Mayor Richard Daley on Tuesday unveiled a plan designed to end homelessness in Chicago by 2013 that calls, in part, for closing homeless shelters and using the money saved to fund permanent housing.
Drafted by representatives of not-for-profit organizations in cooperation with city officials, the plan also calls for shifting some resources now aimed at providing temporary lodging for the chronically homeless–including people with mental illness and problems of substance abuse–to others, including families.
The chronically homeless represent no more than 20 percent of people without shelter but account for 80 percent of expenditures, officials said.
But this most challenging part of the homeless population will not be left behind, they insisted.
Plans call for reducing the number of beds at city-funded temporary shelters, now numbering about 6,200, by 1,000 over the next 18 months, said Human Services Commissioner Ray Vazquez.
The intent is to move homeless people as quickly as possible into apartments and provide the social services necessary to enable them to stay there.
The city’s monthly cost of providing temporary shelter to a family of three is $1,200, Vazquez said.
“With $1,200 a month, you could put a family into an apartment and still have money (left over) to assist that family with support services,” he said.
As for chronic homeless people, “We need to find them an apartment and make sure there is someone to provide them support services, for example, having a nurse on duty if they have to take medications or a counselor for employment services.”
“Under the current system, these people often spend years moving from one temporary living arrangement to another,” Daley said.
The city plans to help finance development of five new “single room occupancy” projects that will contain 590 units, said Housing Commissioner Jack Markowski.
The plan also calls for preventing homelessness whenever possible by providing such things as one-time or short-term rent or mortgage assistance and legal aid.
“The great thing about the plan is that everybody was involved in it,” said John Donahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. But, he said, “It cannot work without more money, and as I said to the mayor, I will ride a bike with him all the way to Washington because that’s where the resources have to come from….”
Donahue said that details of the plan “are not etched in stone.”
“We can’t sign on to the fact it has to be chronically homeless versus families,” he said.
