Homeless in winter ‘a matter of life and death’
As colder weather arrives, here’s how some organizations are preparing for it
As Chicago saw chilly temperatures and bouts of snowfall Friday, organizations working with people without housing are bracing themselves for the winter.
“At this time of year, both our staff and our clients are preparing physically and mentally for the winter,” said Erin Ryan, senior vice president at The Night Ministry, an organization providing housing and health care to those without housing.
Part of this effort is gathering supplies such as warm clothing, headlamps and hand warmers, collection that happens yearround but “really gears up this time of year,” said Ryan.
Life for people without housing becomes more difficult in the winter, said Ryan. It’s harder to charge phones on outside outlets, and it’s difficult to travel around the city with snow and ice.
Hygiene is also a concern as many public bathrooms close in the winter. ShowerUp, an organization that launched in September, provides mobile shower facilities to people living outside and is preparing for its first Chicago winter.
According to its co-founder and executive director Paul Schmitz, the team has “put a lot of thought into how we handle winter” — although they can technically still provide showers when the temperature falls into the teens and below, getting out of showers with wet hair in extreme cold is unsafe.
The organization’s plan is to still go visit people living in encampments and
do wellness checks as well as hand out items to maintain hygiene, ranging from body wipes to toothpaste to shaving cream.
The organization operates west of Humboldt Park at the corner of West Chicago and North Albany avenues, providing showers from noon-2 p.m. It sets up heated tents, warmed with propane heaters, for people to dry off and warm up in.
According to The Night Ministry’s Ryan, people tend to stay put in the winter, so organizations are trying to “build up what we can bring directly to people,” such as food, water and medicine.
“When staying outside is a matter of life and death,” she said, medical care becomes crucial. Staying still in tents leads to increased cases of skin infections, for example, particularly when people have multiple layers of
clothing on to stay warm.
The Night Ministry has outreach teams on the street providing medical support that ranges from treating frostbite, which is “always a concern,” as well as cold and flu, to helping clients with existing medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to infections such as pneumonia.
The teams also provide vaccinations and STI testing, and work largely near expressways, viaducts and main train lines.
The organization recently started outreach efforts on the CTA, at the end of the Blue and Red lines.
“(A) lot of people use trains as (a) de facto shelter,” said Ryan, a practice that is expected to increase as the winter season progresses.
Forcing people without housing to relocate is
“extremely dangerous,” she added, referencing actions taken both by the city and neighboring residents. People who are displaced in the winter would lose body heat trying to find new places to stay.
The winter also brings more people who previously stayed outside to seek shelter, said Richard Ducatenzeiler, executive director of homeless shelter Franciscan Outreach. The organization operates shelters in North Lawndale, Pilsen and East Garfield Park on Chicago’s South and West sides, which generally have less consistent services for homeless people.
According to Ducatenzeiler, the lifting of the eviction moratorium has brought more people who are homeless for the first time to shelters as well, but shelters have even lower capacity
due to the pandemic and its social-distancing requirements. Franciscan Outreach went from 280 beds at its largest shelter to 210, and in general decreased its bed capacity by 20%.
COVID-19 has also made getting help from volunteers more difficult — the nonprofit Sarah’s Circle, located in Uptown, is unable to bring volunteers on site, but people can still help in other ways, including providing meals or sack lunches, or signing up for the nonprofit’s Winter Walk.
Franciscan Outreach’s shelters have sought to manage the spread of COVID-19 by putting up partitions between beds, but they still have communal bathrooms where people are forced to come in close contact.
The organization hopes to transition to a less “congregate” style, where there are fewer beds in one room.
Part of this also has to do with safety.
Many people avoid shelters out of fear that their belongings will be taken or that harm will be done to them by others staying there. There are also often regulations that dissuade people from staying, such as curfews.
Franciscan Outreach is piloting a low-barrier shelter in Pilsen that does away with common shelter regulations, allowing people to bring partners or pets in with them.
Ducatenzeiler sees this as a solution to providing more people with shelter in “unpredictable” Chicago winters, where sudden temperature drops will lead more people to quickly seek shelter. But he added that it’s a model that “requires more funding and support.”
When it comes to helping organizations and their clients, Ryan recommended financial donations or clothes and other supplies, which are “always needed,” she said. But she recommended calling ahead to check because “oftentimes what’s needed is very specific.”
According to ShowerUp’s Schmitz, financial help would get them to “more places” and can be given through their website.
According to Ryan, calling one’s alderman to learn about organizations doing work in specific communities is helpful for people unsure where to start.
She added that showing “general support for organizations and efforts to help people living outside” is needed, including calling aldermen to install porta-potties, outside tents or hand-washing stations.
This would “make life better for everyone,” she said.