statement of their beliefs. Among them: That they should help feed those in need.

The local group happens to be just one chapter of the international organization Food Not Bombs, or FNB,an organization that according to its mission statement, “believe[s] that food is a basic human right and no one should go hungry when so much food is wasted every day.”

The group takes food that would otherwise be thrown away by food outlets—restaurants and stores—and cooks and serves it to those in the community. The food is all vegetarian. Though the organization cooks food, FNB, true to its name, is essentially an anti-war protest, its organizers say.

“Technically, it’s a war protest,” said Travis Clark, 27, a volunteer.

But regardless of belief systems and politics, one chapter of the national group here says it feeds somewhere around 50 people a week.

“We don’t like the system,” said Mark Saulys, another volunteer with the group. “And we’d like to do something about it, so we do something about it by offering something else.”

“We want everybody in the world to become a Food Not Bombs volunteer,” he added.
Political agendas aside, the group says it makes good use of the 50 percent of food—at least that portion it receives—that it contends is wasted every year in the United States.

The organization began in 1980 in Cambridge, Mass., as a result of the efforts of anti-nuclear activists and is dedicated to “nonviolent social change,” according to the group’s published literature. And the group boasts hundreds of different chapters in the world today, three of which are located in Chicago, a volunteer here said.

Using food that would otherwise go to waste allows FNB to get its message across while also using what seems to be a simple concept to try and alleviate hunger.

‘Sharing It’

Sweet potatoes steamed as they sat in the cream-colored roasting pan on a recent winter Saturday, a group of volunteers gathered in the kitchen near Humboldt Park in Chicago and prepared the meal they would later deliver to the Rumble Arts Center to be served to families in need. The group gathered around noon to cook for several hours.

The donation of food came from a Whole Foods store and included mashed sweet potatoes, beans and rice, a salad mix and stir fry.

World music drifted into the kitchen from the living room as the scents and sound of simmering food filled the kitchen.

Jenny Abrahamian, 28, a FNB Chicago volunteer for a little over a year, worked at mashing the sweet potatoes as fellow volunteers also prepared food. Despite FNB’s political leanings, Abrahamian doesn’t like to think of FNB coming into a community and peddling its beliefs, which she contends is what some faith-based soup kitchens sometimes do.

“We try to kind of bring people together...We’re trying to be part of the community and not just coming in and giving charity to people,” she said.
She also said that volunteers eat with those they serve, which creates more of a community feel.

Clark, who stood by the stove doing more observing than actual cooking recently, said the group’s approach to feeding those in need is more about dignity—something he believes one can’t get from a soup kitchen.

“You go there and people have an agenda. They want to get you on board with what they believe or…make themselves feel good because they’re working at a soup kitchen,” Clark said.

Because the volunteers eat and mingle with the patrons at FNB, there is a sort of equality between the two groups. Clark said that the food FNB makes also helps him.

“I’m supported by it, too. It helps me to live,” he said.

Other volunteers agreed.

“We’re poor, too. We’re just sharing it,” said Saulys, 29, who minutes earlier debated whether a can of black beans might contain botulism. Clark had assured Saulys that botulism was a hidden killer.

But Saulys, not one to waste good food, ate the beans anyway. He said the beans tasted fine.

‘Making a Spectacle’

A red wooden sign with large painted yellow bubble letters read, “Free Food” on the top and “Food Not Bombs” on the bottom. The sign welcomed those on the street into the Rumble Arts Center, at 3413 W. North Ave..

Inside the Rumble Arts Center, families assembled in two lines to take part in the food donation. Boxes of apples sat towards the back of the room, somewhat hidden by a mob of people dressed in winter gear. The cooked food was spread on a table near the front. Volunteers watched as the 50 or so people waited for their share of the pantry food, which is also provided by FNB.

Some families came equipped with their own shopping carts, filled with bags of food.
“Yams? You shouldn’t have,” one volunteer says,

After the families collect food from the boxes, some partake of the hot meal and stand around the room quickly eating. A father feds his son. Another man with a brown cap and a plaid gray jacket rubbed his eyes as he stood with his shopping cart. Forks clinked against the ceramic plates.

Abrahamian said that normally the food is served outside, but winter is just too harsh in the Chicago area to serve outside. When it’s warmer outside, the group usually sets the food up on a picnic bench. By holding the event outside, the group hopes people will notice what they’re doing.

“Part of the whole thing is making a spectacle,” she said.

“Technically, it’s a war protest,” said Clark of serving food as he walked towards the door at Rumble Arts Center.

A protest that the group says feeds somewhere around 50 people a week at just this one local chapter.

“We don’t like the system. And we’d like to do something about it, so we do something about it by offering something else,” said Saulys. “We want everybody in the world to become a Food Not Bombs volunteer.”

Motivated to help the homeless: Inspiration Corporation

2009-05-27T19:16:00.000-05:00

By Kristin Bivens
Her charcoal hair framed her face in a bob that just reached her shoulders. Her tennis shoes had various colors, but looked worn, as if they have endured several Midwest winters. They belong to Naomi Tankersley, whose job as a career specialist for the homeless, in some ways, is to help provide a little inspiration.

In fact, Tankersley, 25, works at Inspiration Corporation, a Chicago-based organization that helps those in need across the city.The organization’s mission: to help “people who are affected by homelessness and poverty to improve their lives…through the provision of social services, employment training and placement, and housing.”

Tankersley, with a grass-colored bandana hung loosely around her neck, said she focuses more on helping the homeless prepare themselves for and also find jobs, adding that unemployment and homelessness often have a cause and effect relationship.

Tankersley started her career just two hours away from Chicago in South Bend, Ind., at the Center For the Homeless—which is not a homeless shelter but a place for the homeless to seek services in South Bend—as an intern. She later moved to Chicago and happened to find the job at Inspiration Corporation online. She has worked at Inspiration for nearly a year.

“From my experiences, I knew that it would match up pretty well,” Tankersley said.

Tankersley also has experience with poverty that she didn’t find working with the homeless in South Bend and at Inspiration. Though she was not homeless herself, as a child growing up in a violent neighborhood in South Bend, her family faced some difficult times that she says have impacted her career choices greatly.

Tankersley’s parents divorced before she was out of diapers and her mother was left to raise three small children alone. To make ends meet, her mother rented out part of their house and performed manual labor, Tankersley recalled. Despite her mother’s hard work, the family still needed government aid. Tankersley said if it wasn’t for her grandmother moving in with them to help out, her family may have ended up on the street.

She recalls as a child her mother often picking up people on the side of the road who were carrying groceries and driving them to their destination, even if the destination was out of the way. Watching her mother work so hard and give to so many had a lasting effect.

In her current position, Tankersley helps those in need to create resumes or rework already existing resumes and create goals for themselves. She also helps her clients create a work plan so they can figure out exactly what they want to do career wise. Tankersley said she is not responsible for finding specific jobs for her clients. In fact, most people who come in to see her usually find their own jobs. She’s just there to help assist them in whatever way she can in that process.

The most rewarding part of her job?

“I know it sounds kind of cliché, but really, actually seeing people accomplish their goals,” said Tankersley.

She said one has to have a certain type of toughness in her line of work. But it does not appear that she has not allowed her toughness to destroy her empathy for her clients.

“I would say most of, if not all of our population, has experienced a serious amount of trauma in their lives, and when people relay that kind of trauma to you, you vicariously experience trauma,” Tankersley said.

“I’ve gone home and cried about things and I’m not necessarily a crier. People really do have amazing survival stories.”

One of Tankersley’s coworkers, Emily Hunt, a case manager at Inspiration Corporation, said Tankersley’s compassion and patience are two of her best qualities that help her succeed at her job.

“She’s always very polite and very compassionate when she meets with each person,” Hunt said. She added that Tankersley doesn’t treat her clients differently just because they may be worse off than another client.

Tankersley typically starts her work day by walking down the bright yellow lighted hallways of the center, at 4554 N. Broadway Ave., Suite 207, to the kitchen, where she greets the morning kitchen assistants. Inspiration Corporation also has a branch located on the city’s South Side that Tankersley sometimes visits, in addition to the Broadway branch.

In the time she has worked with the homeless, Tankersley says she has come to believe several policy changes and social improvements need to be made locally and nationally to effectively deal with homelessness in America. Among them are improving and empowering families on the one level and on another, improving housing and lending policies.

Tankersley also says that racism is a big factor in homelessness. Chicago’s history, she said, has had segregation written all over it, and has led to poor housing policies for blacks.

“The poorest people live in the worst conditions and usually that means you’re black and living on the Southside,” she said.

Despite the challenges of her job and the difficult situations she says she encounters helping those in need, who often come to her in dire circumstances, Tankersley still approaches each day as an opportunity to make a difference. Why?

“Because I care,” she said.

Reflections - "The story of the Invisible Man"

2009-05-27T19:15:00.002-05:00

By Alex Hernandez

Text version of essay unavailable.

A bed, a meal, a way back up: Walls Memorial seeks to be the difference

2009-05-27T19:15:00.000-05:00

By Alex Hernandez
It was Tuesday night and other men chatted or ate inside the makeshift shelter at a church gymnasium on the West Side. Mike Bryant sat at a table with a sketch pad and colored pencils.

“I’m painting at Douglass Park Field house,” said Bryant, a homeless man who goes to the shelter at Walls Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, at 200 S. Sacramento Blvd.

Bryant had cut out a magazine ad of a woman on a beach, which was held to his sketch pad with a paper clip as he recreated the ad freehand, talking all the while.

“I read a quote by Emil Zola,” said Bryant while he was still working. “It’s okay to have the gift, but the gift is nothing if you don’t put work into it.”

That sentiment is why Bryant and the other men, according to many here, are at Walls.They not only want to seek shelter for the night, but to also be able someday to leave the streets.

“Many of them are working homeless,” said the Reverend David L. Bryant Jr. (not related), who runs the church and its programs geared towards the homeless.

Bryant’s office overlooks the church gymnasium that serves as the homeless men’s home for the night. He sat recently, hunched over the church’s budget for groceries, worried about the rising cost of food amid a continuing slumping economy.

“They do work jobs but are not able, based upon the number of problems in their lives, to have adequate housing,” said Bryant. “It comes as a result of many different areas. It’s a complex problem; there is not an easy solution to it.”

And reaching solutions for it has become harder as the economy falls deeper into a recession. According to the U.S. Department of Labor the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent this past February. While this has created a difficult job market for most people, it has created a near impenetrable fortress for the homeless.

According to Bryant, many of the men who are at the shelter want nothing more than to work again. Many of them go out and look for jobs. Often, the biggest challenge holding the majority of them back is that they have no permanent residence, bank account, or even identification. And even many of those who do have had run-ins with the law that hold them from getting jobs.

“I have a heart for community,” said Bryant. “I have a heart for people and trying to make a difference in the quality of life of people on all different levels.”

Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Bryant said he has nearly always been involved with community activities. With an undergraduate degree in social work, he says he brings a social-conscience mission to his ministry.

After serving 14 years as a reverend for a parish in Kansas City, the Methodist Episcopal Church decided to assign Bryant, he said, to Walls in Chicago because of the outreach ministry that he had been practicing. They felt he needed to continue his work in Chicago because of where Walls is located—in the heart of one of the city’s poorest, most troubled communities—and in terms of the church’s mission of outreach to grow. So in 2006, Bryant pack his bags and set up shop at Walls in Chicago.

“Upon my arrival here, I was saddened to see some of the tremendous challenges that this community is facing right now,” said Bryant.

“We’re on the West Side of Chicago and we’re partially located in the East Garfield Area, which is one of the high unmet hunger areas in Illinois,” said Bryant. “We have a high number of children whose parents have been or are currently incarcerated in the country.”

Since 1999, Walls Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church has provided overnight shelter for the homeless in the area, using the church’s gymnasium area, which it transforms into an overnight shelter in the evening for approximately 65 men, primarily for ages 18 and over.

In addition to providing a hot meal, showers, and a cot for the night, Walls also is involved in case management to help rehabilitate its patrons into society. This involves Walls and its volunteers helping the homeless men find employment, housing and education.

“Prior to my coming here, many programs were already in motion,” said Bryant. “We’ve been expanding on it nurturing it of course. We have now haircuts that are offered throughout the month so they can feel good about themselves and prepare for interviews.”

According to Bryant, in order to fulfill his mission of outreach, Walls can’t just house its homeless population and give them shelter from the elements. That’s just the number one on the list.

