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LOCAL Commentary :: Civil & Human Rights

Quick Fix or Legitimate Restructuring?

commentary on homelessness, gentrification, and discrimination
The City of Chicago currently has a disproportionately high density of homeless men and women in the north side neighborhood of Uptown. Over the past two years the face of Uptown has changed from a low/middle class, ethnically diverse neighborhood to a rapidly gentrifying upper middle class, white neighborhood. I work at the corner of Lawrence and Sheridan: I can count at least eight new or gut rehab condo developments in a two-block radius off the top of my head. That doesn’t include the projects that have been completed and are now occupied, or the ones I’ve missed.

This drastic turnover has caused a lot of stress for the homeless in Uptown. Last August I learned of area residents videotaping homeless in the park and on the street. Cornerstone’s male emergency shelter is now closed and it’s female shelter has cut it’s stay to 4 months unless the woman is working or in school. The other shelters seem to be heading in the same direction. Breakthrough Urban Ministries, for men and women, is scheduled to move to the city’s west side: an economically depressed and highly segregated section of Chicago. Salvation Army for men is losing fifty beds to the same area.

As an activist I cannot help but wonder whether Uptown is succumbing to the pressures of money and race. It is as though the homeless are being shipped off to the west side, out of sight and out of mind from the eyes of the younger, more white, more financially stable residents moving to Uptown.

Transplanting homeless individuals without providing adequate supportive services does not encourage or allow for as much societal change to produce visible results. Taking emergency beds offline may not seem like a big deal, unless of course you are now the person forced to sleep in the park or abandoned building that is. In fact it is an even bigger issue considering the cost of living and the shrinking number of affordable housing units, supportive housing programs, and subsidized housing programs in the city.

Some may feel that this shift will be good. That it will in fact cause homeless men and women to change their act and begin to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. What this view does not acknowledge is the numerous reasons why these individuals have ended up being chronically homeless, how difficult it can be to shift from being homeless to housed, or the reason why people become homeless: lists which often mirror each other. The National Coalition Against Homelessness states that the main reasons a person becomes homeless are: poverty, lack of affordable housing, lack of affordable health care, domestic violence, mental illness, and substance use disorders.

I only hope that the homeless and the residents in Uptown can come to an agreement. I fear that the homeless forced to relocate to the west side will fall through the cracks even further than they already are. Housing is a human right, regardless of income or issue. At the same time it is easy for me to make this argument based on the fact that I am also young, white, and more financially stable than those who find themselves homeless in Uptown. At least I’m trying to do something about it: advocate for those who most need it.
 
 

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