A day after the city ousted 20 homeless men from Lower Columbus Drive, the question remained: Was Tuesday’s sweep a cold-weather mission of mercy, or a cold-hearted mission of muscle?
Not even Mayor Richard M. Daley seemed totally sure.
Within a space of 10 minutes Wednesday, Daley offered conflicting views of how police can deal with camps of homeless people in Chicago.
During a round-table discussion on crime, the mayor said that police can’t arrest the homeless and force them into shelters because even the homeless have basic human rights.
But a few minutes later, Daley said police can do just that as he defended his administration’s actions in destroying a homeless enclave on Lower Columbus Drive, because, he said, many are mentally ill and in need of treatment. The city also is liable for civil lawsuits by homeless people injured on the streets, the mayor said.
“You can’t get them off the street,” Daley said at the tail end of a forum at the Duncan YMCA, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. “You’re lucky if you can take them out of the garbage can if they’re going to sit in the garbage can. And that’s a major problem in America.”
After the forum, the mayor said that the action of police at Columbus and Lake was done to help the homeless. Daley and other city officials claimed that the Department of Human Services found the shacks to be filthy, in some cases covered with excrement, and there were official concerns about tuberculosis, the mayor said.
“It was done to help them, to give them shelter and to take them out of conditions that really affect their health,” Daley said. “So they don’t have to live on the streets.”
When told by reporters that the homeless group in question did not want to leave their neighborhood, the mayor said: “We have shelters, we’re looking out for their safety. People should not live on the streets of Chicago.”
Meanwhile, advocates for the homeless vowed that they would take the city to court for violating the rights of the men.
“I think it’s illegal for them to take people’s possessions,” groused John Dohnahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “I talked to one guy. They threw away his jacket. All he had left was the shirt on his back.”
Donahue said he had contacted the American Civil Liberties Union about a suit, which he plans to file in Cook County Circuit Court in the next week.
“I don’t like the way the city handled this,” agreed Christian Industrial League Chairman Rick Roberts, who runs the largest shelter in the city. “They should’ve turned this over to (Human Services) Commissioner Dan Alvarez; it would’ve been handled properly. It was mishandled.”
Daley brushed aside characterizations by homeless-coalition leaders that the action was an outrage.
“No it’s not,” Daley said. “We have open beds. We don’t want people living on the streets. They come by and say `Why isn’t the mayor doing something? Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?’ We want to help them, with their drug and alchohol problems, for their own saftey.”
Daley’s less-than-cozy relationship with homeless advocates dates back to November 1989, when he announced plans to relocate roughly 200 people living at O’Hare International Airport. Coalition leaders questioned whether the city was trying to hide its homeless problem from visitors.
Other cities have recently decided to get tough with their homeless populations. Last year, political candidates in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Rochester, N.Y., rode to office on a wave of anti-homeless sentiment. Elsewhere, anxious city councils are moving to outlaw sleeping, camping, loitering and related street activities.
Roberts acknowledged that he agreed with some of Daley’s reasoning behind Tuesday’s roundup.
“My concern is that we not have people end up in body bags,” Roberts said. “I don’t know what (the city’s) motivation was. But the practical notion is that if you keep people indoors during the winter, they have a better chance of surviving.”
But just which city agency was in charge of the the sweep is not clear. On Tuesday, spokesmen for the Department of Human Services and the Department of Streets and Sanitation denied that their departments were handling the operation.
As for the police role, Donahue charged that officers had roughly handled some of the homeless. “One of the guys was laying down and they hit him with a stick, told them to get moving . . . others were threatened with arrest.”
“I’m not aware of that,” responded police spokesman Billy Davis. “Our officers were not there to roust anyone. Their instructions were to act in as humane a manner as possible. From our point of view, this is an act of compassion.”
In spite of the best intentions of city officials, at least half of the men picked up in Tuesday’s sweep returned to the dark, grimy maze of lower-level streets Wednesday.
Michael Brown, 28, was one of a half-dozen men perched on a loading dock at 200 Lower North Michigan Avenue.
His voice tinged with bitterness, he railed about how unfair sanitation workers had been to him and his companions.
“They threw away brand-new items I hadn’t even put on my back,” Brown said. “Brand-new items, $50 quilts that people bought out of their pockets.”
Brown, who said he became homeless last summer after his father died, seemed resolute about staying on the streets as opposed to entering a city shelter.
Standing on the cracked, dirty pavement, fighting a graveyard cough, Brown recounted how the shelters were full of gang members, violence and sickness.
He seemed oblivious to the fact that sleeping outside in sub-freezing weather was far less safe.
“We feel safer down here,” Brown said. “We’re like one big family, and we’re not letting anything happen to us down here.”
