Bad News is Worse than Planned: Number of Homeless Children is Up
In 2020, I reminded people in a blog post on “Second City Teachers” that, according to 2017-18 data, there were 52,978 homeless children in Illinois (Second City Teachers: Homeless Students). In fact, the name of the article even made it pretty clear I was not kidding. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.
“How can that be possible?” people screamed.
“Where are their parents?” people asked.
“Where did you get those numbers that cannot possibly be correct?” people warned.
Well, unfortunately, the numbers are real. Here is the bad news: A year later, the number of homeless children in the Prairie State rose by 1,259. The new number is: 54,237.
54,237 Illinois kids in 2018-19 slept in these kinds of places: in a buddy’s garage, in an abandoned building, in their grandma’s basement, on a friend’s porch, in an old van, in the basement of a hardware store, in a homeless shelter, in the hallway of a police station, in the kitchen of a fire station, in the waiting room of an ER, in the back booth of an all-night diner, in/on/behind a dumpster, in a tent, at a cousin’s house, on the floor of their aunt’s living room, on the sidewalk in a sleeping bag, on a park bench, on a CTA bench, on the bus, on the train, in the bed of some guy who paid them to “stay overnight” with him, in the hotel room of two guys who paid them to “hang out naked” with them. The number 54,237 comes from various reliable sources, by the way (Homeless in Illinois Statistics 2019. Homeless Estimation by State | US Interagency Council on Homelessness (usich.gov)).
54,237 is the number. It is from the most recent available data. I want to keep repeating that number. Shouting it from the rooftops. Making people aware of it. Speaking up for over 50,000 young people who do not have a voice.
That number represents the total “over the course of a year” (Homeless in Illinois Statistics 2019. Homeless Estimation by State | US Interagency Council on Homelessness (usich.gov)). This means that some of those young people may have been homeless for only part of a year. At least that aspect of the disaster is encouraging. They were homeless for January through April in Chicago, for example, where the weather was bitterly cold, but housed for the rest of the year. Others were homeless in Carbondale in July and August, where the weather was insanely hot, but living under “their own roof” the rest of the year.
Doubling up with friends, relatives, church members, clients, or johns does not count as being “housed/indoors/safe/sound.” The kids are still homeless if doubled up. Aren’t they? Living in somebody else’s house means they are not in one of their own. Not living in their family’s house. Not living with their parents, brothers, sisters, dog.
However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) does not consider them homeless if they are sleeping on their grandma’s couch or at their best friend’s house (as in a slumber party that might last six months). HUD says that is not homeless because the kids are in some kind of home. HUD does not care whose home.
This means the children are NOT a priority in housing programs aimed at helping the kids. They do NOT qualify for the most important service available from HUD, namely, getting indoors into their home.
There are many stories in the media indeed of families and individuals who do not qualify for emergency and long-term housing either—if the individuals are doubled up (Homeless but hidden, some Americans families are disqualified from crucial aid (nbcnews.com)).
That must be remembered: to qualify for housing, the children may not be “doubling up” with family or friends.
Doubled-up or not, there are 54,237 homeless children in our state, based on the most recent data available. In fact, that is only public school students. That does NOT include students who go to private schools, who are *home-schooled (sic), or who have gone missing and no school district knows where the student is. (*For sake of argument, parents could be teaching their children outside of a school, but not in a home—which they do not have—but maybe in grandma’s kitchen or in an abandoned car, etc.)
By the way, the locations of where children sleep (as mentioned candidly above) are factual. The information comes from personal interviews, research about the homeless, testimonials available easily through Yahoo and Google, textbooks, television expose’s, newscasts, newspaper articles, blog entries, and from movies (the ones based on actual events). There are no exaggerations in the information above of where kids wind up sleeping, over a given year, in cities, towns, and countryside hills of Illinois.
54,237 is the number.
I am outraged by that number.
At some point, other people will become outraged. Until then, I will keep talking about it, writing about it, and posting it on blogs and Facebook and my emails.
And, yes, I will figure out how to get on some damn rooftops and shout it!