We run the organizations that house Chicago’s most vulnerable residents — veterans, seniors, people with disabilities and families with children. Every day, we see the return on that investment: people who were once on the streets holding jobs, raising kids, stabilizing their health and contributing to their communities. Now, two sweeping changes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) threaten to undo that progress and push thousands of Chicagoans from stability back into crisis.
The first threat strikes at the core of homelessness services. HUD’s revised funding guidance for its Continuum of Care program would cap permanent supportive housing at 30% of funding — down from nearly 90%. Chicago has over 9,000 permanent supportive housing units, about 60% HUD-funded. Of the $120 million in federal homelessness dollars flowing to our city, $96 million supports permanent housing. An estimated 2,800 Chicago households are at risk. A federal court blocked the worst provisions of the guidance in December, but the administration has signaled it will try again.
This is bad policy and bad economics. Permanent supportive housing is not just compassionate — it saves money. A single chronically unhoused person costs taxpayers an estimated $35,000 annually from emergency room visits and hospitalizations, for example. A permanent supportive housing unit costs a fraction of that. Replacing proven long-term housing with two-year transitional programs ignores the reality that many people we serve have severe disabilities. They will not become self-sufficient on a political timeline. They will become homeless.
The second threat emerged on Feb. 19 when HUD proposed a rule that would force mixed-status immigrant families out of federally assisted housing. Under current law, undocumented family members already don’t receive federal subsidies. Eligible members — often U.S. citizen children — receive prorated assistance while the family covers the rest. The new rule would require every household member to prove citizenship or the entire family faces eviction. It would also require housing authorities to report undocumented residents to the Department of Homeland Security.
Nationally, this could displace nearly 80,000 families, including 37,000 children. In Chicago, it would destabilize families already paying more than their fair share of rent.
These policies compound each other. The funding cuts eliminate the programs that many turn to for help. The mixed-status rule pushes families out of housing. Combined with cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the result is a homelessness crisis that will cost Chicago far more in emergency spending than the federal government saves.
We urge Congress to renew Continuum of Care grants and protect the Housing Choice Voucher program. We urge state and city leaders to prepare bridge funding. And we urge every Chicagoan to submit a public comment opposing HUD’s proposed mixed-status rule during the comment period that ends April 21.
Investing in housing is smart. Tearing it apart is not.
— Mark Ishaug, president and CEO, Thresholds; David Sinski, chief executive and vision officer, Heartland Human Care Services; and Laura Zumdahl, president and CEO, New Moms
The system is failing many
I recently left my job as a psychiatrist at a safety net hospital on the West Side of Chicago. Not because the patients weren’t worth treating — they were. But because I couldn’t treat what was actually making them sick.
Housing instability. Food insecurity. The constant, grinding stress of poverty and a lifetime of trauma. I could prescribe medication, but I couldn’t prescribe an apartment. I could treat depression, but I couldn’t treat the despair that comes from a lack of work that pays enough to live or schools that lead nowhere generation after generation.
Then came the new Medicaid work requirements. More paperwork. More barriers. More ways for people who are already struggling to lose the health care they desperately need.
My patients don’t talk about politics much. They’re too busy surviving. But the truth is, politics are deciding everything about their lives — where they sleep, whether they eat, whether they can see a doctor. They just can’t afford to notice.
Here’s what would actually help them:
• A public health insurance option that automatically enrolls the uninsured and negotiates drug prices, so no one falls through the cracks and medications are actually affordable.
• A universal basic income — say, $500 a month for every adult — so poverty isn’t a life sentence.
• Housing policies that make apartments affordable instead of luxury goods.
• A democracy that actually responds to people instead of donors.
These aren’t radical ideas. They’re broadly popular. But given the way our federal government is set up right now, they’re unlikely to pass.
We need deep governmental reforms — starting with ending the filibuster and overturning the Citizens United decision — to fix the political system so we can reorient our economy away from corporate capitalism and toward worker capitalism: a system where the people who do the work share in the prosperity they create. Where technology serves humans, not the other way around. Where government is competent enough to actually deliver.
Because right now, too many of my former patients have learned that it doesn’t.
— Dr. Travis Amengual, Chicago
Major blow to health care
At a time when patients are waiting weeks for appointments and hospitals are struggling to fill shifts, the last thing policymakers should be doing is making it harder to train health care professionals. Unfortunately, a recent announcement from the U.S. Department of Education lays the groundwork to limit which health care workers are considered to have professional degrees, excluding access to vital student-loan financing.
The Education Department’s proposed federal loan eligibility rule will limit the definition of a “professional degree” to 11 degrees, excluding nurses, physician assistants, physical therapists, social workers and other crucial health care roles. This would make it harder for these essential providers to finance graduate education — further straining an already stretched workforce.
Limiting the amount of federal loans these students can access will not lower tuition costs; it will create an untenable financial situation that is likely to turn them away from high-demand professions. Not to mention the disproportionate effect this will have on students from diverse and low-income backgrounds, undermining efforts to build a representative health care workforce and preventing even more qualified candidates from entering the field.
We are already facing severe shortages of physicians, nurses and allied health professionals, and we cannot afford to lose any more. I urge the Education Department to reconsider this policy and maintain current professional degree definitions to ensure a robust workforce pipeline across health care disciplines.
— Dr. Rosalind Ramsey-Goldman, Chicago
Teens getting a bad rap
Why do we allow the media to portray our teenagers so negatively? It seems news organizations focus on destructive activities downtown instead of highlighting the teens who are spending their weekends in more productive ways. Within the past month, I have witnessed amazing maturity and self-control among our teens, which has mostly gone unnoticed.
Several weeks ago, Highland Park High School hosted a chess tournament where hundreds of teens gathered to play chess. When I walked into the gym, there were dozens of teens from many schools paired together, playing chess in an absolutely quiet gym. There were no cellphones. There was no raucous behavior. There was only respect for the other players and the game.
Recently, I witnessed the same mature behavior in middle schoolers who had gathered for the solo and ensemble contest of the Northern Illinois Music Conference. Many boys and girls were gathered, carrying every instrument imaginable, and eager to perform before judges who would evaluate their level of expertise. Once again, there were no cellphones, and the halls were filled with whispers, out of consideration for those teens who were performing in the classrooms.
On neither of these occasions were adults required to patrol the halls to enforce good behavior. It came from the teens themselves. I am sure that other parents are observing this same type of responsible behavior in other sports, meetings and groups of teens.
Today’s teenagers represent the future, and we should be giving them the respect and recognition they deserve, instead of focusing our attention on those who are bent on causing havoc.
— Mary Ann McGinley, Wilmette
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