Chicago Tribune: Crowded houses - program seeks to aid homeless families forced to live with family, friends

Published June 2, 2017

By Tony Briscoe, Chicago Tribune reporter

Pandemonium has been the norm for 17-year-old Sonitra Mitchell in the two years since her family lost their north suburban apartment and moved in with more than a dozen relatives living at her grandmother’s Far South Side two-flat.

Each morning, before the sun rises, the high school junior is roused by a flurry of footsteps and flickering lights before she gets up and jockeys for position outside the bathroom. After a five-minute shower, enforced by a timer, she gets dressed and hustles to catch a city bus from West Pullman to Harlan Community Academy, about 4 miles away.

After class, she takes her time before heading back into the fray of the crowded household.

LINK TO VIEW VIDEO: In collaboration with the nonprofit Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a new city program looks to help families forced to live with others. (Alyssa Pointer and Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

“I didn’t like coming home,” Sonitra said. “I would stay at school as long as possible to do anything I could. I would sit at school and do homework, talk to friends. … But every time I woke up I was like, ‘I have to start this day over and over, again.'”

Sprawling homeless encampments under viaducts and families vying for beds at local shelters are the most visible examples of housing instability. But there are thousands more who have seen their lives upended by economic hardship, forcing them to move in with friends or family.

For the first time, people like Sonitra — who fall into a category known as “doubled up” — are being included in an initiative to help the homeless. The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services in April announced it will be providing permanent housing for 100 homeless and at-risk families with children who live in the high-crime neighborhoods of Austin, Humboldt Park, West Englewood and Englewood.

Created in collaboration with nonprofit Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the pilot program seeks to provide housing stability for students. The program will be paid for through a city tax on the home-sharing industry, which includes companies like Airbnb.

In implementing the city tax, Chicago joins a handful of municipalities across the country that have created a sustainable stream of funds dedicated to assisting homeless families instead of relying on unpredictable state and federal money. In March, Los Angeles County residents voted to increase the sales tax a quarter-percent to raise an estimated $3.5 billion over a decade in an effort to house 45,000 of the county’s 47,000 homeless people.

Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services identified nearly 5,900 homeless people in shelters or on the streets — the lowest number in 10 years — during its 2016 homeless count, which adheres to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development definition of homelessness.

But the homeless coalition for years has argued that there are thousands more who are homeless under the Department of Education definition, which includes individuals who have moved in with others due to loss of housing or economic hardship, or in other words are doubled up.

Sonitra Mitchell, from left, Shacoori Jackson and Chrishauna Thompson laugh among themselves while posing for a portrait May 17, 2017, in the South Chicago neighborhood. All three have been doubled-up, living with various family members without having a permanent home, at one point in their lives. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune)

“I don’t think we’ve ever been that far apart on an empathy standpoint,” said Lisa Morrison Butler, commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services. “The vast majority of our funding is federal or state, and based on those dollars and based on the definition of what they truly consider homelessness, we have to concentrate on those who are on the street or in shelters.

The homeless coalition in April released an estimate that found there were more than 82,000 homeless people in Chicago, 82 percent of whom fell into the doubled-up category.

According to Chicago Public Schools, there were about 18,800 homeless students during the 2015-16 school year, a nearly 7 percent drop compared with the previous school year. Eighty-seven percent of those students were doubled up.

Families with children who attend Ellington, Nicholson, Earle, Ward, Howe and Lowell elementary schools are expected to be a priority under the pilot program.

Julie Dworkin, policy director at the homeless coalition, said the inclusion of doubled-up families was an important first step in recognizing other forms of housing instability.

“It’s really big, something we’ve been pushing on for 20 years,” Dworkin said. “We know from working with doubled-up families that they struggle with the same things and have the same needs as those who are in shelters.” ”

Because Sonitra does not live in the targeted neighborhoods, she and her siblings will likely not benefit from the pilot program. But her situation illustrates the problem the new policy seeks to address.

For Sonitra, the constant commotion and lack of sleep caused her to suffer anxiety and depression.

“My attitude was terrible,” she said. “I didn’t want to be around anybody. I didn’t want to talk with anybody. If you said the wrong thing, I would snap. It would bother people like, ‘Why does she act like that?’ And it was frustrating because people didn’t know the pressure and anxiety I was dealing with.”

Sonitra’s mother, Sonita Lewis, said she never intended for her personal struggles to become her children’s. The family had an apartment in Chicago’s Parkway Gardens neighborhood when Lewis decided to move to far north suburban Lake Villa to shield her kids from the city’s persistent violence.

Shortly before the move, her car broke down, preventing her from finding a job, she said. She soon fell behind on bills, and the family lived without water and electricity before they moved in with relatives in West Pullman.

“Thank God we weren’t out under a bridge or on the street, but it still felt like we were,” Lewis said. “It should’ve been coming home to family with open arms. But it wasn’t open arms. It was a turned back.”

Chrishauna Thompson, 17, said the strains of living in a doubled-up situation can be difficult.

When her mother decided to leave an abusive relationship, Chrishauna, then 10, and her siblings found themselves at the door of a domestic violence shelter. At the time, she thought the family, which had never been homeless, had finally hit “rock bottom.” But she reassured herself it would only be temporary.

For the next six years, the search for stable housing took the family from Milwaukee to Mississippi. The hardest times, she said, were when they were living with relatives. At an aunt’s home, 10 people were crammed into a two-bedroom apartment, and Chrishauna said she often slept on the floor.

“To be honest, the shelter was better,” Chrishauna said. “At the shelter we were in our own room. In the morning it wasn’t as chaotic. They had to let the school kids get dressed first. It was some organization. Even though you had to deal with bedbugs and things like that, it was better than sleeping on the floor and having to be late for school all the time.”

All of the moves were accompanied by the challenge of changing schools and making new friends. Through it all, Chrishauna, whose family eventually found housing last year, persevered, taking honors and advanced placement courses at Chicago Vocational High School.

Though she, too, is outside of the pilot program’s target area, she hopes her dedication to her schoolwork will help her become the first in her family to attend college. With one more year of high school, she has her sights set on Central Michigan University, where she hopes to earn her degree and become a social worker.

“I hope college opens some doors for me,” she said. “I don’t have a set plan, but I’m just gonna ride this wave.”

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Chicago Tribune: Crowded houses – program seeks to aid homeless families forced to live with family, friends

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