“Number two is our partnership with the Greater Food Depository,” which supplies area food pantries and organizations with food, said Bryant, “because feeding 65 guys a night is a great great challenge.”

But because of the economy, many people who would normally donate food are tightening their belt, and cupboards at food depositories are not as full as they once were.

“It takes a lot more to do what we used to do,” said Bryant.

Regardless of the challenges, Bryant has continued to expand the outreach of Walls through what the shelter’s Interim Housing and Empowerment Program. The homeless men that qualify for the program are given assistance in getting back to mainstream society.

That program works to identify four different areas that we try to help the participant in. The first is life skills. Many of the homeless men do not have checking accounts and the program tries to help them get into the habit of saving their money by opening up a checking account and depositing it.

Often, many of the men don’t have such accounts because, being without ID, banks refuse them. Another aspect of the program at Wills addresses this issue by helping homeless men with the paperwork required to get a state ID.

It also offers seminars and counseling for the men where they can talk about the choices that they’ve made and where the aim is to help raise their self-esteem, encourage group interaction and work on personal interaction skills.

“We try to provide some counseling and help them understand where they went wrong and then what they need to do to stay above board to move forward,” said Bryant.
Part of helping them moving forward is also to help them improve their education.

“Many of the men are high school dropouts,” said Bryant. “Many are illiterate or have had struggles with education. So we try to help them get their G.E.D., high school diploma, vocational training, that way they have job readiness in their resume.”

Yet, even with all of this assistance, many employers often are apparently wary of hiring these men. Seeking to be able to provide an economic lifeline, Walls has recently purchased franchising rights with Jani-King, a national commercial cleaning company. Men who go to the shelter and are in the program will be able to use as a stepping stone to other jobs and a life off the streets.

“Many of them have a desire to work,” said Bryant. “The most important thing is having a place to work.”

Streetwise vendor finds a way up from the streets

2009-05-27T19:14:00.014-05:00

By Morgan Amos
A man stood along downtown’s South Michigan Avenue, shouting to people as they walked by. “StreetWise!”

“Buy StreetWise!”

The man with the salt and pepper goatee, selling the magazine that focuses on the homeless and related issues, seemed undeterred, even by a sudden burst of rain. It was 3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. Nearby, people stood at bus stops, listening to music. Others passed the street vendor on their way about their business.

And yet, Daniel Howard, the man hawking StreetWise, remained steady as the rain that fell on Michigan Avenue, even despite the lack of sales and the evidence that passersby were more interested in escaping the cold and rain than in buying the magazine. This is how Howard makes his living.He is a vendor for StreetWise, which for some homeless has proven to be one road to a better life, at least one off the streets.

Among them is Howard whose eyes tell a story of sadness and pain, though also show a glimpse of the hopefulness he now has with a new job he has had for slightly less than a year, but that he says in many ways has already changed his life.

“It made me look at myself in a different way,” he said during a recent interview. “It made me start saving up my money instead of messing it up all the time. It made me want to go and get an apartment and start school again.”

Howard says that he has been off the streets for nine months now and that StreetWise—
at least the opportunity of being able to make money selling and promoting the magazine—has greatly impacted his life.

Before StreetWise, Howard says he used to live on Lower Wacker Drive—the underground makeshift street haven where many a homeless man in Chicago dwells in the shadows of downtown buildings–in cars and cardboard havens. He said that he used to get his food from local pantry places. That he makes some money on the side by helping his family with any construction work they need done whether it’s laying tile or putting a new light bulb in.

Howard, a vendor for StreetWise, is part of the franchise that StreetWise has established. StreetWise Magazine was started by Judd Lofchie and has been around since 1992. It is a non-profit organization designed to help men and women who either are homeless or near homeless find a way to have a source of income through selling StreetWise magazines. Suzanne Hanney, editor-in-chief of StreetWise, says the way in which vendors like Howard make their money is a two-step process.

First, those interested must attend an orientation on Mondays or Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Then they receive 15 free newspapers and a temporary orange identification badge. To become a fully-fledged vendor, they must sell at least 50 papers within two weeks. Those who do get a permanent badge with their picture on it.

Once the orientation is complete, StreetWise sells the papers to vendors for 75 cents, and the vendors, in turn, sell the magazine for two dollars on the streets. Annually, 416,000 StreetWise Magazines are sold, according to officials.

The name StreetWise means wise to the ways of the streets and the people who live there. At 51, Howard says he is wiser and in some ways richer.

It was 5:25 p.m. as he walked down Michigan Avenue on a wet and cold evening, carrying StreetWise magazines to sell.

“I am content with my life right now,” he said. “I have my own apartment. I have food, clothes, and I am taking it one day at a time.”

Related links:

Streetwise Newspaper May Go Under

Chicago's Streetwise saved

Streetwise Success: Cash Flow Climbs but Vendor Income Drops

Clinic on wheels; Mobile health unit takes medical care to the street

2009-05-27T19:14:00.013-05:00

By Alex Hernandez
The sound of thunder explodes in the night, drowning out the pitter-patter of cold rain, falling on city streets.

A line of men, all waiting on the sidewalk in front of Walls Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on the city’s West Side, chat while trying to keep warm.

It’s Thursday, and they have been waiting for about an hour for the church’s doors to open at 7 p.m. Most look weary, standing in the cold damp air that chills to the bone.

Inside this church, at 200 S. Sacramento St., they hope to find shelter from the cruel night, a warm meal, a bed, a shower and tonight even medical care. There is only one catch: The first 65 men will get in. After that, the restwill wait around for transport to another shelter, which means that their meal and bed are going to be delayed for another couple of hours, until they get to a shelter that isn’t at capacity.

“The biggest misconception, that they’re all lazy,” said Heather Duncan, 44, a nurse practitioner that visits Walls every Monday and Thursday night.

On this night, she and her mobile team have set up a makeshift clinic in the gymnasium behind some movable screens, using folding chairs and three folding tables. Her medical bag, full of her equipment and medicine, are on the table nearest to her. Next to the bag is a scattering of paperwork, all pertaining to the 65 men in the shelter that night.

She works with an organization called Circle Family Healthcare Network that provides primary health care to the homeless in Chicago. According to Duncan, the Mobile Health Units are comprised of four people, each specializing in a specific are. There is a social worker, mental health therapist, Medical Doctor and Nurse Practitioner.

While Duncan has only been with Circle for about three years, she has been involved in providing primary care to the homeless for 20 years, she said.

“I think if you polled the guys in here, most of them are working during the day,” said Duncan. “They’re working under the table, they’re working side jobs, they’re working construction. I think that’s the biggest misconception that they don’t want to work.”

Duncan started providing healthcare for the homeless in 1989. In 1980, while still a nursing student, she had begun to work in some clinics. After her experiences there, she said she knew that she wanted to focus on working with patients that didn’t have access to healthcare.

“It took me a while to find out what that meant,” explained Duncan. “I worked as a nurse in a hospital for a year and then found the job, healthcare for the homeless. It was just the perfect match.”

At one time, providing healthcare for the homeless was Duncan’s full-time job. Now, her full-time job is teaching nursing students at North Park University.

“But even though it’s not my full time job anymore, I can’t not do it,” said Duncan. “It’s a great job and it’s really, people deserve to be respected and people deserve to have quality care no matter what they’ve done. And this really is an opportunity make that happen.”

The Good, Bad and Ugly

Having worked for 20 years as a nurse to the homeless, Duncan has her share of stories. One of her favorites involved a homeless man, a rock of cocaine, and an ear.

“I was with another nurse practitioner. She’s a very calm person and she walks over and says, you’ve got to come over here,” said Duncan. The other nurse knew that one of Duncan’s favorite things to do, as a nurse, is to take things out of people’s ears.

“Well, I go in and there’s this guy that I’m looking at his ear and there’s this white rock,” said Duncan. “And I ask him what is this and he tells me it’s caine rock.”

What she discovered was that the patient was involved in a drug bust a month before and in order to hide it from the police had stuffed the crack rock into his ear. That way he couldn’t get arrested. Except the drugs had become stuck in the patient’s ear.

“…We finally got a big syringe full of water and we wash the thing out into the basin,” Duncan said.

Later, she found out that the man from whose ear she had extracted the crack had sold the wax-laden crack rock to another homeless man for five bucks.

“We were like, ‘but it has ear wax on it,’ and the guy said, ‘yeah, well, that will cook off,’” Duncan recalled.

All in a night’s work

Some of the patients that Duncan and her team see have been homeless for years. But recently, she has seen newer, younger, faces like Daniel Solk Jr., who, wearing a black hoodie, blue sweat pants, and blue flip-flops, had come to Willis looking for shelter this night.

Soon it is time for Solak and the other men at the shelter to say a prayer before the food is served.

“The reason why I’m here is because I lost my job when I got hurt and they downsized,” said Solak, one of the younger homeless men at the shelter.

Solak, 37, says he used to work at a firm called Metro KBR, a bike messenger company. His job as a bike messenger in Chicago was cut short when he was hit by a taxicab on Michigan Avenue on April 22, 2007, he said, adding that the impact caused him to flip into the air and come crashing down into a pole. The accident fractured his right elbow, right fore arm, and broke two of the ribs on his right side, he says. Then, while he was in traction, his bike was stolen.

“Everything was gone, you know, except the frame,” said Solak. “It’s been downhill since. And living in a shelter with a bunch of men, it’s kind of difficult.”

When Solak was first was looking for a shelter, he went to a shelter by the name of REST, at 941 W. Lawrence Ave. It was there, after talking to a man that had been homeless for a longer period time, that he heard of Walls.

“He told me this one was the best one,” said Solak. “So far it has been the best one because there are no fights like at other shelters. They argue once in a great while, it’s not like anything big.”

Solak says he has been having problems with his heart. Since coming to Walls, he says, he has been receiving treatment and medication. While grateful for that treatment, Solak says that other than those two nights that Duncan and her Circle unit come to Walls, it’s next to impossible for him to get medical treatment.

“We have social worker who isn’t here tonight,” said Duncan. “Over there is our mental health therapist and she’s kind of filling in and so people come and they sign up.”

On this Thursday, patients at Walls sign up. Dr. Hugget and Duncan see whoever is at the top of the pile, taking the sickest men first.

As the night progresses, Duncan and her team finally pack up to leave. The men they treated are now moving tables, the same tables where a short while ago, they sat eating, reading, chatting.

Soon the floor of the small church gym will be filled with 65 men, among them Solak, who on this night have secured a warm place to sleep—or at least try—before it is time again to return to the streets and the cold.

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Cathedral Shelter provides a hand up

2009-05-27T19:12:00.000-05:00

By Kristin Bivens
The room smelled like a grocery store, its walls loaded to the brim with canned goods and packaged items. The wall of silver refrigerators hummed.

In the back where a painted food pyramid hung on a wall, men and women of different ages sat beneath it.

It was the fourth Saturday of the month, which in this area of the

city means the Cathedral Shelter of Chicago’s food pantry is open for distribution. As patrons walked through the back door from the cold one recent Saturday, they took a number from a food pantry volunteer then sat in one of the orange-red chairs—and waited.

The Cathedral Shelter offers a variety of resources for those in need, the pantry being just one of them. Located at 1668 W. Ogden Ave., the shelter provides the neighborhood with a food pantry, thrift shop and housing services. The pantry is the oldest of the services the shelter offers, and is what Kevin McCullough, the director of operations, calls the shelter’s legacy.

The food pantry is just one of the 600 organizations that the Greater Chicago Food Depository, or GCFD, says it supports across the Chicago area and one of the 160 organizations to which the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation, or CAHF, says it provides food.

And this at a time when the need, according to those who serve the poor and homeless, continues to be great and steadily rising.

‘Where to come’

The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago began at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on Chicago’s Near West Side during the early 1900s, according to published literature. McCullough said the church provided services, including a soup kitchen, a shelter and a food pantry. When the Cathedral burned down in 1915, McCullough said the church was still strongly dedicated to its services. The Cathedral moved and later became known as The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago.

Though McCullough cited the shelter services and addiction recovery services as perhaps the most significant services Cathedral Shelter offers, he said the food pantry probably isn’t going anywhere.

“They are our tie to the community,” he said.

Yearly, the pantry serves about 3,600 patrons, though McCullough says some of those might be duplicates as the pantry doesn’t keep track of how many times one person comes in for food.

