With welfare reform and a decline in public housing threatening to increase the number of homeless, a proposal for restructuring the city’s services for the homeless over the next five years calls for more intensive efforts to return them to mainstream life.
But though most homeless advocates welcomed the city’s efforts to draw up a long-term strategy, they objected Wednesday to several of its key components, including a proposal that would send people to one of four “assessment centers” before they get shelter.
According to the plan, recently unveiled by the city Department of Human Services, the centers would serve as a port of entry for families and individuals, whose needs would be determined while they stay for an average of five to 10 days.
During that time, they would be referred to the necessary job training, counseling or substance abuse services and placed in other shelters if needed.
But the centers would create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and possibly discourage many homeless–already weary of government red tape–from seeking help, said John Donahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
The money needed to convert four buildings into assessment centers–each with 80 to 100 beds–would be better used to improve the city’s existing hot line for the homeless, shelters and various training and rehabilitation services, he said.
Additionally, much larger problems outside of the city government’s reach–such as the decline in affordable and public housing and shrinking funds available for services–would interfere with the center’s effectiveness.
“Once you determine a person’s needs, there just aren’t enough resources out there to meet those needs,” Donahue said.
The proposal of the Department of Human Services is only a broad outline for the types of changes he would like to see implemented over the next five years, said department commissioner Daniel Alvarez Sr. and could be modified depending on funding and other practical considerations.
It would cost about $5 million a year to reach the plan’s goals and funding for the effort would come from a number of different resources, Alvarez said. Currently, the department’s has $22 million for homeless services and directs funding for 5,000 beds in more than 100 shelters.
Coalition leaders praised the plan’s goal of replacing beds in overnight shelters with beds in 24-hour facilities. There are approximately 500 beds in more than a dozen year-round overnight shelters in the city and another 900 in more than 30 warming centers that open only during the cold months.
But, under the city’s plan, some chronically homeless–especially those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or mentally ill–might end up freezing to death because they resisted getting an assessment for approval to enter a 24-hour center, said Doug Dobmeyer, an advocate for the poor and editor of Poverty Issues . . . Dateline Illinois newsletter.
“If someone comes to your door and they’re freezing, you just take them in,” said Dobmeyer, a former shelter operator. “You don’t ask whether they’ve been in an assessment center.”
Alvarez assured that the plan will not eliminate the total number of beds and that the city will make sure shelter is available for those homeless “who will not benefit” from 24-hour centers.
