Chicago Wants Homeless Shelter Land for School (Signal vs. Noise)

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Chicago Wants Homeless Shelter Land for School

15 May 2003 by

Now here’s a tough one… The city of Chicago wants property currently occupied by the Pacific Garden Mission homeless shelter [N.Y. Times] for a new gymnasium and library for the adjacent Jones College Prep High School. The area is gentrifying, the neighborhood is changing, the school needs more land to expand. It would be one thing if the land was being taken for a new high rise with million-dollar condos, but it’s being taken to help expand a school. But, on the other hand…

“One of the reasons we see the numbers that we do, being the largest shelter in the city of Chicago, is we are downtown, we are close to temporary work,” said Mr. Kwiatkowski, 39, who has worked for 15 years at the shelter. “If we were put somewhere in a neighborhood that was far away, would we have the clientele that we have? Would we be able to minister to them like we do now?”

In the end, I think you have to do what’s best for the school. You have to favor land used for the education of young people than for homeless adults — even when the shelter houses “…140 men who have temporary residential status and are enrolled in computer training, general equivalency diploma and job placement classes with the hope of moving out on their own.“

15 comments so far (Post a Comment)

15 May 2003 | Darrel said...

Eh. Chicago has been kicking out the poor from downtwon for years now. This is nothing new. Besides, poor people suck, right?

15 May 2003 | Paul said...

Well, the 'near South Loop' is becoming a school-y area. Jones is already sizable but needs the space; Columbia is growing; super dorm is going in on Congress and State.

There had been talk a while ago that an SRO might move to the old George Diamond steakhouse building on Wabash, but I think that got quieted quickly.

15 May 2003 | Darrel said...

Couldn't the shelter and school share space? Maybe hire some of the able-bodied ones to help build a new complex that would contain a stadium and library for use by all?

As a bonus, I think going to school next to a shelter would be subtle encouragement to graduate ;o)

15 May 2003 | bah said...

New rumor is that the mission will not be placed in the building that the George Diamond steakhouse is in, but it will be in the parking lot on the corner of Wabash and Harrison. Whether or not that is true - I don't know.

Whatever they do I'm pretty sure the mission won't be moving to far.

To read more about the mission you can check out the Chronicle.

15 May 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Pacific Garden Mission ... they have the radio program "Unshackled". They did a story about my friend, Mike Hauenstein, about five years ago.

RIP Mike; died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1998.

15 May 2003 | Carl said...

Two points you won't hear from Pro-Mission advocates:
1. Sexual offenders and drug addicts are regularly admitted to Pacific Garden.
2. When day work is available to Pacific Garden residents they are almost always bused to locations outside the Loop; to maintain that residents are finding work in the immediate area is untrue.

There is no denying that the Mission provides much-needed services but their current location is far from perfect.

18 May 2003 | alisha said...

Im inclined to agree with you but not knowing enough about it, its hard to say. If the current location is far from perfect, then its anyway not very optimal. If gentrification has happened, then its quite in line with New Urbanism, isnt it?

21 May 2003 | Emily said...

The mission has been there since the 1800s. If the school didn't want to be next to a homeless shelter, it shouldn't have moved in next door to a homeless shelter. If a guy's got a criminal history, a substance abuse problem, or a serious (untreated) mental illness, you can figure he's not gonna have corporate recruiters beating down his door to hire him. How naive are these idiots running this school that they didn't realize our homeless population includes more than a few people who could be considered "damaged goods" and who maybe shouldn't be hanging out right next to a school? Maybe the school should move. And what kind of values are these people teaching the children at this school if they're going to move into the shelter's neighborhood and then say, "Gee, guys ... I'm sorry you're homeless, and I'm sorry you have nowhere else to go, and I know you were here a long time before we moved in here, but you're going to have to leave now, because you're not our kind, and besides, you're in the way"? And what kind of people would send their kids to a school run by a bunch of narrow-minded, elitist bigots like that? I worry about the future of this country. I really do. To borrow a line from Disney: God help the outcasts, or nobody will.

12 Jul 2003 | Melissa said...

You said it, Emily! Brava! If they do chose to get rid of that location, they'd better relocate it and at the same capacity. Where do they expect them to go? The city wouldn't want them hanging out in larger numbers downtown. That's contrary to the Mayor's whole idea. By the way, all this negativity about homeless people has got to be addressed. The homeless are regular people with families, moms, dads, kids, spouses. Some hit economic hard times--so many people live paycheck to paycheck. Have you paid attention to the economy lately? Yes, many are drug addicts. If you would educate yourselves about drug addiction, you would realize that it can take your life away. Mental illness is such a huge problem. So many of those afflicted don't believe anything's wrong with them because the illness affects the very thing they think with. It's a brain disease that must be controlled with medications or a person will get sicker--just like a person with diabetes must take their insulin regularly. Please think about it.

23 Sep 2003 | David said...

Talk about clueless, PGM houses over 700-900 people a night, they feed over 500,000 meals a year. The city needs to ante up and pay FMV for the land which is near 16-18M.

Someone who knows...

24 Nov 2003 | Wes said...

I agree with David; $7 million does not sound like a fair market value for the land alone. If the city of Chicago is truly interested in helping its homeless as well as expanding the prep school it seems that FMV for the land should be the starting point and reasonable incentives/assistance given to relocate the PGM where the people it now serves can continue to be served. Can the City afford not to do this?