"The poor you will always have with you..."
Thoughts on recent increases in homelessness
Last week, my family took the train to downtown Chicago. We hopped on the Metra and take the nearest line all the way to the end: Chicago’s well-known and large train hub, the Ogilvie Transportation Center. It is a big terminal, and you reach a bunch of fast food restaurants just a minute after stepping off your train. For our return home at night, we were in a hurry to get through the terminal and onto our train before it departed. If we missed it, we would be waiting another hour before the next train would take us to our destination.
As my wife and kids visited the ladies’ room, I ran to the men’s room myself, and then positioned myself at the base of an escalator that would take us up to the trains, so I could flag my family down and get us moving right when they emerged from the bathroom. A young lady bundled in a thick coat approached me and in a sweet voice, asked me if I could buy her a Gatorade. “I’m homeless and I just had a seizure a bit ago, and I’m so dehydrated, I need the electrolytes.” Of course I agreed; there was a Dunkin Donuts a few steps away, so I bought her the drink. She was very appreciative, and before I could say much more, my family emerged. I called to them, and when I turned around to find the young lady, she had completely disappeared in the bustling crowd.
My family and I hurried up, settled into our seats on the train, and I got to thinking about the young lady. Readers of this blog from the old Wordpress site know that I am not entirely disconnected from and unaware of the world of poverty. I run a community dinner at my church each Friday night that serves many dozens of homeless and low-income guests. I know how pervasive homelessness is, in this country and most others, and through all of human history. I know. But seeing it in a different context, with the reminder that the third largest city in America does not have sufficient housing and resources for this lady to avoid sheltering in a train depot… it just sucks.
It should be obvious to nuanced critical thinkers that there is no single cause, and no single fix, for homelessness. Some cities and countries address the challenges better than others, but it is still incredibly difficult for any area to come up with a solution that will put a sizable dent in the problem.
About a year and a half ago, I wrote this post about the market pricing out too many people. I cannot recall exact statistics because estimates have varied in recent years, but I have seen that the number of affordable rental units is meeting only 25-40% of the total need in the country, and I would venture to guess that any estimate around 40% is extremely generous.
To cite more statistics about homelessness in America, the total of unsheltered homeless in America is well over a half million. That number does not include most of the “sheltered homeless” population who are sleeping in some shelters with specialized programs, or are couch surfing, or are paying the exorbitant costs of hotels or motels while trying to find permanent housing.
Let me talk for a moment about Elgin, IL (a Chicago northwest suburb) with relatively strong support for unsheltered homeless who are sleeping outside. In Elgin, there is a partnership of churches that ensure a breakfast and dinner “soup kettle” are served every single day at a church somewhere in Elgin. My Friday evening dinner is technically not a part of this soup kettle rotation; as a church ministry event, we take occasional breaks, have special events at times, provide many tables of free clothing and blankets, and offer an ambitious buffet dinner. It is widely known throughout Elgin that if you are homeless in Elgin, you will not starve. This makes Elgin, the 7th largest city in Illinois by population, a viable destination for some unhoused citizens looking to survive on the streets.
At times, city government has struggled with the presence and challenges of an unhoused population in its midst. Many unhoused residents have told me over the years how frequently the city has blamed their presence for the relatively under-developed downtown nightlife (apart from one casino). A year ago, the city announced its most significant step that I could remember toward offering shelter for the homeless, which was a planned tiny home development. The project initially was pledged just under one million dollars. The first phase was supposed to launch November 2023, which was one month ago. And how many tiny homes have been built to date?
Zero. In fact, several community leaders and unhoused citizens who were a part of a committee involved with supporting and consulting on the development have told me that discussions on the project died months ago. This site still does not have a parcel of land dedicated to the project, to my knowledge.
At the same time, the city approved a local nonprofit to run a winter overnight shelter every night from December through February. Previous winters saw the shelter only open when temperatures were forecast to dip below 15 degrees, which left many sleeping outdoors at risk when it was, for example, 18 degrees outside but with dangerous wind chill. So this is a positive.
Recently, several guests at the Friday night dinner brought to my attention another source of frustration for them. As far as they are concerned, the tiny home dream is dead for right now. But Elgin was quick to accept just over a million dollars in grants for migrants coming to the city from the southern border. The city made note it is not technically a “sanctuary city”, however. And to my knowledge, Elgin has not received an inordinate number of asylum-seekers.
But it took in money (which was promptly distributed to at least three organizations), some migrants, and a handful of challenges recently. Anecdotally, police have seen a rise in undocumented individuals from as far as Honduras and Venezuela, and perhaps on a related note, a stark increase in drugs and overdoses within the homeless community in recent months. And we can still be justified in lamenting that we still don’t know where the million dollars went to help Elgin’s unhoused, but it gladly accepted over a million to help people who just arrived from the border.
This local and national conundrum would require its own post, with a level of complexity that has clearly gotten the best of elected officials, so I am certainly not the one to exposit all of the details. But the bottom line for all things related to homelessness is that our culture needs to care enough about the challenge to drastically increase available housing and competent mental health resources, and promote economic flourishing for individuals in poverty for various reasons. If most neighborhoods remain gripped by “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) thinking, to block new developments of affordable housing and public housing, all the therapy in the world won’t help someone with a new entry level job move from the street or a hotel room to permanent housing that doesn’t exist. Flood the market with low-income, affordable, and mid-level housing, and it will have a domino effect that will alleviate the problems for at least a few classes of housing seekers.
I also know that God’s people have a calling and responsibility that dates back the Law of Moses to be radically generous to the poor. Although Jesus was talking about an entirely different situation, he wasn’t kidding in Matthew 26:11 when he said “the poor you will always have among you…” It is likely that Jesus was making a passing reference to Deuteronomy 15:11, which reads,
“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”
(note: I wrote more extensively about this passage in Deut. 15 in this post from 2 years ago.)
Like all things related to the biblical Babylon that is government, I have low expectations for government to get this issue right, but I also do not know precisely how the church can put large dent in the problems that evolving in its community. I do know that if churches are willing to band together (a big ask) and be openhanded (an even bigger ask), God can empower his people with creativity to do something.