The Chicago Coalition for the
Homeless estimates 138,575 Chicagoans were homeless in 2014. This number was up
19.4% from just one year earlier, and is expected to rise again in 2015. The
evidence of this growing homeless population can be seen in the streets of the
Loop, the university and business district of the city. Hidden beneath the
skyscrapers, university campuses and expensive Magnificent Mile designer stores
are hundreds of homeless individuals that have fallen through the cracks of the
same society that built the city to its heights.
It is all too easy to ignore
these individuals and walk past them – something we are all guilty of doing on
a daily basis – but it takes a different kind of person to stop, take notice,
and try to make a change in the daily lives of the people the system forgot.
The South Loop Campus Ministry started life as an organised community meal for
students at the Roosevelt, DePaul and Columbia university campuses surrounding
Grace Place, an Episcopal church at 637 South Dearborn, in 2007. However, after
a while it became clear that many of the individuals that arrived to take
advantage of the free food and drink served at these community meals were not
students but homeless men and women that lived in the streets of the Loop.
Reverend Tom Gaulke shifted the focus of the ministry from feeding students to
developing a community meal for the homeless at Grace Place in response to this
and it proved incredibly successful. Excess food was taken to the streets and
handed out to anybody who was hungry, and with that the current South Loop
Campus Ministry was born. Today, under the leadership of Pastor Benjamin Adams,
the ministry takes a shopping cart filled with packed lunches, soup and
clothing to the streets every Sunday, other than the last Sunday of the month
when a community meal is held at Grace Place for anybody who is hungry.
Although run by Ben and seminary
intern Joe Hopkins, the SLCM is reliant on volunteer work from individuals in
the local community in order to continue to feed the needy in its community. It
receives help from students at Roosevelt University through APO, a
service-based fraternity at the school. In addition local churches and youth
groups lend a hand, as well as residents who want to help make a difference.
The work done by SLCM feeds dozens of needy individuals on a weekly basis, and
provides a time for them to talk with individuals who otherwise may have simply
walked past. But Ben is aware that work like this, though absolutely necessary
as a lifeline for people with nothing else, is insufficient in battling the
epidemic of homelessness spreading through the city.
“Without service ministries
people would go hungry,” he says, highlighting the simple need for charity work
to help people on an individual basis, “you have to keep applying pressure to
the wound so that you don’t bleed out.” But the eventual goal of the ministry
is to sew the wound up by ending homelessness as we see it on the streets of
Chicago. As a member of many community-based organisations focused on raising
awareness of issues and mobilising force to tackle the injustices in society, Ben
is aware of the need for social movements to make change. “In a capitalistic
society, homeless people are devalued as human beings because they cannot
produce or consume” he says, “but this is not the way that God looks at people.
The image of God is in all of us, regardless of our situation.” The issue
facing the homeless in Chicago today is that they are viewed by the city administration
as a nuisance and something to be covered up, rather than people that have been
failed by our system.
“The way we deal with mental
illness is homelessness and imprisonment” says Ben. As a volunteer who has
spoken to some of the individuals we have served on the street, I was struck by
how many were suffering from a mental illness or addiction. In particular, many
of the homeless men residing on Lower Wacker Drive (sleeping directly beneath
the tourists and shoppers on the Magnificent Mile) were veterans suffering from
some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Is this really the way we want to
treat our returning heroes? If these individuals are devalued because they have
lost their capacity to produce or consume, as Ben suggests, then the question
that I have struggled with is why do we not attempt to restore them to health
by giving them the medical care that they need? Rather than wait for someone
with a mental illness to harm themselves or others before intervening, why not
be proactive and treat these illnesses in the ways that we can in order to give
that individual a chance to function as a valuable member of society? In 1960,
400 per 100,000 mentally ill people were hospitalized, by 1990 this had fallen
to 50 per 100,000. In 2012 there were an estimated 356,268 mentally ill prison
inmates in the US, compared with only 35,000 in state psychiatric hospitals.
With the advancement of modern medicine there is no excuse for the
criminalization of the mentally ill. Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Governor Bruce
Rauner continue to cut funding for mental healthcare at a time when mental
health services are already feeling the pinch. We are expecting seriously ill
individuals to be able to pay for their own treatment when they often cannot
work because of the affliction they suffer with.
Ben notes the emergence of a new
breed of homeless individuals, lower middle class families that have been
forced out of their homes by debt, largely as a result of medical bills. The
middle class is vanishing in America as a result of the increasing polarization
of income and wealth distribution. In 1968 the top 10% controlled 50% of the
nation’s wealth, today that number has increased to 80%. Meanwhile, the middle
class is disappearing as more and more families fall below the poverty line.
There is no safety net for families that are barely treading water anyway when
someone in that family falls ill. This is leading to an increasing number of
couples and children who are finding themselves homeless. Chicago Public
Schools identified 22,144 homeless students in the 2013-14 school year. Usually
the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) takes homeless
children away from their families and puts them into foster care, but with the
number of homeless families increasing this is becoming a bigger concern that
is putting DCFS under strain.
It is time to stop ignoring the
homeless population of the city of Chicago, and of the US as a whole, and acknowledge
that this is an issue that is not going to go away. These people are like you
and me, and given the chance they can teach us so much about how to survive
true hardship and overcome even the most hopeless situations. Some have made
mistakes, and some are suffering with mental illnesses and afflictions that we
may not fully understand, but they do not deserve to be forgotten in a society
that has the power to lift every individual out of poverty and chooses not to.
Individuals like Ben Adams and the SLCM dedicate their time to helping the most
disadvantaged members of society in whatever way they can. The work done by
SLCM provides a lifeline for people that often have no other means of getting
food or clothing to survive Chicago’s bitterly cold winters, but it should not
be necessary. It should not require an army of volunteers to take to the
streets to help human beings that have the potential to make real change and
improvements to our society. It should be a priority to fix the
poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of a city that I consider to be one of the best
in the world before we try to increase the wealth of the already-rich.
Unfortunately it is not, and that makes work such as that done by SLCM
absolutely vital to ensuring that some of the 138,575 Chicago homeless have
food in their bellies and clothes on their backs.
SLCM is a faith-based
organization, but it welcomes volunteers of all faiths and beliefs. We are all
human, and we all deserve a chance to better ourselves. For many of the
homeless people sleeping on the street beneath the bright lights of America’s third
largest city their situation can seem hopeless. But nothing is hopeless, and organizations
like SLCM help to reignite that hope in people that might otherwise have none.
Until we can make a bigger change, we should feel obligated to continue
applying pressure to that wound while we enjoy the privilege that we have.
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