Still, it is clear that the community has come to depend on the food pantry the shelter offers.

“They know us,” McCullough said. “They know where to come for food.”

‘Carries them over’

On a recent March distribution, nearly a dozen volunteers of various ages and races gathered in the bright yellow room to create what Diane Foy, the food pantry coordinator, calls “shoppers”—brown paper bags filled with a variety of non-perishable food items, including items like peanut butter, corn, and tomato sauce donated by the Food Depository. The volunteers also bag up meat and bread for the patrons, which are provided by the CAHF.

Two lines of wood pallets were filled with shoppers as the 11 o’clock deadline quickly approached and the ruffling sound of opening paper bags muffled any chatter between the volunteers.

“You have a lot of people that depend on this food,” Foy said, as she instructed the volunteers what type of meat to put in the bags they were preparing.

“A lot of these individuals get…welfare….And I know they do receive food stamps, but the food stamps might last them three weeks during the month. so this carries them over,” she continued.

All patrons receive at least two bags, one shopper and another bag with bread and meat.

The number of children a patron has determines the number of shoppers they receive, Foy said. People with two children or less get one shopper; those with three to four children receive two shoppers; and those with five or more children receive three shoppers.

The food, Foy said, should feed the patrons for about a week. The pantry does two distributions a month, one for senior citizens on the second Saturday and another one for non-senior citizens on the fourth Saturday.

Eva Brown, a woman with graying hair pinned to the back of her head, is a volunteer at the pantry. But she also receives assistance from the pantry.

“I don’t know what I’d do without it,” said Brown, 75.

Don Alexander, 64, is another volunteer and patron of the pantry. He said he lives off Social Security and by taking a bag of pantry food home that supplements what he otherwise couldn’t afford. He said one bag can last him several weeks.

The food is just what Alexander and Brown, among others, need to help them get by.

“Soup kitchens and food pantries are so…20th century and so Victorian to go like…‘here’s your meal, here’s your bag of groceries.’ But sometimes that’s really what people need,” McCullough said.

‘A Good Thing’

Five minutes were left until the door opened. The shopping carts in the pantry had slowly dwindled down to empty as bags covered the floor, waiting to be taken home.

The doors facing Paulina Street, at the back of the food pantry, opened at 11 a.m. and just like outside a department store on Black Friday, a line had already formed.

Patrons filed in, ready to sit and wait for their number to be called. Looking defeated and chilled by the cold weather, the men and women stared forward at the brown bags and volunteers.

Food awaited.

When Foy called numbers one and two, a larger woman in a navy blue and gray jacket, stood up and walked over to the table. She was the lucky one, the first one in line. Number two was a tall man in a black jacket and cap who stood, waiting behind the woman. He eyed the food with anticipation.

“Two brown shoppers for her,” shouted Foy to volunteer John Ledesma, 63, who lives at the shelter and handed out bags to the patrons.

The woman called first picked up a paper bag in each hand and waddled off.

By the end of the distribution, 47 people had come to get bags. But counting their children, Foy said 119 people would be fed from the bags that had been distributed, which meant that in a mere two hours, more than 100 people were saved from hunger, at least for a little while.

“We’ve got a good thing going here,” Foy said.

Meals on wheels: The mobile food pantry

2009-05-27T18:56:00.002-05:00

“And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” 1 Thessalonians 5:14 (NIV)

By Robert O’Connor
The line formed early outside the mobile pantry. More than 300 people waited for their monthly supply of food. They had earlier drawn numbers to see who would go first and waited patiently for their numbers to be called. For those who came, the food they collected would have to last the entire month.

The tables snaked around the white delivery truck in the center of the parking lot and as the line made its way around, volunteers with sweaters emblazoned with “Creighton University” across the front helped carry their food. They helped people to their cars and also helped organize food into the shopping carts that some of the needy had brought along.

Father Bob Lombardo, who stopped by, dressed in a gray Franciscan robe and a white plaid scarf, was greeted warmly by everyone. He is the friar who has brought programs, like the food distribution program where people stood in line, to the Our Lady of the Angels mission in Humboldt Park. The Mission of Our Lady of the Angels mobile pantry is one of the 600 member agencies of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which provides the much needed food through its mobile food pantry program.

Lombardo says he came to Chicago in 2005 at the request of Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago. Lombardo had previously helped found the Franciscan Friars of Renewal in New York, in which the friars would live among the poor, not earn a salary and live on donations. He is now doing the same thing in Chicago, at the Our Lady of the Angels mission, 3808 W. Iowa St.

Our Lady of the Angels had been a school until it was destroyed by a fire on Dec. 1, 1958, killing 92 students and three nuns. Their pictures were printed on the front page of the Chicago American on December 5, under the headline “Chicago Mourns.” The school was rebuilt in 1960 with donations from around the world, but was closed by the Archdiocese after the class of 1999 graduated due to under enrollment. The other buildings of the parish had been closed in 1990.

The current mission is using what used to be an apartment building for its convent and rectory. Recently, after the food distribution, which takes place on the first Saturday of each month, Lombardo took the volunteers on a tour of Kelly Hall, which was the recreation building for the destroyed school and reopened January 15, after extensive renovations by donors and the YMCA, which partially owns it.

“It’s named after one of the nuns who died in the fire,” said Lombardo. “We’d like to remember the history of what happened here.”

Lombardo sits on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. The Mission of Our Lady of the Angels is run under the auspices of the St. Francis of Assisi Parish a few blocks away.

Our Lady of the Angels’ Kelley Hall houses after-school programs for young people in the area and the mission’s food pantry, which is also a member agency of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, in addition to the mobile pantry.

Our Lady of the Angels is also a member agency of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which provides the food for its monthly food drive. In 2006, the GCFD and the University of Illinois conducted what they called an “unmet needs study,” which identified areas of Cook County that were underserved by soup kitchens, food pantries and other services for the homeless.

“Our members looked at who was coming and told us which places needed help,” said Megan Parnell, a spokeswoman for GCFD.

Humboldt Park was one of the 10 neighborhoods that had unmet needs. It was also found to be a “food desert” with a deficit of supermarkets and grocery stores in a 2006 study by Mari Gallagher Research Group for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

After the study was completed, the Depository started their mobile pantry service for those identified communities, supplying nutritious food for those in need.

Parnell said that in cooperation with Feeding America—the nation’s largest hunger relief organization—a second unmet needs study is being compiled, and is expected to be released sometime next year. The Food Depository is the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity, supporting food agencies across the country, including member agencies across Chicago.

Last November, Kraft foods and Feeding America started a national mobile pantry program and donated one of its 25 mobile pantries to the Food Depository. At the time, Kate Maehr, executive director of the Food Depository noted the rise—as much as 30 percent—in demand for food across Chicago.

Not much apparently has changed, according to Parnell.

“We have also seen an increase in people who used to donate food now relying on us for food,” she said.

Pantry University: Teaching skills for a new life

2009-05-27T17:56:00.009-05:00

By Jayde Huebner
The classroom seemed like any other: whiteboards covering a wall, long tables lined up in rows with sturdy, black plastic chairs. Hanging from the ceiling was a projector screen and just to the left the words that signaled the topic of the day’s assignment: “food sanitation”.

It may have been a typical classroom. But the scene was not at your typical university. Welcome to Pantry University.

Pantry University is where once hungry and homeless are given the opportunity to learn food handling and sanitation skills that enable them to work in the city’s food banks and soup kitchens as well as provide them with tools that can help them land a job and get them back on their own two feet.

According to the program, some students of the university even go on to become teachers of the classrooms they once sat in learning culinary skills—a job which also pays.

Since 2004, the Greater Chicago Food Depository has offered food handling, nutrition courses, food preparation along with other useful skills that revolve around the kitchen and food to Chicago’s community, according to the GCFD website.

“I view this not as a program, but as a school – a classroom.” Ella Bradford said. “It allows people to not only enlighten their current knowledge, but gives them a change to develop schools that are useful in every-day life,” Bradford added.

Bradford is the coordinator for the Pantry University and is responsible for class structure and many other aspects of the university. Some of her favorites include picking which classes are going to be offered and scheduling students to participate in them.

According to officials, Pantry University has seen 1,300 students since they opened their doors five years ago. Out of the 1,300, more than 300 have earned a food handling license – and 90% of the 300 have passed a state-wide exam relating to the topics.

The two classes offered this spring at Pantry University are food service sanitation and nutrition in four different subtopics: senior nutrition, childhood nutrition, holiday nutrition and diabetes nutrition. These classes are not only offered at a variety of different times and dates, but they also in different languages

Bradford also says that even some restaurants in the area send their staff and food handlers over to refresh their skills and gain new knowledge and updated information. The classes are open to everyone, but at no costs to those who are not homeless or hungry. According to the Pantry University staff, all of the proceeds from those who do pay go right back into the school.

Pantry University, like most other schools, requires materials, texts and financial contributions in order for it to run efficiently. The Greater Chicago Food Depository is the backbone of the Pantry University, so most of its funding is provided through the organization. It also receives funding from other private donors and contributors.

Joan Bondi, a chief financial worker at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, says that the Pantry University is one of the programs she worries about least when it comes to finances.

“Ever since its opening in 2004, people took such interest in the university that it really has yet to struggle financially,” Bondi said.

She claims that she does worry, however, how the programs funding will look five to 10 years from now. With the suffering economy and everyone’s wallets hurting, Bondi says that every single program and person is affected by the economic distress.

“People take interest in anything that’s new and interesting – especially if it not only feeds the hungry but teaches them tools that will allow them to put food in their mouths by themselves,” Bondi added.

Bondi also said that some of the professors at the university volunteer their time to help and teach the students.

In the classrooms, however, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of fullness over the opportunity to learn and a chance that just might change their lives.

Jack Hester, a student of Pantry University, says that being encouraged to enroll was the turning point in his life.

“It gave me new motive, a reason to get up – because I knew I would be doing something useful,” Hester said.

The Night Ministry seeks to be light for those in the shadows

2009-05-27T17:22:00.012-05:00

By Megan Lichte
On any given Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, from 10:30 p.m. until 11:30 p.m., a bus stands at the intersection of Damen Avenue and LeMoyne Street, largely unnoticed by the general populous. But for the homeless, it provides needed hope and help.

This is no ordinary bus. It is part of The Night Ministry—an organization which helps adults and youth on the street. This bus is an outreach program and the bus is where the homeless can get medical help and even a meal and someone just to talk to.

The purpose of the Night Ministry’s outreach programs is “to earn the trust of individuals who have become isolated form much of society and build caring relationships,” according to its published literature.

Through the Health Outreach Bus, the group connects with the homeless to provide for them what they say homeless cannot provide for themselves.

According to officials, the agency’s operating expense for 2007 was $4,398,182, and it serviced 53,908 people from the Health Outreach Bus alone in the 2007-2008 fiscal year. Staff tested 961 individuals for HIV, 59 for sexually transmitted diseases, and 132 for Hepatitis C.

Alicia Adams-Stanley, a spokeswoman for Night Ministry said there are people on the bus who can help the homeless. Among the medical services offered are rapid HIV testing, treatment for injuries, flu shots, and testing and treatment for select sexually transmitted diseases—all administered by nurse practitioners.
The Health Outreach Bus can also provide coats in the winter.

“The supplies all depend on what has been donated that day,” Adams-Stanley said. “You’re not going to need a coat in July.”

“We try to get them cool, bottled water in the evening in summer, as opposed to soup, which is what normally serve in the fall and winter months,” Adams-Stanley said.

This direct outreach service is run in conjunction with two youth shelters in the city—both named Open Door Youth Shelter, one of them an 8-bed, 120 day shelter that serves pregnant and parenting minor girls and their children; the other, a transitional living program with 16 beds for teens,” Adams-Stanley said.

The goal of each program offered is to help individual make better decisions in their daily lives. Unlike many shelters and organizations that help the homeless and are faith-based, Adams-Stanley said The Night Ministry aims to present to the homeless help without a sermon, even though The Night Ministry, founded in 1976, was created by Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.

“While it was founded on religion, it was still based on the fact that it doesn’t matter what stage or walk of life you’re from, you might still need help,” she said.

“It’s not that you need to believe in one thing or another,” Adams-Stanley added. “Faith has nothing to do with it.”

