Evanston City Council members have delayed until May consideration of a plan to aid the city’s unhoused population, including addressing an encampment at the Howard Street viaduct on the city’s far south side.
After concerns from colleagues, Council Member Devon Reid (8th Ward) on Monday ultimately moved that his $500,000 request be tabled until May 28 in hopes of taking a more comprehensive approach then. The council approved tabling the plan by a 6-0 vote.
Reid’s proposal seeks $200,000 to fund support services for District 65 students facing or at risk of homelessness and another $300,000 to go to the city’s Health & Human Services Department to address encampments at Howard Street and in downtown.
Reid said the funding would support “interventions that can make a real difference in the public safety, attractiveness of public transit in the city of Evanston and Howard Street.”
The $500,000 request initially was part of a $1.75 million package that included $1.25 million for Connections for the Homeless, but Reid said he removed the Connections funding from his request because there was “more work to be done” on that component.
‘Illicit’ drug use’ at Howard site
Reid called for a plan last year to address the encampments last summer, putting council members on notice that 15 to 20 unhoused people, some with severe substance abuse issues, had formed an encampment at the viaduct on the Evanston side of Howard Street, across from the CTA transit station entrance.
A city outreach team now visits the viaduct daily, “including weekends, to speak to the people who are spending time there,” wrote Ike Ogbo, the city’s Director of Health and Human Services, in a memo to the council.
“These individuals do not live in the space but choose to spend time there. During engagement with visitors to the specific area, no one will take ownership of the collection of items in the space,” he wrote. “The outreach team has found evidence that not only is there illicit drug use in the space, but many find it to be a place to ‘hang out.’
“There have been microwaves, coffee pots, and other items plugged into the outlet on the property of the CTA, making the space even more comfortable for additional visitors who want to dwell for longer periods of time. In addition to drug use, visitors commune in this area to play music, eat food and enjoy each other’s company in a conveniently sheltered space from the rain and cold winds.”
Homelessness has been on the rise in the United States, increasing 6% since 2017, Ogbo said, citing a National Alliance to End Homelessness report. “Evanston is not insusceptible to homelessness,” he wrote, noting that there have been several other intermittent encampments identified at different locations in the city.
Regular complaints from residents
During Monday’s discussion, Reid told council members that he fields calls “fairly regularly” from residents in both Evanston and Chicago about the encampment issue. He said one of the calls from Chicago’s 49th Ward was from an older woman.
“And the woman shared with me that she was afraid to get off on the Paulina side of the [Howard Street L] platform, which is close to her home, because she fears as an elderly woman she could be a target for being mugged or something else,” Reid told council members.
He said when he made his initial proposal for funding last year his aim was to have money allocated in the city’s 2024 budget to address the problem. That didn’t happen, however. He said that proposal included a commitment for 30 slots of drug treatment. “That is probably not on the table now,” he said.
He told council members, “I truly believe that our Health and Human Services Department – and really in conjunction with our Parks and Recreation Department, which runs the city’s outreach team – need this additional funding to be able to address the situation in a multitude of ways.”
Funding for District 65, he said, “will allow us to take some of the burden off the Health Department” staff, who have been working with the district to find housing for people, “so this will make our own operations more efficient.”
“As a former District 65 student who faced homelessness myself,” he added after the meeting, “it [the school support] is really close to my heart.”
Nieuwsma: ‘Robust’ response needed
In discussion, a number of council members said they shared some of Reid’s concerns but wanted a more comprehensive plan before approving any funding.
Council Member Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward) acknowledged “that not only our community, but our country, has a problem with homelessness.” Until now, he said, Evanston has managed to deal with the problem without dipping too much into the city’s own funds, leveraging state, county and federal money.
At some point, though, he said, “it will … demand an Evanston response, using Evanston money in a more robust way.”
“I want to make sure that not if, but when we get to that point, we are doing so in a thoughtful and proactive, strategic manner in collaboration with all the community stakeholders that are involved in dealing with with these issues,” he said.
In the meantime, Nieuwsma said, a number of initiatives are on their way to the council, addressing different factors in homelessness. He mentioned an $810,000 rental assistance program that grew out of the participatory budgeting process and a $400,000 allocation for the city’s community responder program, which will send trained unarmed civilians to answer some 911 calls and attempt to resolve issues.
