Homelessness not just an 'urban problem'
Most of those in Illinois without fixed residence live outside of Chicago
June 4, 2006
By Jessica L. Aberle
Peoria (IL) Journal Star
More than 40,000 people in Illinois went without a place to call home last year.
And those numbers, most experts say, are grossly underestimated.
More than half of the homeless men, women and children were outside of Chicago. And not one county in the state is immune to the problem.
"Sometimes you feel very frustrated, very helpless," said Barb Banister, Section 8 director for the Fulton County Housing Authority. "And that's the person trying to help. I can't imagine how the person in that situation would be feeling."
Many people view homelessness as an urban problem, said Julie Dworkin, director of policy for Chicago Coalition for the homeless, adding that even the urban perception is narrow and frequently limited to single alcoholic men, or those with mental disorders.
In fact, with housing costs rising, heating and fuel costs soaring and limited access to affordable child care, there is an increasing number of working homeless, homeless families and homeless teens, Dworkin said.
And while the Illinois Department of Human Services shows an overall decrease in people accessing the state-funded shelters from 39,939 in 2004 to 38,636 in 2005, Dworkin contends those numbers - which exclude private, faith-based shelters such as the Peoria Rescue Mission and many Salvation Army locales - don't tell the whole story,
She said a lot of people don't access the shelter system, or access shelters that aren't state funded.
The same IDHS reports show an increase in the length of shelter stay, limiting the number of people able to access the shelter system.
Nearly 12,000 people were turned away from state-funded shelters due to lack of space in 2005, according to the IDHS report.
And no one, according to Angela Stoltzenburg, executive director of the community action agency Central Illinois Economic Development Corp., can put a number on those individuals and families sleeping on other people's couches, bouncing from cheap hotels to family members, living in tents in local parks or sleeping in their cars.
"In some of our counties it takes a year to get into housing," Stoltzenburg said. "Where are those people living in the meantime? In a trailer with five other families?
"Homelessness is not just people living on the streets."
What is homelessness
By legal definition a homeless person is an individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.
However, to meet the legal definition and hence qualify for certain programs or allow certain social programs to qualify for federal funds, the person must also either: reside in a shelter, a temporary residence for people intended to be institutionalized or a public or private place not designed as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.
Salvation Army Capt. Bonnie Sanders knows firsthand there is another kind of homeless person.
"I call them the invisible homeless," the 64-year-old Lincoln woman said. "They really are here you just don't see them."
These people and families often fall through the social cracks, bouncing from couch to couch, to welfare motels or even their cars.
"People in (Lincoln) think there is only one homeless person in town, because the man lives on the streets by choice," Sanders said.
"In Macomb, there's a lot of under the radar over-housing," said McDonough County Housing Authority Director Bill Jacobs, explaining that in Macomb there is a problem of more than one family living under the same roof, or over-housing.
"Homelessness in Macomb, in terms of a community problem, it's not large. The story in Macomb is over-housing, as it is really throughout our society," said Jacobs. "They are in a very unstable situation."
Jacobs said homelessness is just one of many social ills in our society.
"It's all about social justice," he said, "and until a majority of people in our country are concerned about social justice, some things will never change."
Rural challenges
Brick streets and rolling farm fields don't shelter rural areas from homelessness.
In fact, limited services and other challenges can make the issue even more difficult to deal with, says Mary Carla Grube, executive director of Freedom House, a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter in Princeton.
"There isn't a shelter up here," she said for non-domestic situations. The nearest homeless shelter is in Peoria or the Quad Cities.
Freedom House has 28 beds that have been packed for the last two to three months, Grube said. A HUD grant supports some transitional housing in the area to prevent homelessness, she said, but there just isn't enough available housing.
"People think it's all farm fields and stables and that's just not the case. Homelessness happens here just like in urban areas," Grube said. "Homelessness definitely is a problem in the rural areas for a variety of reasons."