The short line outside of the bus on a dank Tuesday night on the last day of March of 2009 would eventually become part of the agency’s statistics. But for that moment, they stood as a wintry portrait of real people with real needs getting real help.

Shelter aims to be the breakthrough for Chicago homeless

2009-05-27T16:32:00.007-05:00

By Meghan Lichte
A lamentable site: An abandoned house on the city’s West side looms over a road that separates it from railroad tracks. With walls made of crumbling plaster and a frame constructed of a material akin to wigs, it stands as a remnant of a scattered past—the past of a man named Cedric Strickland.

At one time, it may have been a home with a warm hearth and cheery Christmas dinners. But it now stands, worn on the edge, like the frayed edges of this community known as East Garfield Park, where crime, poverty and homelessness are as glaring as this old house on a snowy, cold winter’s night.

Most recently, the house, some around here say, did not serve a family but as a makeshift haven to the homeless and a place where drug addicts smoked crack. But just steps away stands an organization know as, Breakthrough Urban Ministries, whose mission is to help rehabilitate those like Strickland—a self-admitted, former crack addict—who says he once dwelled in abandoned houses as his only refuge and used the old house a few feet from Breakthrough’s door as a place to do drugs.

For Strickland and others, Breakthrough and shelters like it are a refuge from the cold, from the harsh Midwest winters that grip this city when it turns cold—a time of year that can prove deadly for the homeless, perhaps more than any other time of year.

“The cold is the homeless person’s worst enemy,” said Laura Stemberg, a spokeswoman for Pacific Garden Mission, a more than 100-year-old shelter in Chicago, “The homeless don’t survive in the cold, they go to shelters.”

Strickland was among them this winter, the tens of thousands of men that experts say roam the city, seeking shelter, finding even a dim, cold and damp abandoned building as a refuge from a brutal, unforgiving Chicago winter’s night.

For these men and women, there’s is a story of survival. And for the lucky ones like Strickland, Breakthrough is a second chance sometimes for a new start in a shelter they find safe, especially compared to some other urban shelters, which can be dangerous places to lay one’s head.

Breakthrough Urban Ministries founder, Arloa Sutter, said that “most of the people who come to us have been to other shelters and they talk about sometimes there’s fights.” It seems, according to Sutter, that gang activity can sometimes be attributed to control in the shelters.

“I’ve heard complaints that some of the shelters are overcome by some of the gang leaders,” Sutter said. It can be just as bad on the streets, if not worse, some say.

“People say their things get stolen and women are sexually assaulted,” Sutter added. “With men, there is spite and muggings.”

Sutter says that’s not the case at Breakthrough.

“It’s safe, it’s clean, and there aren’t fights. Their space is respected; they have storage for their belongings. They feel safe. It’s the group time and the one-on-one with case managers. Relationships are developed through all that.”

Strickland is among the men and women who have found a place to rest and recoup. But standing at the back of the abandoned house, in the shadow of Breakthrough recently, he recalled harsher times.

“We used to come through this back window like it was our apartment,” he said, his words echoing a sense of pride over how far he had come—even if with a few scars, some of them visible on his youthful face, others not as visible.

Strickland says he never lived in this particular house but had gone there several times to escape the cold and the pain of being homeless with crack cocaine.

“It’s kind of like an anesthetic,” he said of using the drug. “You know, the crack cocaine would numb the pain. It made me able to walk more. And in my walking, I would hustle to get more money to get more drugs. As soon as the drugs wore off, I would get more drugs to ease that pain and the cycle continued.”

Strickland said he was not alone in his endeavors, and that being homeless is like being part of the general populous.

“Sometimes you grow kind of close to certain people and you form a bond, like a family, basically,” he added.

His drug family, however never replaced his true family, he says.

“I came from a two parent home with a younger brother and older sister,” Strickland said. "I was taught good morals, but harbored some resentment toward my father. I felt neglected and that he didn't spend enough time with me."

“I was good at school, but just wanted to hang out a lot,” Strickland said.

Strickland says he grew up on the West Side, in “K Town,” and that he has a wife and five children who now have two children of their own. After becoming homeless, he said he lost contact with them, but has recently seen them.

“They respect me as their father,” he said. “They can talk to me about this like friends. I miss that. The whole time I was addicted I missed that.” Strickland said that being on the street and seeing people avoid him affected him greatly and led even to a personal breakdown.

“I would walk across the street and I could hear the car doors lock and the eyes watching to make sure I wasn’t gonna come to the car. I knew they were judging me by my appearance and it was kind of a hurt feeling,” Strickland said.

He often found safety on the streets, he said, simply by taking cover, when gunfire erupted between gang rivals. There were times, he said, when “young guys” threw bottles at him and recalled time he was asleep in a park and a young man kicked him in the jaw.

With a sense of consequences and also community, and with the help of Breakthrough, Strickland says has turned over a new leaf.

In his new environment, he said he has had time to reflect on his time as a crack addict.

“At first, I thought I could quit it any time I wanted to,” he said. “Even today I want it, but I hate it. I don’t like the consequences: I don’t like being dirty, not being able to hold a job and going to jail.”

His addiction put him on the street, he said, and led him to leave his family, and caused him to steal from extended family members to survive. Things are different now, he said.

“I’m overcoming that pain now and setting certain goals,” Strickland said. “I am going to register for a computer literacy class tomorrow and see where I can go from there. And I’m still drawing,” he added, referring to his artwork.

His words fell delicately as he spoke of his past, much like the snow falling on the abandoned house.

For women, a place of their own

2009-05-27T16:12:00.004-05:00

By Celia Martinez
In a small, crowded low-lit room sat 12-year-old Azalea Scales. She was surrounded by several children and five adults who hovered around a long wooden table attentively watching as a tall woman with short hair told a story about a small cat living among big animals on a farm.

The storyteller, who stood across the table from where Azalea sat, did not have a book but instead acted out the story with help from a little girl wearing a bright orange top and pigtails. Together they spoke:

“I want to be big, I want to be tall. I don’t like being so very, very small.”

But even with live-action storytelling, it was evident that Scales was bored. As the rest of the children repeated the lines, Scales fidgeted in her seat and repeatedly turned her head, attempting to peak out the door behind her. A few moments later, she stood up, walked out the door and greeted her mother in the hallway of this their home.

It is not the typical home,not an apartment or a single family house, the kind that Azalea and her three siblings and their mother Raven Sanders might like to live in. But it is a home no less here at Thelma’s Place, 8040 S. Western Ave., which has become a home for homeless families.

Thelma’s Place is one of nine interim housing programs operated by the Chicago-based not-for-profit organization Inner Voice. Founded over 20 years ago by Reverend Robert Johnson, Inner Voice is now the largest provider of homeless services in Chicago.

According to the organization, it assists approximately 13,000 people every year by providing shelter and offering resources such as job training and job placement and also helping the homeless find affordable housing.

“I assist the clients in housing, life skills, and help budget their money,” said Karin Moret, who has been working for Thelma’s Place for three years.

Moret said clients are given four months to stay at Thelma’s Place and that within that time, the shelter provides them with many resources to become fully independent again.

The shelter also holds job fairs on occasion. In March, the company Avon and a company for nursing homes visited Thelma’s place in hopes of recruiting a few new employee, Moret said.

But bringing in the employers doesn’t necessarily mean that a client will get a job. And if clients still don’t have any luck finding a job after their four months are up at the shelter, they are given an extension.

“People don’t have to leave,” added Moret.

At last month’s job fair, Scales’ mother didn’t have any luck. Still, Sanders, 28, said the shelter has been providing her with good resources, but she just can’t seem to find a job, so far.

Sanders said she first came to Thelma’s Place just over a month ago from the Salvation Army in Kankakee, Ill. Originally from Chicago, Sanders said she left for Kankakee with her four children, hoping to improve their lives. Although she didn’t have family there, she had a job and she thought she was secure.

“When I left [the economy] it wasn’t too bad,” said Sanders, “I just wanted to get away.”

Sanders said she was living in a good neighborhood and her children were attending good schools in Kankakee. But she said she hit a streak of bad luck when she lost her job and her rent increased, she explained. She soon found herself and her children in the Salvation Army, which she described as a bad experience because she was certain her roommates were stealing from her.

Although unhappy with her living situation, she says she remained at the Salvation Army for three months before deciding to come back to Chicago.

She first arrived at the Holy Cross Hospital and the hospital staff called the Department of Human Services, or DHS, who directed her and her family to Thelma’s Place-all within a matter of days.

“It’s just hard,” said Sanders of the instability she says her children have been put through in such a short period of time. “They’re not used to this type of stuff.”
Sanders said that although the fluctuating economy was in part to blame for her misfortune, she mostly blames herself.

“I probably should’ve tried harder,” Sanders said. “I don’t think I tried as hard as I could.”

Sanders said that right now, all she could do is keep looking for work but wants to remain optimistic because she is currently in the process of getting her own apartment, thanks to the Housing and Rental Assistance Program provided by Inner Voice. Although Sanders is currently unemployed, Moret says the Thelma’s Place and Inner Voice will still help provide housing.

“We find a place in the suburbs and take them there,” Moret said. “We even help pay rent for one month.”

Sanders said that overall, her stay at Thelma’s Place has been pleasant. She said the facility is cleaner than the previous shelter and the staff is friendlier. But mostly, she is content to have her own room that she shares with her four children—and no roommates.

Sanders said she is also grateful that her children’s education hasn’t been affected with the moves.

“They’re still doing good in school,” she said.

Sanders said Thelma’s Place, which offers tutoring for the children twice a week, is the reason for their success in school. Azalea has been receiving tutoring and, in fact, says that it’s her favorite thing about staying at Thelma’s Place.

“They’re nice,” she said of her tutors. “They teach different things…they teach me slow so I could understand.”

Azalea says she didn’t have a problem readjusting to life in the new shelter and at a new school and has even made a few friends. But she admits that she is tired of it and craves normalcy. She says that occasionally she’ll bother her mother for a cell phone or new shoes, even though she knows they can’t afford it.

She says she doesn’t blame her mother for their current situation and that her mother has tried her best, but just can’t seem to find a good job. And although she hopes someday to become a lawyer, Azalea said that what she really wants is for her family is to have their own place to call home.

“I want Mama to have a good life and a nice home,” Azalea said.

Fundraiser a cornerstone for one local shelter

2009-05-27T15:52:00.003-05:00

By Ashley Mouldon

For one day only, the Chelsea House, at 920 W. Wilson Ave., was turned into a crafter’s paradise. Community and church members filled the small room on the first floor with hand made goods and crafts.

This was the second year Indie in the Windy City held its semi-annual fair. Hosted by Jesus People USA, the craft fair benefited Cornerstone Community Outreach, a local shelter, located just down the street from Chelsea House in this Uptown neighborhood.

In the lobby of the building, coffee and fresh baked goods were for sale for guests of the fair. Church members helped serve the customers while directing other people to the craft event down the hall.

The vendors lined up along the wall sat behind small banquet tables that housed their goods. Everything from jewelry to purses to journals and candles were on display with colorful table cloths , some of them topped with handmade merchandise. Throughout the room, guests strolled from table to table, admiring the prized possessions.

Seated at her own table, selling handmade earrings, broaches and necklaces, Marsha
Spaniel smiled proudly when showing off her goods to a potential buyer. Spaniel has been a member of the church, Jesus People USA, for 35 years. She lives at the community housing complex with other members of the organization and has helped organized the craft fair since its inception two years ago.

“I have been a member for 35 years. I love the feeling of
community,” said Spaniel.

“Some are community members, others members of the church,” she added, pointing to some of the other vendors. “They just, like selling their goods, and this fair is benefiting something worthwhile.”

More visitors flocked into the room, scoping out the various goods. Raye Clemente, greeted a few of them by name.

Clemente, whose hair was dripping wet, was dressed in a bright yellow T-shirt.

“Well, I moved in here with Jesus People and we all got jobs right away,” said Clemente. “I do intakes and maintenance at the shelter now.”

“They sent me over to the shelter and I noticed things that needed to be done and did it,” said Clemente. “I do a bit of everything.”

Clemente has been with Jesus People USA for two and a half years. She enjoys being a part of what she calls a close-knit family community.

Cornerstone Community Outreach is primarily used by families in the neighborhood. But Clemente stressed that the shelter is open to anyone who needs a bed and food.

The biggest reward for Clemente working at the shelter is being able to say that she has helped keep it funded over the past two years. But working at the shelter has its challenges.

