On a recent winter day in Chicago the wind chill temperature dipped to minus 20 degrees at night. In general, of course, it has been cold on many of these winter days and night. One big problem is that in Chicago there is a lack of warming centers for evenings and nights. We must demand that more warming centers be added.
We are talking about the needs of homeless people, or people whose heat has gone out at home, or people just out and about at night who get cold and need to warm up.
On the issue of homeless people, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless repots in a Chicago Tribune *article there are more than 60,000 in Chicago. The federal government says there are 5,300 in Chicago.
According to the City of Chicago website, “The City operates a network of warming centers that includes libraries, police stations and park district facilities.” And there are some community centers as well. The problem is that, except for police stations, these places have closing times in the evenings (City of Chicago :: Warming Areas).
Again, according to the web site, “We have TWO facilities that will be opened as Warming Centers 24 hours a day. These facilities are located at: King Center 4314 S. Cottage Grove and Garfield Center 10 S. Kedzie.” Only two centers open at night!
The site also mentions, “The City will also have designated CTA buses acting as warming centers overnight,” but the site does not say where they are located!
So people are basically left on their own to try to see if they can stay warm at a hospital, or homeless shelter (if they know where one is) or perhaps police stations.
Mayor Lightfoot has just declared WAR on the homeless sleeping and camping out at O’Hare Airport so that is impossible – at least for now (Mayor says homeless people can't be sleeping at O'Hare - CBS Chicago (cbsnews.com)) or on the trains—not always the easiest or most reliable place to relax or hide out or sleep.
Nights are terrible for the homeless and the poor in this city… and days are not much better during bitter cold times. There are only SIX warming centers open during the day from 9 to 5 (City of Chicago :: Warming Areas). In a city as huge as Chicago!
Obviously, Chicago needs a better, easily available and well publicized system of warming centers.
How about if we call on the aldermen and mayor to see that this is taken care of? Why don’t we write to all of them and urge them to expand the warming centers — and add more of them?
An additional question we need to raise is --- why in this country, with such a rich ruling class, is there homelessness?
Part of the answer is that the aim of the capitalist system is to produce maximum profits for the capitalists. It does not provide all of the kinds of services that people need. And, since a characteristic of capitalism is not to take care of social problems unless forced to, or provide training and jobs for everyone in the society who can use a job, there is always a high degree of unemployment. Some of the homelessness is based on that.
In addition, many seniors are unable to cope with factors such as the inflation that the capitalist system has caused, and so have become homeless on that basis.
It gets pretty cold and raw out there. Perhaps if a person has not been outside they do not realize this? With nowhere to go? With nowhere to sleep?
This situation and the reasons for it help to show hint why we might need to get rid of this capitalist system and replace it with a system that actually serves the people, with peace and justice, with decision-making by the people which is for the people.
For the people who are out there in that cold and raw night!
Following is an article from the Friday Chicago Tribune which shows some of the limited and inadequate actions being taken by the government on the problem of homelessness ("Chicago to Receive $60 in Federal Funding to Fight Homelessness,” by Lizzie Kane, Chicago Tribune, 2-2-23) Chicago to receive $60M in federal funding to fight homelessness (herald-review.com)
Let’s take action!
Let’s write letters to the mayor, and to the Chicago aldermen, asking for more warming centers in Chicago immediately – before winter ends and people freeze to death on the streets!
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Editor’s note:
To send email or letters to the mayor, use this link and click on “Contact the mayor” City of Chicago :: Office of the Mayor
To send emails or letters to aldermen, use this link: https://chicago.legistar.com/People.aspx