Gene Dempsey knows he doesn’t fit many people’s image of a disabled person.
He has a college degree in physical education and once worked as a recreation therapist. For the past 13 years, he’s done a combination of volunteer and part-time work for the Fox Valley Special Recreation Association in North Aurora, a park district for disabled people in St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia.
Articulate and outspoken, Dempsey is also on the board of directors of the Center for Independent Living in Elgin.
Yet Dempsey, 52, is indeed disabled, having struggled with mental illness since childhood. In the last 20 years, he has been able to work full-time only for a year. Because his illness sometimes makes it difficult for him to concentrate, he does not drive, relying instead on a complex and time-consuming system of public transportation. And he can afford his housing only because his family was able to buy a condominium for him in Aurora.
“There’s a need for affordable housing for disabled people, but also for accessible (housing.) . . . There’s a bigger need for that,” Dempsey said. “I’m lucky. But I have a friend who was on the list for about three years for affordable.”
This summer, Dempsey and a handful of other people are trying to channel their concerns about housing and other obstacles facing the disabled into a united voice. They hope to do that by founding the Kane County chapter of the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois.
The grass-roots effort was born of the belief that Kane County’s disabled residents form a far-flung population that seldom receives adequate representation, said Judith Thontlin of Joliet, a representative of the statewide coalition who is helping the Kane County start-up effort.
A disability, Thontlin said, is something most people “don’t think about until something happens to them.”
She knows from personal experience how quickly a person’s life can change. Chronic degenerative arthritis and disc disease forced her into a wheelchair in 1987. She wasn’t able to work again until she got a job as an office manager at the Greater Chicago Chapter of the American Red Cross in Aurora 2 1/2 years ago.
For Thontlin, 51, the high unemployment rate among disabled people is a burning frustration. Advocates say as many as 73 percent of the disabled population in America is unemployed.
“I think a lot of it is due to discrimination,” Thontlin said. “They say it’s not, but who are they kidding? They’re not kidding me. I know. I was looking for a job, but nobody would hire me in Joliet.”
To form the Kane County chapter and join the statewide coalition, which was founded in 1985 and now includes 20 chapters, the organizers need 10 founding members. Attendance at their first two meetings has fluctuated, but Dempsey and others say they are optimistic that future meetings will draw a steady quorum.
“About a year ago, I attended the coalition’s annual conference in Springfield and got very excited about the coalition,” Dempsey said. “I’d been a member for three years, and the nearest chapter was Bolingbrook. It took me a year to find a meeting place. I honestly didn’t think I could do it.”
The group is using a conference room at the Community Counseling Center at 400 Mercy Lane in Aurora for its monthly meetings.
Organizers envision the chapter as a clearinghouse for information, a source of referrals to services and agencies and an advocacy group to address problems of transportation, housing and employment they say disabled people in Kane County often face.
Housing is a particular concern. Dempsey believes hundreds of disabled people in the county might be on waiting lists for affordable or accessible housing. While no one agrees on the exact number on waiting lists in the county, advocates and officials agree on one thing: There’s definitely a shortage of such housing.
“How can you call it a `waiting list?’ ” said Steve Jara, a disabled St. Charles resident who is attending the chapter’s start-up meetings. “We’re not trying to get into a Bulls game. This is a needs list.”
“There’s such an enormous shortage of accessible, affordable housing,” said Vickie Wilson, program director for the statewide office of the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities. “And home ownership–it’s the American dream, but it’s really a pipe dream for many people with a disability.”
Reasons for the housing shortage are many, not only in Kane County but throughout the state, said Bill Pluta, director of housing coordination services for the Illinois Housing Development Authority. The state legislature created the authority in 1967 as a public corporation to coordinate the financing of affordable housing in Illinois.
“Part of the problem is that the attempts that have been made to change building construction practices are long in coming,” Pluta said. “If you’re in an area that has a lot of older housing stock, it becomes very expensive and very impractical to make it accessible for people with disabilities. I’m not saying it in defense of not doing it, but these are the things the contracting industry brings up when they say they can’t do it.”
The 1990 federal Americans with Disabilities Act and subsequent court decisions have broadened the definition of a disabled person, Pluta said.
“It’s a much wider umbrella that covers it now, so to say what the housing needs are for these groups is a pretty daunting task,” he said.
If the Kane County chapter succeeds, one of its most daunting tasks will be to help disabled people realize they can and should speak out, Dempsey said. Disabled people in a major city such as Chicago are more visible than they are in smaller communities, he said. And, in turn, disabled people in less populated areas might be more hesitant to stand up for their rights–their numbers are fewer, and their needs might be perceived as less urgent.
Dempsey and his fellow organizers can’t wait to tell them how to start making their voices heard.
“I think that’s the biggest thing we’re facing,” Dempsey said. “They just . . . how do I want to put it? They accept what they’ve been given.”
