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The homeless make it through the day knowing they can go to shelters at night. But shelters close April 30 and the scramble is on to find A place to sleep.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Pam DeFiglio Daily Herald Staff Writer

The purple school bus rumbles down the street, jiggling Floyd Jennings up and down in its stiff vinyl-covered seats.

It's noon, and he has just left a homeless shelter to go to an agency that, he hopes, can get him an apartment.

The bus has ground-in layers of grime and it creaks a lot. He talks over its noisy motor.

"I've been diagnosed manic-depressive," Jennings says earnestly, his dark brown eyes lucid and shining.

Partly because of that mental illness, he wound up at PADS Crisis Services Inc. two months ago.

Jennings is one of 960 Lake County homeless people PADS helped last year. At night, they sleep in church basements, in places like Mundelein or Libertyville. During the day, PADS lets clients hang around its North Chicago office, working with staff to get their lives under control.

PADS provides a zone of safety. Unfortunately, though, the door will soon shut on it. The overnight program closes April 30 during a five-month stretch of warm weather. Jennings, like everyone else, is scrambling to find a place to stay so he won't be sleeping under a viaduct.

Rent, not drugs

Jennings gets off the purple bus in downtown Waukegan and heads for the office of I-PLUS (Independent Positive Living Under Supervision).

Program director Kim Jones leads him over the office's well-worn linoleum floors and into a conference room lined with chairs covered in burnt-orange fabric, obvious castoffs from the 1970s.

She explains I-PLUS can receive his Social Security check, which he gets because of his mental illness disability. The agency will put the money in an account for him and pay his bills - like rent and utilities - as well as give him a weekly allowance of $10 or so.

"Someone with chronic homelessness usually can't get an apartment, but landlords know they'll get their money from us," she says.

Jennings listens carefully, leans back in his chair and swivels. "How do you get housing?" he asks. "PADS closes at the end of April."

"You pick an apartment and we work with your landlord," Jones replies. "Hopefully, we can get you in housing by then."

She...

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