Chicago’s Ten Year Plan: Is It Working?

The city of Chicago is in their third year of implementing their Ten Year Plan to end homelessness. Here's an article about this.

(At least they are implementing their plan. Here in Los Angeles we are in our third year of still creating our plan.)

Like many other cities in America, Chicago’s plan is centered around replacing their homeless shelters with permanent housing (specifically patterning their plan after the “Housing First” model.)

Chicago Mayor Daley says there has been progress since the kick off of their plan. Critics disagree. Who is right?

The mayor says they have increased the number of permanent housing units for the homeless from 3,600 units in 2002 to 4,900 units in 2005. They also decreased the number of shelter beds from 5,800 to nearly 3,900 beds since 2002.

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says the city is closing homeless shelters before the resources are available to replace them. The mayor’s office says there are 6,715 homeless in Chicago and 5,000 are in shelters.

Let’s look at Los Angeles… there are around 90,000 homeless people in the County of Los Angeles, and nearly 13,000 shelter beds.

So clearly, L.A.’s Ten Year Plan should not decrease shelter beds. In fact, we need a lot more to help get people off the streets.

The preliminary L.A. plan is proposing the development of 50,000 permanent affordable housing units in the next ten years. That is a good number. As long as the resources to build these units are new funds, and not as a result of de-funding shelter or services. (L.A.’s Ten Year Plan should be announced in mid-March.)

Back to Chicago… their Coalition says there were 13,108 homeless in Chicago. Nearly double the projected number from the mayor’s office. I wrote an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times last summer on this “Homeless Numbers Game.”

It’s amazing that our society argues over numbers, as if they are numerical economic projections rather than numbers that reflect real lives struggling on the street.