“It’s a challenge to work with people who have a mental or physical challenge,” said Clemente.

At the recent fundraiser, Laura Jensen, a young woman with short blonde hair, sold purses and flower broaches made out of zippers. One of the most positive things for Jensen living with the other church members, she said, is being able to get more involved with the community and to try and better serve the shelter and the neighborhood.

“We’re pretty involved, and I like being a part of the community and being accessible,” said Jensen.

Dignity in dining at one local soup kitchen

2009-05-27T15:30:00.005-05:00

By Ashley Mouldon
Metal spoons banged on the sides of large silver colanders on the two stoves inside a small kitchen. Just behind a rickety door where a sign hangs above, with the words, “Dignity Diner,” this half-kitchen, half-children’s-playroom is where all the magic happens.

“How many cups are in a quart?” asked one.

“Who will make the corn bread?” asked another.

“Can you do the pudding?”

“Fifty people, that’s right,” another volunteer said, answering perhaps the most important question.

Such is the chatter of a typical late-Tuesday afternoon amid the commotion that sometimes seems chaotic among volunteers at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, at 925 W. Diversey Parkway.

Buzzing to and from the kitchen to the open dining room, the cooks, one recent evening, swiftly prepared supper where every Tuesday night, the church’s sanctuary turns into an informal dining room, known here as the Dignity Diner.

Dignity Diner was founded in 1992 to serve the area’s homeless and other residents of the community. Today, the majority of its patrons are homeless, or live in the nearby Lincoln Park Shelter. The guests receive a meal and every other week can participate in activities such as art projects, talent shows and music events held at the church.

Sprawling about the room, the volunteers serve their guests rather than the guests helping themselves, thus the name, Dignity Diner.

On a recent Tuesday, at the front of the makeshift diner, sat a cheerful woman, writing down the names of the people who had come. Her name is Kara Teeple, Dignity Diner’s coordinator. She has worked at the diner for 11 years.

Tonight is like all the others: Teeple helps prepare the food in the kitchen, this time the rice. Then as usual, she took her perch at a small table and chair near the entrance to the church. She has a faded piece of white construction paper and a black ball-point pen, taking her time to make sure she gets the spelling of everyone’s name correct as they enter. At her side is her dog, a Sheppard-mix.

Every so often, one of the guests makes his or her way over to Teeple’s friendly pet to say, ‘hello.’

“I love the community feeling and fostering the sense of family,” said Teeple as she smiled and nodded at one of the regular dinner guests who walked in from the rain.

Teeple has a welcoming nature about her, always taking a moment to chat or tell someone ‘yes, she has walked her dog today.’

Over the past few years, the program has struggled with financing the dinners.

“We have to rely mainly on grants, but lately it’s been more of private donations,” Teeple said.

And yet, for the last 17 years, they have somehow managed.

On that winter’s night, six cooks stood around the stove, checking every couple of minutes on the simmering food. One poured herself a cup of coffee, looking as if she craved the caffeine.

On the menu, for starters, are bagels from Einstein Bagels and a syrupy fruit cocktail. For the main course: vegetarian egg rolls, fried rice, and corn bread and for dessert thick chocolate pudding.

Hovering over the stove, the volunteers stirred rice and piled eggrolls onto large metal sheet pans and put them into the ovens. By then, the fruit cocktail and bagels had already made themselves upstairs to the guests. The cornbread was the last to be made, but seemed to be the most difficult for the chefs to master.

“How much cornbread?” asked one.

“Do we have enough room?” asked another.

“Who has a Blackberry we can use to find the measurements,” someone asked. “I did that once.”

Once the cornbread made its way into the oven, the group of volunteers carried the food up the winding staircase to the dinner guests above, where various sized tables and chairs filled the space inside the makeshift dining hall. Towards the back of the room, two tables were covered with plastic plates.

Meanwhile, Teeple signed in another guest, a man named Troy who happens to be a Dignity Diner patron of three years. Dressed in a black knitted hat and black jacket, traces of a younger Navy veteran can be seen in his eyes.

Troy heartily laughed, bragged about his two girlfriends all the while asking Teeple if she had walked her dog this evening.

“What keeps me coming back is the socialization,” he said, swaying back and forth. “There’s good people here.”

Troy said he was referred to the diner by a friend he knew living on the streets. He first came for a hot dinner, but said he soon discovered he liked socializing with other people over dinner rather than on the sidewalk.

After a few minutes of catch-up with Teeple, Troy walked away, saying goodbye and headed over to the food table for a cup of pudding.

By then, the last trickle of the crowd into the dinner had stopped and guests had started to leave. Sitting by herself was a woman with young-looking skin, sipping from a cup of coffee.

Her name is Cheryl Almgren. She is a Dignity Diner veteran of eight years.

“I started coming here after my father died in August 2001,” Almgren said, dressed in a lilac purple overcoat with a matching shirt peeping through. Her maroon- colored pants hid her prosthetic leg and the foot she wears.

“See, I am disabled,” she said. “I have a sort of mental illness. But the art projects we do really help me,” added Almgren.

Almgren says she enjoys coming to the diner because it offers a sense of community. She comes every Tuesday night and looks forward, mostly, to the various art projects that the diner facilitates.

“I really like photographing tulips. There is something really calming about art,” Almgren said, then asked for more coffee.

As Almgren sipped a fresh cup, Linda Fetzer, a member of the host church, walked up. Fetzer has been a volunteer for a year and half.

“I do it because I love it,” she said.

Soon Fetzer retreated back to the basement kitchen, where washing of the dishes had already begun. Not long after, the dinner guests upstairs had all left, leaving only a few volunteers like Alex Johnson, who was busy picking up leftovers.

“It’s exciting,” said Johnson, a volunteer at Dignity Diner for three years. “I go to sleep happy every night,” said Johnson, adding that he believes it’s his duty to give back to the city and that the diner has been the place for him to do so.

“I will always keep volunteering for as long as I’m in the city.”

Pacific Garden Mission: City’s oldest shelter still making all the difference

2009-05-27T13:30:00.003-05:00

“And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” 1 Thessalonians 5:14 (NIV)

By Robert O’Connor
Along a stretch of South Canal Street, empty glass bottles of liquor, coffee cups and other trash are strewn. In corners of abandoned doorways of the boarded up factories that line the street some men are grouped together on a cold winter’s day.

A short distance away sits Pacific Garden Mission, a shelter with a mission for the last 100 years to encourage the timid, help the weak and show patience to everyone who enters its doors. And it still has its iconic neon cross.

Pacific Garden Mission opened in 1877, at 316 S. Clark St., and is the oldest continuously operating rescue mission in the United States. It moved to its current location in November 2007 from its longtime location at 606 S. State St.—a spot it moved into with the help of baseball player Billy Sunday) and which it occupied for 84 years. The iconic neon cross that adorned its front door, with the phrase “Jesus Saves” on the front, moved with it and still sits above the Mission’s front door.

In addition to providing a host of services and also shelter for 950 men, women and children, Pacific Garden Mission serves 2,250 meals per day, every day. Some of the food is donated by overstocked markets or restaurants, or by places like the Greater Chicago Food Depository, but most of the food is bought. Laura Stemberg, assistant to Pacific Garden Mission’s President Dave McCarrell said that it cost $2,000 to $3,000 a week to buy the food they need to feed the homeless.

Soup is a common feature in lunch.

“They need a well-balanced healthy meal,” said Stemberg, “and we provide one for them.”

Sometimes food donations are notable enough to save money. Pacific Garden recently was given 10 barrels that could be used to make 80 gallons of soup. Stemberg estimates that this would save $150 a week.

The menu changes frequently, and has included items like Mexican food and Chicago-style hot dogs.

Executive Chef Floyd Turnball is in charge of feeding those who come to Pacific Garden. Turnball was born on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, and speaks with a light Caribbean inflection in his voice.

He moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands when he was four and was taught how to cook by his mother. When he was 13 he helped his aunt who owned a restaurant. But Turnball developed a drug problem and served time in jail.

“I needed help,” he said. “My friend worked in social services and she had heard of Pacific Garden Mission, and she mentioned it to me.”

He arrived in Chicago on March 4, 1993 and hasn’t left.

Two years ago, the mission moved from its original location after the city filed an eminent domain suit against it. The mission, its neighbor Jones College Prep High School and the City of Chicago had been in negotiations to expand the facilities of the high school after it switched from a two-year vocational school to a four-year selected enrollment school in 1999.

“They had no pool, no science labs and no gym,” said Laura Stemberg, assistant to Pacific Garden Mission’s President Dave McCarrell. “They needed a place for them.”

The city agreed to help Pacific Garden Mission move into its new location at 1458 S. Canal Street, with 150,000 square feet, which was designed by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, according to Stemberg.

The mission moved, and with it the hundreds of people it served. Turnball said he likes the new place because everyone is able to sit down.

“Before, the people in the program went first, and then had to leave and make room for the people from outside. Now, everyone can sit down, no problem.”

PADS: A suburban hand to help the homeless

2009-05-27T13:06:00.002-05:00

By Jeff Schaefer
On Tuesday nights on the outskirts of the Elk Grove Village town center, the Christus Victor Lutheran Church is one of the three shelters run by PADS, or Public Action to Deliver Shelter, available for homeless people to get out of the cold weather and get a warm meal. Inside, the shelter is a dedicated group of volunteers who desire to help those in need.

Usually 20 to 25 volunteers work at the shelter throughout the day, which is divided into three shifts that run from 6 to 11 a.m., 11a.m. to 3 p.m., and 3 to 7 p.m.

The shelter has 40 mats available spread across six rooms for the homeless, who are referred to by the volunteers as guests. Aside from the sleeping rooms, there is a dining area with four tables and a television set up where people can eat and socialize with volunteers and other guests. There is also a supply room where guests could get shampoos, deodorants, clean undershirts and underwear, donated clothes and thermal clothing, razors, combs and haircuts offered for the guests.

On one recent Tuesday, volunteers were busy setting up the shelter for the night. In one classroom being turned into a room for eight male guests, Barry Carlson set up mats with an assistant.

Carlson, co-site manager for the shelter on the first Tuesday of the month, began volunteering at the shelter six years ago. Originally, he said his son needed credit for school and that he saw an article in the Chicago Tribune about PADS. So both father and son decided to volunteer for the program, although Carlson said he continued volunteering because he felt that he had to give something back.

For others volunteers like Patty McKisic, there are other draws.

“I enjoy talking to the guests,” said McKisic.

McKisic finds talking with guests one of the most rewarding aspects of volunteering. She says she started volunteering at the shelter when two of her girlfriends said they needed help.

“I’m just a worker bee,” she said, adding that she believes it’s important to keep busy when volunteering.

She also said that some people volunteer and leave when they’re done. But there are others who seem to have a greater passion for volunteering.

Rob McCracken, site director, has been working at the shelter for 17 years. His friend initially asked him to help with cleanup. He did and eventually became a co-site manager before ultimately becoming the head of the shelter.

While the maximum occupancy for the shelter is 40 guests, he said that no one is left out in the cold. If the weather is decent, the shelter will pay for a taxi to move guests to another suburban shelter, he said.

“We’ll buy things for our guests,” he said.

If somebody is working outdoors, they will pay for boots and clothing for them, he added.

All of the money the shelter receives is from donations, which according to McCracken, are plentiful, even with the current economic crisis that is also being felt at shelters and food pantries. Among its donors are churches, charities and other organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America.

McCracken says that while donations are important, so is volunteerism. In fact, the biggest reason that shelters close down, McCracken says, is because of a lack of volunteers.

“I always invite anyone in my circle to come and witness this,” McCracken said. “Once you see the need, you’d be cold-hearted not to help.”

Vets on the Street; Agencies seek to aid forgotten soldiers

2009-05-27T12:54:00.002-05:00

By Kristen Strobbe
As citizens of Manteno, Ill., gathered to celebrate the fourth of July holiday last year, many were unaware of the military past and troubled present of the others in attendance.

Scattered among the civilians were veterans from WWII, the Korean War, and the conflicts in Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Most were from the Manteno Veterans’ Home, a nursing home facility that offers care for incapacitated veterans.

A small group, however, were not from the nursing home but another facility altogether.

Earlier in the day, Deanna Mackey decided to take her group of 15 veterans to the Fourth of July festival in hopes of giving them a break from their daily routines of counseling, group therapy and job training classes.