Very limited low-income housing, lack of rental properties, no public transportation and insufficient day care both lead to homelessness and create obstacles for overcoming it.
"Again there's some sort of myth that it doesn't occur in rural areas, because it certainly does," Grube said. "That is an issue that people just can't quite come to terms with. Plus people don't want it to be here."
Dworkin said many areas in the state suffer from a lack of even the barest services. Each county is covered by community action agencies, some, however, cover up to 21 counties.
Bannister says Canton is the same way. "A city our size," she says, should have a shelter.
Every month the local housing authority over-issues vouchers to people waiting to get into public housing. The waiting list is about six months.
Bannister said her clients frequently have transportation issues. "It's kind of a double edge sword. When people are able to find jobs then they are met with the challenge of finding adequate, available, affordable child care," she said. "I know a lot of people who can't get a job because they can't get the transport to get there. And we lack public transport in the rural area."
Somewhere these people need to get a break, Banister argues. "I have always felt that the quality of a person is not determined by the balance in their checkbook. We have first class people that if they could just get a break somewhere."
Faces of homelessness
Michelle lived in a modest home taking care of her three daughters while her husband provided the income.
Financial struggles and a divorce, however, left the woman without a roof over her head.
"I never thought I'd be 47 years old and telling people I live in a shelter," Michelle said during a stay this winter at a Peru shelter. "You tell them you live in a shelter and they classify you as a low-life, and I'm not like that at all."
Michelle is part of a growing population of homeless. Social workers say they are seeing more women, more teens and more working people and families.
A study by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, IDHS and the University of Illinois at Chicago estimated there were 25,000 homeless teens, the majority of them female in 2004.
Said Dworkin: "We used to talk about families as being the new face of homelessness, though I wouldn't even call that new anymore. We are seeing more two parent families, more working families and more working people in general."
Why?
"The cost of housing is just more out of reach even for people who are working. There's no place, no jurisdiction either city or county in the country where minimum wage is enough to afford a two-bedroom apartment," the policy director said.
In Pekin, the Harold J. Rush Transitional Center has 27 beds and runs most times at 98 percent capacity, according to Justin Byers.
Most of them, Byers said, land there due to a specific situation and remain only a few weeks.
The most common is an eviction, he says, or people come in after a divorce with no where else to go.
A lot of the people are working and just not making enough to pay the rent, Byers said.
"We had a person in here diagnosed with cancer, and he had to make a decision whether to pay for his meds or pay for his house," Byers said. "He chose to pay for his medicines.
"I'm not sure what the answer really is," Byers went on.
Said Dworkin: "The problem is really overwhelming. So it's affecting more and more of the population. But we have definitely made progress."
Preventing homelessness
Dworkin admits there is no quick fix to the longtime social ill.
"We don't focus on the shelter system, or just giving to charity," Dworkin said, adding more people in the general public need to communicate with officials and legislators about providing more affordable housing and requiring a living wage.
"Then maybe there would be more political will to do those things."
Still, Dworkin points to legislation passed in 2005 creating a statewide rental subsidy program with a funding stream of $25 million to $30 million a year. The money comes from a $10 charge on real estate recordings.
Other recently passed legislation requires areas with less than 10 percent affordable housing to work toward that goal. Affordable, she said, in general means your household is spending no more than 30 percent of its income on housing. And relating to home ownership, that criteria should apply to people earning 80 percent of the median income for the area - maybe $50,000 for the state, Dworkin said.
Salvation Army Capt. Sanders said helping those on the verge of homelessness also must remain a priority, such as increasing funding for vouchers. Last year more than 40,000 requests for a homeless prevention grant were turned away due to a lack of money in the state-funded program. But funding for those grants is set to double to $11 million in the 2007 budget.
Funding for such preventative programs and public involvement, she said is the only way to make a serious impact on the problem.
"We need society at large to say, whether business or individuals, we're going to do something to help this situation," Sanders said.