“Coming to us very shortly will be a recommendation from HCDC [the city’s Housing and Community Development Committee] to invest a million dollars of federal money in the Margarita Inn,” he said, referring to the city’s first permanent homeless shelter, at 1566 Oak Ave., in his ward. “So we are taking some strategic and thoughtful approaches here.”
Reid stressed the need for urgency, noting the conversation around the issue has been going on for close to a year, and “I’ve got people in my ward who are afraid to take the train,” he said, referring to the encampment outside the Howard CTA station.
Harris: City needs to meet with District 65
Council Member Krissie Harris (2nd Ward) argued that the situation at Howard is not strictly a homelessness issue. Rather, “it’s a drug area,” she maintained. “The people are passed out, passing out. …
“Most of these people have somewhere to be,” she said. “They don’t want to be there, because they can’t engage in the behavior that they have there [on Howard Street].”
She recalled an attempt to bring Peer Services, a longtime addiction treatment center in Evanston, to the area “to get service to these outside residents.”
But you “can’t make anybody want to get help until they want to get help,” she said to council members. “So I’m not comfortable without a plan. We are short on money. Our government, scarily, has become a social service agency of Evanston, not a government. And we’ve got to figure that out.”
District 65 is the city’s biggest taxing body, Harris noted. So in figuring out a plan, “we [the city and District 65] need to sit at a table and do that [arrive at a solution] collectively.”
Reid: Group at spot 24 hours a day
Council Member Bobby Burns (5th Ward) said whether the issue is tabled or not, he would like to see a proposal tailored to address the situation at Howard Street. “I’m not prepared to support anything for District 65 at this point,” he said. “I’m not prepared to support, honestly even anything for the city, until we have a conversation about how we want to go about this.”
Council Member Clare Kelly (1st Ward), in whose downtown ward small encampments have sprung up from time to time, also said a broader plan should be considered. “I think we need measurables,” she said. “How do we measure success? What are the targeted outcomes? There’s just so much more involved. I do think this is something that we desperately do need to address.”
Reid said he recognized that drugs are an issue, mentioning it in his call for action to the council last year. He said he understood Harris’ contention that some of the individuals at the Howard Street encampment have their own housing, but estimated that it’s a small number. If more did have housing, he explained later, it would be easier for the city to move them from their current spot, based on a recent Chicago consent decree.
As things stand now, he told council members, the people at Howard are there around the clock. “They have gone there late at night and they’re still there early in the morning,” he said. “So whether they’re homeless or not, they’re there, seeming, 24 hours a day.”
He said the city would need to develop alternatives, including providing housing, if officials are to move them.
Coordinated approach
Ogbo reported in his memo that a number of meetings with service providers have been held to fashion a strategy to address the Howard encampment and other intermittent city encampments. After the issue arose in July 2023, he wrote, Reid “convened and organized meetings with City staff and multiple organizations, including Peer Services, Connections for the Homeless, the CTA, Chicago’s 49th Ward Alderman’s Office, and the City of Chicago Department of Family Support Services. The gathering aimed to coordinate efforts to deliver necessary aid to the unhoused population at the Howard viaduct.”
Ogbo said the “fundamental elements of this coordinated approach” being considered include:
- “Securing and funding housing rapid response events.
- Offering drug treatment and medication.
- Providing case management services.
- Engaging public safety options for those who decline assistance.
- Activating spaces where large encampments have previously existed.
- Providing adequate lighting in the vicinity for security and safety purposes.”
“The key to amply succeeding in this venture is matching people to affordable, appropriate, and stable housing, including services for health care (mental health and substance abuse treatment), employment, and childcare services,” Ogbo wrote.
“Evanston has limited affordable units and rising rents, which will be challenging to achieve without having a significant affordable housing program to address the housing needs. It requires the coordination of a service system not only to provide housing but also to support long-term housing stability and the creation of enough permanent housing to meet the demand,” he concluded.
Connections for the Homeless, as “the professionals in the field,” would lead the $1.25 million portion of the project that wasn’t part of the discussion Monday night – and would tackle the growing needs of Evanston’s unhoused population, Ogbo’s memo said.
The program drawn up would address not only the Howard encampment but the conditions that might lead to other encampments in the future, Ogbo’s memo said.
I believe Mr. Burnett put it best: On the homeless issues, Evanston = head-in-sand, overriding insistence on looking correct, deep aversion to soiling our hands and a noticeable dose of hypocracy. IOW, the usual human habits in the face of a truly significant and impossible problem.
