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120 days: Chicago's 10-year Plan to End Homelessness meant moving people from the street to permanent housing within 120 days. Seven years later, advocates now struggle to fulfill a plan critics say is unrealistic, underfunded and lacks sufficient housing.

Article Excerpt
Cassiet Robinson and her 2-year-old son, Zabon Noah, were four months into their stay at the St. Francis DePaula shelter when their time ran out.

Under the city's plan to end homelessness, shelters like St. Francis could house clients for four months before they had to leave. Robinson requested a three-month extension and got it.

During Robinson's life, the 42-year-old has conquered drag addiction and domestic violence. Now she's in a race to conquer homelessness.

Chicago's 10-year Plan to End Homelessness began in 2003, setting up guidelines that gave service providers 120 days to get clients like Robinson into permanent housing.

The goal was to end homelessness by converting overnight shelter beds--which are predominantly operated by the city--into interim housing beds, where the homeless could temporarily stay. They would then be transitioned into permanent housing units built by nonprofit developers or existing market-rate units, where their rent could be subsidized.

Mayor Richard M. Daley endorsed the plan in 2003. It had few numbers and no stated funding goals or estimates of how much housing was needed. A year after the plan started, the first numbers emerged. They were later updated, promising 8,700 permanent housing units and 3,632 interim housing beds by 2012. The city based its estimates in part on its 2005 homeless count, which said that on any given day there were roughly 6,715 homeless in the city.

Advocates were hopeful after securing Daley's support, but were concerned about the low numbers. By their estimates, the city's homeless population was nearly 21,000 a day, roughly three times greater than the city's estimate. The city also said 15,000 homeless individuals cycled through the system in a year; advocates calculated it to be more than 73,000.

Today, seven years into the plan, some providers say not enough housing has been built, some clients are being relocated out of state for affordable housing, and most interim housing agencies are granting extensions, unable to meet the 120-day deadline.

"With the economy in this shape, I'm looking to see possibly more people becoming homeless," said Reggie Harden, director of program services at Matthew House, a permanent housing program.

Most providers say the city has made significant improvements. Innovative initiatives were created, like Street-to-Home, which uses outreach workers to bring the homeless directly from the street into permanent housing. In the past year, the city also set aside money for homelessness prevention under the Family Stabilization Initiative.

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But critics say that from the start, the plan lacked realistic homeless estimates and adequate funding. An analysis of spending to end homelessness shows that New York spent nearly 15 times as much per capita as Chicago; Los Angeles invested nearly four times as much. On a more pragmatic level, the plan lacked sufficient housing.

The Chicago Reporter surveyed the city's 91 homeless housing providers. The Reporter got responses from 20...

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