As fireworks lit up the sky, it became apparent that not all of Mackey’s veterans were celebrating, he recalls. One soldier dove under a picnic table to take cover from the decorative explosives. Others cringed and grimaced with each boom.

“This is why these veterans are homeless,” Mackey said. “Things that happen in everyday life are a threat to them.”

“When a backfiring car or fireworks takes them back to combat; it’s hard to bring them back to reality,” said Mackey, clinical director of Prince Home at Manteno, a pet project of former Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich that houses 15 homeless veterans and helps them find employment and housing.

Prince Home opened in February 2008 and, in addition to helping veterans with employment, allows for them to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and other mental illnesses that, according to Mackey, can lead to homelessness.

While the facility, according to Mackey, lacks staffed nurses and physicians to address medical ailments of the residents, it has a partnership with Edward Hines, Jr. VA hospital in west suburban Hines, Ill.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness in its 2007 report said there were 1,475 homeless veterans in Illinois. And on any given night, 1,200 veterans will be homeless in Chicago, according to the Volunteers of America of Illinois’ Veterans Housing Project, which also concluded that veterans account for about 50 percent of the homeless in Chicago.

The statistics concerning the number of homeless veterans raise questions about the effectiveness of VA care, familial and community support – or the lack thereof – of returning veterans and the widening gap between the Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs, Mackey said.

Bob Adams, founder and clinical director of the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans in Wheaton, Ill., said the numbers themselves have to speak for the often silent voices of homeless veterans.

“Homelessness among veterans is certainly on the rise,” Adams said. “Judging from the initial number of homeless veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, even within the first years of occupancy, there is going to be a Katrina-like wave of homelessness when we finally withdraw troops from Iraq.”

Adams, a jovial 61-year-old and Vietnam veteran, was active for many years in the veteran community in DuPage County before opening the shelter. In 1997, Adams was invited to visit Boston’s New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans. Also a licensed clinical psychologist, Adams was offered a job with the New England shelter but turned it down.

“How could I possibly ignore what was happening in my own backyard?” Adams said. “So I said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and started out building a shelter where it was needed— here.”

Despite Adams’ excitement over the success and work of the shelter, he is also somber that it is even needed.

“Veterans come to us so unaware,” Adams said. “They don’t know why they’re hitting their children, or why they’re drinking or why they lost their job.

“The military mentality makes them ignore what’s happening to them,” Adams said.

The Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans works on an annual operating budget of about $300,000 with half coming from government sources and half through fundraising. Both Adams and Mackey said that with the shift in the economy, funding has been more difficult to come by.

“Prince Home is sustained with state money, yet we are still struggling to get the space and money we need to expand,” Mackey said. “We would love to provide medical care on-site, but we’re waiting to see what the stimulus package can give us.”
Even the veterans feel the trickle-down effect the economy is having on shelters and facilities.

“More money means more outreach and more services,” said Jose Vasquez, a Vietnam veteran who said he was homeless for four years. “There’s no people walking the streets or in cars looking for veterans because they can’t afford to house them once they find them.”

With deep and sunken eyes – a consequence of getting up early that day to work as coordinator of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’ Home Ground Coffee program and, also from the years of living a transient life, moving between Texas, Ohio and Illinois– Vasquez is impassioned as he talks about his life after the war.

“There were no parades for us,” Vasquez, who was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, said. “The protesters were calling us baby killers. We weren’t seen as heroes.”
Although homeless shelters are seeing a rise in the number of veterans from the current war, Mackey said the majority of veterans she sees are those who, like Vasquez, served in Vietnam.

“There wasn’t recognition of PTSD back then,” Mackey said. “On top of that, people wanted to forget about Vietnam and get back to their lives and the soldiers tried to do the same even if they weren’t ready.”

Ray Parish is the one and only military counselor for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an activist group that often serves as advocates for distraught GIs currently enlisted, veterans of conflict from WWII to Iraq and members of the military who have deserted.

“Unlike Vietnam, GIs today are completing numerous tours and the PTSD just gets worse,” Parish said. “The fact that we know what PTSD is doesn’t help much if soldiers aren’t being treated for it.”

When Vasquez returned from Vietnam, he says he suffered from slight PTSD but never sought help for his anxiety and paranoia. He eventually turned to alcohol and later became homeless.

Parish said this is a common scenario among homeless veterans. Substance abuse, according to Parish, is an outlet soldiers feel is “tough enough” to use as a way of dealing with PTSD.

“Soldiers who are still in active duty and have not had their PTSD validated by superiors are going to get called up again,” Parish said. “It’s then, when they know they can’t go back and keep their sanity, that they go AWOL.”

Because so many homeless veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are deserters, they go undocumented for fear of arrest, Parish said. Unbeknownst to most soldiers, there are VA benefits available to those who went AWOL, or were dishonorably discharged.

The benefits require a lot of paper work and red tape, according to Vasquez, which is what he contends keeps so many veterans from seeking help from the VA.
“If people are homeless and have no food, why would you make them jump through hoops to get help?” Vasquez asked.

Candidly, Mackey says she wishes for there to be more communication between the VA and the Armed Forces. She contended that as long as the two stay separate entities, there will be a steady flow of veterans from the current war that eventually become homeless.

Vietnam almost caught 55-year-old Parish, but he was lucky enough, he says, to get a job as a Russian linguist stationed in Turkey during the war. His father, who made his career in the military and was even named Army recruiter of the year in 1964, volunteered for a second tour because he felt he’d already taken too many young lives as a recruiter, Parish said.

Much like his father, Parish is trying save the lives of those who serve America.

“Veterans helping veterans, that’s what it has to be about,” Parish said. “Vets who know the ropes of the VA and know what it’s like to deal with PTSD have to teach those that don’t.”

Interfaith House: Providing in-patient services to the homeless

2009-05-27T12:40:00.005-05:00

By Kristen Strobbe
The worn and dog-eared pages of the Bible rest under Pete Pesina’s equally worn left hand. It’s his only copy.

“I owe a lot to God and now it’s time for me to really understand him,” Pesina said as he lifted the book off the table.

The soft-spoken 45-year-old is a self-admitted recovering crack cocaine addict, who, until early October, was in and out of jail on drug and domestic abuse charges. His drug addiction cost him his job and eventually forced him to live in his van.

But it was one night on Oct. 3, 2008, Pesina said, that changed his life and led him on a journey toward sobriety and restoration. He had gone on a drug run. Something went wrong. He ended up being stabbed, bleeding and nearly dead.

“I almost died that night,” Pesina recalled.“But instead I’m here, slowly trying to figure out my life and my goals.”

Pesina is just one of the 64 residents at Interfaith House, an organization on Chicago’s West Side that offers in-patient medical needs to ill and injured homeless people. His story offers some commonalties with his fellow residents who are a diverse mix.

“Because we do work on the medical side of homelessness we see people who are college educated, had jobs, had homes and a family life,” Sarah Schroeder, 27, director of development at Interfaith House, said.

The Loyola University graduate has been working at Interfaith House for three years, but has worked in the field of homeless services for the past 10. Working at Interfaith House, Schroeder said she has learned that ending up homeless while dealing with an illness or injury is easier than most people think.

“How many of us are seriously one illness away from losing our jobs and our stability?” Schroeder asked emphatically. “When you are in too much pain to work, there are very few options left for you.”

Interfaith House opened in 1994 with the sole purpose of providing more options and services for homeless people to rehabilitate their bodies and their lives.

The people who come to Interfaith are first referred there by social workers from any of the 40 Chicago-area hospitals. Once the intake coordinator at Interfaith approves them, they are let in on a first-come, first-serve basis. Residents usually stay at Interfaith, which can accommodate 64 people, anywhere from three weeks to three months. Some, according to Schroeder, stay longer if they are dealing with a life-altering health issue such as HIV/AIDS and need to learn how to properly care for their illness.

There are three doctors on staff who work full-time Monday through Friday at the clinic. They treat the patients for whatever injury or illness they are suffering from, including trauma injuries such as work-related or motor vehicle accidents and chronic problems such as HIV/AIDS or chronic organ failure.

Because Interfaith House receives 49 percent of its annual funding from government sources, they are required to only take in residents who have been referred by other organizations such as Stroger and Mount Sinai Hospitals. These facilities have the resources to verify an individual’s homeless status, officials said.

Schroeder said when she first started working in homeless services, she thought the referral system was detrimental, but now sees it as necessary.

“We’re dealing with tax-payer money,” Schroeder said. “Anyone can come to us and claim anything so it’s important that we are helping those who truly need it.”

The annual operating cost for Interfaith House is a little over $2 million. With federal funding only covering about 49 percent of its annual budget, Interfaith relies on volunteers and corporate partnerships to help make up the other 50 percent.

Anna Lewis, the volunteer coordinator at Interfaith, keeps track of all the volunteers and also hunts for new ones. The 24-year-old started at Interfaith in August after taking part in City Year, a division of the AmeriCorps volunteer and community service network.

“I guess volunteering is where I belong,” Lewis said, who during her time with City Yeare worked at a nearby school on the West Side. She said she knew she wanted to start her career in the neighborhood. Then along came the job at the Interfaith House.

“I was really attracted to Interfaith because they are such a unique institution,” Lewis said. “No one else is providing this kind of care and I just wish we could be helping more people.”

Lewis tries to keep a steady flow of volunteers coming through the facility, but with limited volunteers and limited space, Interfaith House is limited in their growth, she said.

“For every person we do help, there’s another that we’re turning away,” Lewis added. “It can be disheartening, but we have to focus on the 64 people we’re treating right now.”

Pesina said he would like to see Interfaith House expand and operate different facilities around the city.

“I’m addict and people were always giving me the same pamphlets and same information about addiction,” Pesina said. “But I didn’t know where I needed to go or how to get there to receive treatment that the pamphlets were talking about.”

William Collins, 46, a recovering heroin addict, has been at Interfaith House since November after a traffic accident injured his femur. He now must deal with constant pain due to pinched nerves in his femur.

He too, thinks that there needs to be more places like Interfaith House, but he also said that ending the homeless cycle can start with the individual.

“I had a wife of 17 years, I was a successful barber, and then I made choices that ended up hurting me,” Collins said. “I realized that I couldn’t keep being so self-motivated, I had to start thinking of others in my life.”

Collins, a towering figure even as he walks with a severe limp and the aura of a gentle giant, said he owes Interfaith House for helping him come to terms with his injury and addiction, and hopes to accomplish his goal of finding independent housing before he leaves Interfaith.

Even as Collins and Pesina are on their way to recovery, both still must deal with their addictions and homelessness on a daily basis. Both are issues that can wear on the psyche of the residents, says Myra Austin, Interfaith’s case manager.

Austin, 27, manages the cases of 20 residents, including Collins'. Her main service is to find housing for her clients. But her biggest challenge is helping them move past their frustration and anger.

“They [residents] get tired of trying,” Austin said. “There are options out there for homeless people in terms of housing, but some options are so specific that not everyone is going to qualify.”

Austin said there is special housing for homeless people living with HIV/AIDS or homeless people who have children, but there are those that don’t want people with criminal backgrounds or addictions

“I understand why the residents get discouraged,” Austin said. “But my job is to just keep reminding them that we’re in this together and we will find something for
them.

Pesina admits he is unsure of how he feels about where he is in life, even with the help Interfaith House is providing.

“I don’t know,” Pesina said. “I’m a work in progress.

“I just work on the everyday and see how I feel,” he added. “But I know my life has to change.”

Pesina said he intends to continue with morning prayer service at Interfaith House, to continue talking about his life with other residents and maybe even to contact his two grown daughters whom he suspects are eager to see their father again.

Podcasts - REFLECTIONS

2009-05-26T21:43:00.012-05:00

Listen to the reflections of 12 student journalists at Roosevelt University who spent the semester reporting and writing about homelessness in Chicago. After weeks of hitting the streets, and reporting and writing intimately about the topic, the Roosevelt student journalists were asked to write an essay about their reflections on homelessness.

With camera-like precision, and in the tradition of the literary journalists, they reflect here in this collection of essays on their personal experience of covering the subject. Hear and read the essays, a collection of 12 episodes by the students-and one by the professor-we call, "Reflections."