Impossible without a lot more self honesty, anyway. Really – Parks & Rec given a box of bandaids and sent onto the battlefield as our Face of Compassion? When I think of the people who set that up and sold it with a straight face… I could get angry.
There is also a problem with people who hang out by the south end of the tunnel from Howard station, where the buses stop. Most of these people don’t seem to be waiting for buses. There are parks close enough for hanging out. Sometimes they stand across the entire tunnel entrance. I’ve never been bothered by them, but they’re not people I’d want in my home. I avoid this place, too. The station is for passengers only, so those who aren’t waiting for the next bus should be rousted out of there. Police are at this station often enough. Why are these loiterers being tolerated?
The “homeless problem” will never be resolved, for two reasons:
1. A good number of street homeless *prefer* the “street life”, as this article portrays. No matter how much money and effort are taken to “assist” them, they are simply a “lost cause”, as they have no motivation to improve their lot. Having worked in homeless services, including street outreach, this is the harsh reality
2. Not one more cent for Connections for the Homeless! As part of the corpulent “Homeless – Industrial Complex”, they are only interested in *perpetuating* Evanston’s homeless problem to gain ever more millions in funding so as to seem “virtuous”. As a result of these generous “homeless services”, their “clients” have flocked to Evanston – we see them loitering/begging on our streets/parks/CTA, in our downtown Library (I work there, and the place has become “unsafe” because of their presence IMO) and disrupting our businesses. I’m right around the corner from the Margarita Inn (and a church overnight shelter) and the quality of life in our once – safe neighborhood is degraded by these “homeless services” outfits, which include Interfaith Action of Evanston
Our “progressive” leadership is simply naïve in believing that ever more monies poured into homeless services will “solve” the problem – look at the billions *already* spent in California, Oregon, Washington and elsewhere, where the homeless problem has now become simply intractable…
IMO monies spent on rental assistance for already – housed people should be the *sole* focus of homeless services spending – this is called “prevention” and is an equitable and excellent way to *prevent* homelessness. In Evanston, priority should go to our families, seniors, and veterans…
Respectfully,
Gregory Morrow – Evanston 4th Ward resident, former Connections for the Homeless employee, and Margarita Inn “neighbor”
BS. As a frequent volunteer with the homeless, the number of people who do not want housing is a very small percentage of the people who are unhoused. (There is a very small proportion who are mentally ill to the point of psychosis who are very hard to help under our current legal system. However, that is a tiny portion of the issue)
What they *really* don’t want is to have to live in unsafe situations that are not clean and have curfews and no security for their belongings, which is what many “solutions” offer (not the Margarita Inn, but space is not always available there)
Rental assistance alone is not sufficient, although it is critically important. Unfortunately, landlords in our current housing market have found that moving tenants on, especially tenants with large families is in their financial interest. They don’t always use rent to get rid of them. Evanston landlords are indeed a big part of the problem.
Appropriate housing responses for the unhoused will go a long way to solving this problem, along with good medical care – many people use street drugs to self-medicate (imagine if you didn’t have access to caffeine, aspirin, antacids, cold medicine, or anything else you could buy at a drugstore let alone prescription drugs and the support of a medical professional.) Addiction is of course complicated and you can’t force addicts to become clean, but we can certainly do a better job than we are doing now.
It’s very easy to judge neighbors when you don’t know their story.
It may be true that only a minority of homeless people are committed to homelessness. As a retired mental health professional who at times treated homeless people in a hospital, I can say that this minority of the homeless were suffering from severe mental illness. For this reason I take issue with Mr. Morrow’s stigmatizing such people as a “lost cause” and as having “no motivation to improve their lot.” They are ill and need our care and protection. These homeless are a subset of the entire group of homeless people, who need a different approach than rent subsidies. What they most need is regular psychiatric and medical treatment in a supervised setting, which, like housing, they also reject.
We do not know what category of homelessness is represented by the people congregating under the Howard Viaduct. In fact, according to the RT article , many of them are not even homeless. Therefore, the first order of business is to determine which of them frequent the Viaduct but have housing, and which of them are unhoused; and of the latter, which are mentally ill, substance users, medically ill, with or without family or relatives, with or without any resources, or which of them congregate under the Viaduct as families. The latter seems unlikely, as child protective services would have been involved by now if that were the case.