Episode 1- "Seeing the Invisible" by Robert O'Connor

Episode 2 - "From One Mother Daughter to Another" By Kristen Strobbe

Episode 3 - "The Story of the Invisible Man" By Alex Hernandez

Episode 4 - "Be Thankful" By Ashley Mouldon

Episode 5 - "Makes Me Feel Good Inside" By Morgan Amos

Episode 6 - "As Might I" By Kristin Bivens

Episode 7 - "The Good Samaritan" By Christa Torres

Episode 8 - "Evening Snapshot" By Jeff Schaefer

Episode 9 - "Through My Eyes: More Questions than Answers" By Meghan Lichte

Episode 10 - "Help Me" By George Vlahos

Episode 11 - "Minor Relief" By Celia Martinez

Episode 12 - "Ignorance and Invisibility Not Bliss" by Jayde Huebner

Final Episode - "Now, I See" By Professor John W. Fountain

City Turns Cold: Healthcare for the Homeless

2009-05-26T21:42:00.000-05:00

City Turns Cold: Breakthrough Urban Ministries

2009-05-26T21:41:00.000-05:00

Meeting the needs: Northside Housing and Supportive Services

2009-05-26T21:24:00.007-05:00

By George Vlahos

A short walk from Wrigley Field sits a unique homeless shelter in the heart of Wrigleyville, Northside Housing and Supportive Services, located at 835 W. Addison St.

A not-for-profit organization, Northside was founded in 1983, serving men who are homeless or formerly homeless. For those who work there, respect and empathy are as important in rebuilding lives as food, shelter and supportive service, they say. The agency’s aim is to educate the community on homeless issues, and advocate for change to improve situations for people suffering what it calls the indignity of homelessness with the goal of eradicating the conditions of homelessness from society.

Among the volunteers at is Michelle Wittig, 34, who has served at the shelter for the last year. Wittig says Northside is the most unique homeless shelter in Chicago.
“The shelter is unique because we help men,” Wittig said. “I don’t know of many shelters in Chicago that cater to men only. Our goals are to provide meals and help for our guests to back on their feet.”

One of the men recently being served was Lloyd Rosen—a guest, as residents are called at the shelter for about four months this winter.

Rosen, 55, said he came to the shelter in December after he had to stop working because of layoffs.

“I got laid off in October of last year,” says Rosen, adding that he previously worked as a security officer. “After job-hunting non-stop for two months, I got behind on my rent. Next thing I know, I am out on the street.”

Before coming to Northside, Rosen said he stayed at another shelter on the Northwest Side. He contended that that shelter was poorly run.

“This shelter gives me everything I need,” Rosen said. “I have three meals a day, a bed to sleep in and help in getting me a job.”

Most importantly, Rosen says until he finds a permanent home, he does not have to worry about being in the freezing cold or not having a bed to sleep in.

“I just thank the Lord I have a roof over my head,” said Rosen.

Just how does Northside help guests like Rosen in getting their lives back together?

The shelter has three programs to assist residents, including a case management program, permanent supportive housing program and health care management program. The most important of these, according to case manager George Wilson, is the case management program.

“The case management program is the cornerstone for what we try to do here,” said Wilson. “Through this program, we try to help our guests with their substance abuse problems through counseling, education, employment and housing assistance, permanent housing and follow ups to make sure they’re on the right track.”

Darnell Taylor, who has lived at the shelter since October of last year, is currently a part of the case management program. Taylor says it has helped him greatly in overcoming his substance abuse problems. Once a custodian at a local school, he has been unemployed for about two years because of his substance abuse, he said.

Taylor says that he is now clean and sober and focusing on finding a good job and a decent place to live.

“I don’t know where I would be without this place,” Taylor said. “I thank God that he brought me here.”

Taylor hopes to be out of the shelter in about two months. He has applied for jobs and says has yet to hear back. It is not an unfamiliar story in these lean economic times.

“A lot of our guests have applied for jobs, but have received little to no response,” Wilson said. “We feel it’s because of the economy. But it will turn around.”

Program Director Neal Mueller also attributes the bad economy to a more populated shelter.

“We are always full,” Mueller said. “Unfortunately, we have to turn away a lot more people during this poor economic time. It’s just the way it is right now.”

Taking a holistic approach to healing: Lincoln Park Community Shelter

2009-05-26T21:06:00.003-05:00

By George Vlahos

In the middle of one of Chicago’s most vibrant and popular neighborhoods of Lincoln Park stands the Lincoln Park Community Shelter.

From the outside, the shelter may look more like a prison, but it is far from that. Dark brick adorns the exterior with very few windows—just enough for sunlight and sightseeing.

Inside, the shelter for the homeless, state-of-the-art and stainless steel appliances adorn each room. The newly-renovated facility, at 638 West Deming Place, boasts a large and complete kitchen with refrigerators, stoves, a large sink and a dishwasher. Also, each bedroom houses two sets of bunk beds and each bedroom has a different paint job. Some bedrooms are painted blue, some white and there are even a few with brick walls.

It even has its own modern computer lab complete with the latest computer technology.
But the center is not all about beautiful appliances and modern technology . One of the main purposes of the shelter is to help the homeless who are in need and to assist them in getting their lives back on track.

According to the shelter’s published literature, it is a comprehensive social service agency serving adult men and women who are experiencing homelessness. The agency has been providing shelter and other basic needs to our homeless neighbors for more than 20 years. Today, the shelter provides transitional housing, meals, and a targeted array of social services to over 450 people each year.

One of the volunteers who offer their services and try to carry out the shelter’s mission is Nancy Ulie, 29, a 5th grade teacher at Alcott Elementary School in Lincoln Park. Ulie says that she got involved with the shelter because of one of her former students.

“One of my students from a couple years ago volunteered here with his mom and they suggested that we take a field trip and see how this shelter was run. After the field trip, I decided to volunteer my time here. It’s a great place to help others,” Ulie said.

Ulie says that her volunteer time spent at the shelter is very rewarding and very humbling at the same time.

“Volunteering here is a great experience because it allows me to help others. It also makes me realize how much we have and how much we take for granted. Volunteering here or at any other shelter should be a big wake-up call for all of us,” Ulie said.

Matt O’Brien, 22, has recently started volunteering at the LPCS. So far, O’Brien says his time has been tough on him mentally, but overall he is enjoying helping other people.

“It’s kind of hard watching people live like this and hearing their stories,” O’Brien said. “It’s almost depressing listening to how they got here. At the same time, I know that I am doing a good thing by helping out other people

Just how does the LPCS help the guests who come through its doors?

“Through what they call an ‘On Track Program’,” Ulie explained.

“The On Track Program pushes our guests to acknowledge not only their homelessness, but we want them to realize that they are worth something and then we set guidelines and goals for them along each track,” said Betsy Carlson, program director.

Carlson says the program seeks to help the homeless in three specific areas: substance abuse recovery, mental and physical health and job training and employment.

“We have many services and programs in place to help our guests achieve their goals,” Carlson said.

Among the shelter’s programs is a savings plan that encourages guests/residents to save at least 50 percent of their income.

“We do that so that when they do venture out of the shelter they are not tempted to spend their money on what got them in here in the first place,” Carlson said.

Another service offered through the On Track Program is the daily group activities program. According to case manager Murray Manus, the daily group activities objective is to have support groups and classes that offer personal and educational development.

“We try to focus on group activities that promote a healthy community,” Manus said. “The daily group activities also try to foster support for job searches, healthy lifestyles and tries to help those with mental disabilities.”

During one such session, with about nine people in attendance, including Manus, the group gathered in a “classroom style” environment.

“Okay, everyone what are we going to try and do from now on?” Manus asked.

“Stay away from drugs and alcohol,” the guests replied.

“Why?”

“‘Cause it’s bad for you,” they said.

“Can you do it?”

“Yes we can!” they said.

“We do this every single session,” Manus later explained. “I ask them these questions, they answer back and we end each session with the guests saying, ‘yes we can.’

“We want them to know that they can do it and we will be there to help them each step of the way.”

Saving a Home

2009-05-26T20:29:00.005-05:00

By Christa Torres
Vanessa Sanchez is a housing counselor, helping numerous families throughout the south Chicago metropolitan area who are close to losing their homes.

It is part of Sanchez’s job as a counselor at the South Chicago’s Spanish Coalition for Housing to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The coalition is a non-profit organization that helps Latino families with their housing needs, particularly in the area of counseling, education and housing resources.

In the South Chicago area alone, more than 300 houses have been placed in foreclosure market, according to the coalition, and hundreds of other families are in danger of losing their homes.

“I do only what I can when it comes to saving a home,” said Sanchez, adding that a family can get the help they need if they come in at the right time and do not wait until the last minute.

The foreclosure process begins when the borrower misses the third payment on their mortgage, she explained. The lender then sends a notice and informs the borrower that it intends to foreclose on the home. The case then goes to an attorney who reviews the case and draws up a complaint.

“The entire foreclosure process takes about 14 months to complete. Whether the family is in the beginning stages or closer to the end of the foreclosure process, our job is to help them understand what is going on, and what to expect,” Sanchez said. “There is no real set time for how long the client has, because really it is all up to the banks and their process as well,” she added."

She says she alone has serviced through her agency about 120 families have, but fears that there are more families out there that don’t know about the coalition’s ability to help them. From examining a homeowner’s financial history to assessing how far into a foreclosure process a homeowner is, the agency, Sanchez says, can utilize its many years of experience to help out many a family in need.

“We work more as the middle man,” said Sanchez. “What we do is explain the situation to our clients, make sure they understand what is going on with their home. Then we go to the banks and tell them what the homeowner wants to do, if able to in their financial situation, we then try to work out a plan to get them back to paying their mortgage at a lower payment.”

Occasionally, there are not the happy endings. There are cases where families have not gone to get help in time and have to accept the facing foreclosure on their homes, Sanchez explained. Once the 30-day period that allows a home owner a special right to redeem the property, the courts will inform a sheriff to deliver an order of possession and the homeowner can be evicted from the property.

For some families, learning to create an effective budget can go a long way to helping them keep their home from foreclosure, which is one of the first steps for those who seek help from Sanchez’s agency.

“Homeowners need to realize that their monthly budgets have to be realistic,” said Sanchez. “Driving around in an expensive car or buying their children unnecessary video games does not pay their monthly mortgage payment. It just gets them further into a financial grave than what they are already in.”

Reflections - "Now, I See"

2009-05-26T09:00:00.001-05:00

By John W. Fountain
Even as I stride up and down a stretch of Michigan Avenue, north from Monroe Street to Wacker Drive and back south again, I see familiar beggars—men and women mostly, mostly black, mostly men who look like me. Swaddled in layers of wool and tattered gloves—often plump, sometimes swollen and scarred, I see them. And yet, I realize that so many of us don’t.

The homeless—often invisible, like the wind, constant, sometimes relentless, calling, and always hard for me to ignore. I hand some change here and there. Sometimes a dollar or two, though I am not necessarily a Good Samaritan. In some ways, I feel I owe.

Growing up on the West Side, I knew hunger, the ebb and flow of living on the fringes of a world where life was tenuous and nothing guaranteed. The pain of disconnection: The electric, the gas, from the rest of the world, the city.

And while my family—my mother and stepfather and three siblings—were never homeless, we often seemed to teeter on the edge—life’s consequences and our socioeconomic circumstances as unforgiving as Chicago’s winters.

Today, even as a man, a journalist and professor—a life and in some ways a world removed from those days of hardship and struggle—I can still feel the cold emptiness of staring into a barren refrigerator as a little boy; still see exhaust pouring from my mouth as I speak in our frozen apartment; still feel the eyes of my classmates roaming over my hand-me-downs; still feel the humiliating sting of poverty and the loss of hope when it has fizzled like the last breath of summer.

What I also remember—still taste—is that frosted winter’s wind, snaking through my neighborhood, locking the city in a deep freeze. The cold was always the sign of difficult days ahead, the taxing of whatever resources we had to endure the season.

And yet, I know now that back in those days in K-Town, we were blessed, even when supper was fried potato patties and our treats reduced to thinly-buttered sugar toast. For we were never homeless, like those I see so much of nowadays and who, in the streets of even this city of broad shoulders, face the brutality of the elements like no other season of the year than as when the city turns cold.

So as a professor at Roosevelt University, teaching the capstone undergraduate journalism course, which focuses on producing a project, it was clear in my mind back in January what subject I should choose for my students’ exploration this semester: Homelessness. My students’ task: To explore from various angles with a zoom lens the issue, seeking out the agencies and men and women who seek to make a difference in the lives of the homeless and also those people who find themselves without a permanent place to live.