The bottom line is that you cannot find effective solutions by generalizing the problem, even if you have all the money in the World to throw at it. The City of Chicago and the City of Evanston should put together a team of social service professionals to assess the make up of the group and to determine the needs of various sub groups or individuals, and then to start seeking solutions. It’s not an easy or quick fix, but as is written in “Pirke Avot” (“Ethics of the Fathers”), which is a collection of wisdom from the Talmudic sages: “You are not required to finish the work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.”
So many important subjects on the table. The number one issue is lack of resources. The biggest gap to fill is housing. Chicago being one of a few sanctuary cities means there will be more folks struggling in our community. We need to steer the conversation away from the stigmatizing language of fear and unsubstantiated accounts from old ladies. Is there a pattern of people being robbed in front of the encampment? As difficult as it can be to see tangible evidence of our broken world, I don’t think the folks at the encampment are violent. If there was a real danger it would be easy to get actual data rather than rely on perceived danger based on unsubstantiated fears of certain community members. Also what does engaging them in public safety options if they decline assistance mean? Can we make that kind of language more transparent. Just say we’ll call the cops and ticket you for existing if you don’t engage with community responders. And the community responders are not experts in social services. They took random folks that work for parks and rec department and made them jr police. These are not experts. It’s good that the responders are from the community, but they don’t have the tools to address anything other than rowdy youth. We need to put the kind of figures into affordable housing that we invest in public safety. The city is making it rain cash on the EPD like they’re Atlanta strippers while we offer minuscule sums to address the needs of folks who need it the most. It’s nice to see our city council engaging in real discussions about the subject and acknowledge that it’s significant enough to merit more than a bandaid.
Mr. Burnett Your comment is certainly mean spirited. “The unsubstantiated accounts from old ladies.” So I understand from your comment that the folks at the Howard L are more important than some “fearful” old lady. You go on to say that we are spending way too much money on EPD. Sort of like putting money in certain clothing of Atlanta strippers. No lets spend money “on the folks who really need it i.e. the homeless who congregate at the Howard L You go on to say that the outreach workers know nothing about social services. I am 100% certain that that is an area not studied by you either.
To the extent these people are using drugs or are homeless by choice, the City should send regular police sweeps followed by sanitation pickups to improve public safety. The south side of Howard by the CTA station is Chicago property not Evanston, so there should be coordination with the CTA, CPD and S&S. If people there want help then assistance carefully thought through and properly planned should be done before wildly throwing money at it. What we don’t want is to become a magnet city attracting homeless people to Evanston because our benefits make it comfortable for them to be here.
If I understand my history right, the bodies and muscle that “made America” consisted largely of “homeless” crowding European cities which the well-off and entitled didnt want to look at, be close to or deal with in any way. Happily for them, the powerful were looking for bodies to throw into the NewWorld in order to figure out how to make huge buck$. Using many and various methods, many thousands of unwanted people ended up on the NewWorld. Win win.
Now my point: This homeless problem looks like it has deep roots. Is history repeatong itself? And many homeless just are not interested in fitting in. Not looking carefully into what we are really dealing with is just a real fat way throw away a _lot_ of money with no meaningful results at all.
In my opinion, most of the immigrants from Europe back in the day weren’t homeless there. Many fled persecution of various kinds.
Wait a minute: the city sends people out there daily? They have determined that none of the people are homeless and that they are congregating to hang out, disturb the peace, and do drugs in the public right-of-way.
Instead of sending the Health Department out there daily, why isn’t the city sending the cops to clear the area?
I don’t necessarily agree with criminalizing drug use. But it seems pretty straightforward for the cops to clear an area where random have taken over the public right-of-way to party. Give the squatters information about substance abuse programs and send them on their way.
If they want to party and do drugs, they can go for it in the confines of their own home.
Randall, the problem with having cops clear the area is that first you need the 49th Ward Alderman working with the 24th District CPD to clear out all the drug dealers and gangbangers that have taken over Howard St from the El down to Ashland as well as the ones over by the busses by Pete’s Grill. Unfortunately the 49th Ward Alderman has publicly stated that she is committed to defunding the police. We residents that live NOH are very vocal about this drug/gang activity but it falls on deaf ears because the Alderman doesn’t care what happens up here. In fact she has plans on making this area the new Cabrini Green. Buckle up!