With the economy slumping and news of foreclosures and layoffs rising, homelessness seemed a timely subject wrought with possibilities for budding young journalists. It also seemed the kind of subject that students at an urban university with a “social justice” mantra ought to be delving into for all sorts of reasons—among them the possibility of exposure to a world beyond their own and to their potential as journalistic storytellers to make the invisible visible, to make the “inhuman” human.

For me, the task has meant challenging students to get “the facts,” to move beyond their comfort zone, to slash and burn with red their stories and to push, poke, prod and encourage, being fully aware of their potential and of the continued need in the future—aside from the technological glitz and glam sweeping journalism—for journalists who have the ability to do what has long been its staple and that I suspect shall ultimately be its salvation: Tell good stories, accurately and, as my mentor at the University of Illinois at Urbana, the late-Bob Reid, urged me, to pursue them with passion.

My students’ project is now complete, the cold mostly faded now and the scent of a new season risen. And I have seen evidence of successes, of wonderfully human stories—none more evident than in their words read aloud after they returned from an assignment one night during the recently ended semester.

Moving and deeply-reflective snapshots, they reminded me—even in a day when the bell is said to be tolling for newspapers—of the power of journalism and its ability to help make the world a better place.

And this much also was clear as I stood, listening, moved at times, unbeknownst to them, nearly to tears, as poetically, each of them said, in so many words, ‘Now, I see.’

And for us journalists, that’s more than half the battle.

Saving women from the streets: Here’s HOW

2009-05-25T19:20:00.000-05:00

By Morgan Amos
Amid the constant traffic of people walking from one end of the corner along a stretch of West Howard to the next sits the home of Housing Opportunities for Women. Located at 1607 W. Howard St., on the city’s Northwest Side, the brown rustic building holds the stories of the many people who have come to call this place and its staff home.

Inside the Housing Opportunities for Women building on a recent Saturday morning, 19 women gathered for the first day of orientation for a program called Life Smart. The 10-week program aimed at teaching helping them learn more about themselves on the road to reclaiming their lives is a branch of the HOW organization.

The orientation, which took place on the second floor, was held in a small room with yellow walls, red drapes, and hardwood floors. The instructors for the course, Bob Wysocki and Lakethia Conner are only two of the members who work to help make HOW a place where homeless women can find the resources they need.

HOW is a non-for profit organization that receives its funding primarily through private donations, officials said. Since 1983, the group has helped women find homes, employment, health care, and much more, specifically in the Rogers Park area. Women ages 18 and up can receive help from the center. According to the center, 65 percent of its clients as single women and 35 percent are homeless families with children.

Darcel Pickett, 46, a woman with short dreadlocks, is among those who have found help at HOW. Pickett said that after four years of being homeless, prostituting and using drugs since the 1990s, she has managed to turn her life around and is now eight years clean.

As Pickett introduced herself to the rest of the group during the recent orientation, her smile seemed to radiate the room, though not apparent beneath that smile is a story of the hardships she has had to endure.

Pickett says that after going to treatment at another center, a woman gave her a flyer, which had information about HOW. It was during that time that she says she had a spiritual awakening and decided to turn her life around.

“I decided that I wanted to get off the streets, stop prostituting, and stop using drugs,” Pickett said.

She also says the HOW Organization has helped her by addressing her mental health issues and providing the support system she needed during that time.

Like Pickett, Carmen Lott, 48, says she has been through rough times, but has managed to find the strength to persevere and become a better mother to her seven children. Lott says she has been homeless for 10 years and has a disability.
Before coming to HOW, Lott says that she stayed at a battered woman’s shelter. During a telephone interview, she explained how the agency has helped her.

“My son was shot, and HOW allowed my son to be put on the lease in order for him to come and stay with me so that I could help take care of him,” said Lott, adding that she believes HOW will continue to help her with her future goals.

“My goal is to see my kids off to college, and I believe that by the HOW organization helping me that I can definitely see my kids off to college,” Lott said.
Even though HOW has provided Lott with a place to stay, she says that she still considers herself homeless because she is living in one of the homes provided by the organization.

Lott’s story is not that different from Bridgett Jamison, 48, who says she was homeless for five years and that she is grateful for HOW’s help.

“HOW is helping me to try and find a job,” said Jamison. “The program has also helped me become a better person both mentally and spiritually.”

For these women, becoming a part of the organization wouldn’t be possible without people like Conner and Wysocki.

Conner, 33, has worked for the agency three and a half years. Conner is the “patient navigator,” and as such helps women with any medical services they need. Annually she services 700 people, including single women and women with children.

“I love what I do,” said Conner, wearing a white shirt, blue jeans, and braids while sitting at the table in an office at the center. “Getting to help these women make life changing decisions is very inspiring.”

Wysocki, 47, who has been with the center since 2005, but has only been in his current position as Wellness Activities coordinator for two years, expressed the same sentiment.

“I like being able to make a difference in someone’s life,” said Wysocki.

Just recently, the agency expanded its services to the South Side since some of its clients live there and it is difficult for them to make the trek to the North Side center. In fact,, many of the case managers from the Rogers Park center now make house calls to its South Side clients. HOW has also expanded its services to provide help to homeless men through one of the four departments, which is called the Echo Team.

And many here, like Conner, say they are making a difference.

As the recent orientation wound down, Conner stood in the doorway waving goodbye to a new group of women on the road to turning their lives around, the sun shining down on her face.

Reflections - "Minor Relief"

2009-05-16T19:38:00.003-05:00

By Celia Martinez

Text version of essay unavailable.

Reflections - "Through My Eyes: More Questions than Answers"

2009-05-03T13:38:00.006-05:00

By Meghan Lichte
It feels more like autumn than spring. Walking outside is not all that pleasant yet. I wanted to go outside and have something clever to say, like: as the tourists return so do the homeless. Instead, I was presented with the blustering winds of change on our city’s most celebrated avenue. Michigan Avenue as I saw it a month ago, covered in snow and black slush, has revived itself once again into the tourist haven it’s known to be.

As I tooled across the street into Millennium Park, I searched high and low for a homeless person but security seems to do its job by keeping out the wackos—except those pesky tourists. I passed two women with Northface fleece coats on and a funny accent that asked if I would take a photo for them. I took the camera and thought, wow, this is not my assignment and although tourist is nice, I would prefer to avoid people who take the city in such vapid terms as Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue.

Nevertheless, I went into the Park and found the ice rink, which as far as I remembered was overflowing with people ice skating laughing at their mistakes as they fell on the glistening winter ice. But now this winter haven of hot chocolate fun is a bland space occupying prime real estate. There is still a miniature pile of snow chilling just outside the rink, and I wondered if it was real—I mean, we had a really warm day last week. How could it survive? But I chalked it up to the city emptying the ice rink.

From the rink, I looked over and saw a bus ejecting two men from its yawning mouth. They did not look as if they were here for a long time, just a good time. They both had funny blue puffy jackets on, and one had a cane, the other, glasses.

I had so many errant questions. Questions about things that do not apply to me whatsoever. Like, who are these guys and what brought them together? Were they loved? Did they have anything to look forward to at the beginning of each day? Were they getting ready to go forget their lives at the bar? Or were they going home to their wives and children for a wholesome supper?

Why do I care?

Reflections - "Evening Snapshot"

2009-05-03T13:36:00.011-05:00

By Jeff Schaefer
It’s a typical evening on a Wednesday night up on Michigan Avenue. The sounds of traffic fill the air as people walk by, going about their own business.

However, the commonplace sight of those down on their luck rhythmically shaking cups of change was absent.

On the other hand, there was a slightly atypical sight. Across from the Walgreens on Michigan and Washington was a pair of percussionists rhythmically hitting their makeshift drums, a sight and sound ordinarily heard on State Street.

As the pair banged away on their drums, there was a man in a wheelchair recording them on his camera phone. Other people stopped to look on, some only as long as the light was red before continuing to cross the street.

The next few blocks up, people continued on with their business with no disruptors asking for some change. However, returning back down, the drummers continued on beating their drums for all to hear.

Reflections - "Help Me"

2009-05-03T13:32:00.007-05:00

George Vlahos
On a clear, crisp and cool early Wednesday spring evening in Chicago, standing in front of the Roosevelt University on Michigan Ave., overlooking the beam in Millennium Park, watching as cars go back and forth and observing as people walk to their next destination after a days’ work.

The deafening noise of car engines going north and south could be heard along with the shuffling of peoples feet as they casually conversed with one another.

At the corner of Michigan and Monroe, a middle-aged man kneeling, holding a cardboard sign written with a black marker with his eyes fixated on the ground, heard the gentle pitter-patter of shoes as they hit the ground.

He could not see it, but no one who passed him by gave him even the slightest bit of attention. The sign read Help me, just hungry. No one helped him.

Reflections - "The Good Samaritan"

2009-05-03T13:31:00.006-05:00

By Christa Torres
Signs of spring are in the air along Michigan Avenue, as there appears to be a homeless man standing up against a large flowerpot holding new signs of spring life.

As the homeless man watches person after person walk past him and not put into his red paper cup, he looks to be disappointed that nobody acknowledges his presence.

Wearing a beige hooded pullover sweatshirt, blue vest, blue jeans, torn black shoes and black holy gloves, the older looking black homeless man watches as commuters and tourists pass by him every so often.

Finally a sign of hope emerges. An older white man walks slowly toward him and places his briefcase down next to the homeless man. Fiddles around for a moment in his khaki pants pockets and pulls out a single bill, stuffs it into his red paper cup, picks up his briefcase and continues along his commuter journey.

Much like a flower rearing its head to bloom as the first hopeful signs of spring, there is hope that there is that one Good Samaritan who will lend a helping hand.

Reflections - "Be Thankful"

2009-05-03T13:30:00.008-05:00

By Ashley Mouldon
When I was younger and would scrap my knee after playing in the yard, my mom would give me a sweet smile and heal me with a band aid, but told me to be thankful I even had a knee to scrape. Now that I am older, I use that train of thought whenever something negative happens in my life.

Recently, the heat in my apartment wasn’t working and for a few days, I had to double up on clothing rather than just cranking the heat up to 75. However, those few days made me realize that I should be thankful I even have heat to go broken.

Homelessness was something I wasn’t use to before coming to Chicago. Everyone I knew had a roof over their heads and a place to call home.

Now, being in the city for three years, I have come in contact with those who call the street corner their home. Whenever I see people asking for spare change, I always give them a smile and think of what my mom would tell me: be thankful you have the change to give away.

More Multimedia

2009-05-01T19:45:00.000-05:00

To see and hear more on what happens when the city turns cold, click on the headlines or photos below:

When the City Turns Cold: Healthcare for the Homeless

When the City Turns Cold: Breakthrough Urban Ministries

When the City Tur ns Cold: Man on the Streets

Food Not Bombs

2009-05-01T18:38:00.000-05:00

Reflections - "Ignorance and Invisibility Not Bliss"

2009-05-01T13:35:00.000-05:00

By Jayde Huebner
The weather out side on Michigan Avenue is brisk enough that a coat is needed, but warm enough now to appreciate that spring is indeed on its way.

As people shuffle along the sidewalk and quickly cross the street, a man stands on the corner with a beat up cup in his hand, shaking it so that just a few coins nestled at the bottom can be heard jingling.

Tourists are stopping to snap photographs, people are chatting away on their cell phones and children can be heard from quite some distance running and playing in Millennium Park. However, the loudest presence on the street is often ignored.

The lone man with the jingling cup is most likely the only person that everyone passing sees, yet he is ignored. Seldom is it, that someone stops, drops some loose change and then carries on about their business walking down the street. It’s quite the irony that someone everyone sees and notices is the person that gets the least attention.

Do we choose to ignore him because it allows us peace of mind to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist?

Or are we simply too busy that we cannot be troubled by a worrisome man’s innocent shaking of a cup in attempt to get help?

He is the invisible man.

In fact, the homeless population could easily be classified as Chicago’s invisible society. Everyone knows they are present, and we see them everyday, but the story behind the person is lost.

All we see is the annoyance of the shaking cup, the chatter of the plea for a meal. The homeless are not invisible because they choose to be, but because we make them that way.

Man on the streets

2009-05-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

Sweet Home Chicago - A Prof's tribute to a great class

2009-05-01T10:21:00.000-05:00