One of the most effective ways for homeless people to get information is by word of mouth. It is also one of the most common ways. People who are newly homeless—it is a condition, not a nationality or a profession—often have no clue where to go to get help. Although they may have heard rumors of this or that agency offering help, they usually do not know the details… or where to begin seeking the help. Whether they are “new homeless” as they get called by other homeless and street people in the area or simply somebody from another neighborhood that for whatever reason has shown up suddenly, they seem to wander around until they find help.
Enter the neighborhood “helper” who has the information the new homeless person will need. The helper has often been through the game before—or at least has known lots of homeless persons over time and can assist.
Enter “Janie” who says she is “just some crazy lady with a cart and some junk” who travels around the neighborhood doing good deeds. She says she is nosy and has to get involved in every argument or problem she sees as she goes down the street. She has to stop and tell people not to fight, if there is something going on and voices are getting loud. She has to stop and find out what everyone is doing.
Janie has a great sense of humor and knows almost everybody who walks past us as we sit at a hamburger joint on Broadway, on the north side of Chicago. “Hey there!” she yells at most everyone. “Be good today!” she reminds a lot of the younger people passing. They seem to accept her greetings and warnings—they are pleasant and yell, “Have a blessed day, Miss Janie!”
Janie knows all the names, the names of the children, and the names of the dogs going by. She has a huge network and seems to know everybody in the neighborhood including social workers, priests, community members, the manager of the Walgreens, and the employees at every business from Target to Dunkin Donuts (both locations nearby). She is very social, and she is very positive. It would probably be very hard to get her down.
She has helped a variety of people—including a young man who was having trouble with addiction. He eventually got onto disability payments from the government because of a slight learning challenge. An area social service agency helped him, but he still needed more assistance than he was getting. Janie knows some lawyers, so she asked them how she could help more, but help in a way she could “push him through the cracks in the system” so she would not lose him. She became his legal guardian a few years back and started the process of getting him indoors. She got him an apartment, then furniture, bedding, kitchen items, and got him on track with healthcare insurance and a list of food pantries.
All of this she did for him with no pay. I am not even sure she has gotten anything in the way of thanks. Although he made good progress and did get off the alcohol, he did run into some other trouble and so now is going to be spending a short time in jail. In about a year, he will be coming back and she is planning to help him with setting “just a couple clear goals.” Janie insists that a lot of “counselors who have gone to college and taken a bunch of their classes” wind up making things too complicated for a person who needs to improve their situation.
“Keep it simple is what I say!” Janie tells me people “need to boil things down” and that is how they will succeed. People do not need to be rich—they just need to survive. They cannot let the devil get them in his clutches, she tells me. Prayer, church, honesty, and basic living never hurt anyone, she reminds me.
“This is a big city,” she explains. There is everything here—racism, poverty, drugs, drinking, people stealing things in the stores, and people acting stupid. She says what happens to people, young people especially, is they get lost in those “cracks out there.” They fall out with their family—especially their parents—and that’s how they lose touch, according to Janie. They have trouble knowing where to begin to look for help.
They always have to “go somewhere and get an appointment” to find out who to see about what and “how to get a referral to this thing and that thing,” she complains. She has a rating system for all of the agencies, pantries, churches, thrift shops, and hospitals.
“People need to get real,” she insists. She tells me that a lot of people in the agencies don’t realize homeless people—especially new ones—cannot travel all over the city looking for help.
According to Janie, one agency in Chicago that does a brilliant job is the Night Ministry. These people bring food, services, a nurse, blankets, soup, etc. to the homeless persons instead of making them go to an office or other location—and in so doing make it much easier for the person in need to get help. Not every new person living on the street has a laptop or a fancy phone, of course. So finding a reliable friend who can get a person some information or a business card to call for the details is essential (https://www.thenightministry.org/about).
As it happens, Janie is an expert on the Night Ministry and has sent many a new wanderer to get help from the “people in the van.” In fact, these saviors drive to different locations and bring a variety of food, beverages, and much-needed items directly to the neighborhoods where there are people in need. They have been doing this for a long time (since 1976!) and know what kinds of things people who are facing homelessness and other challenges actually need.
Janie directs me to the website on her phone and shows me people should click on different types of help they need (https://www.thenightministry.org/get-assistance). They offer health services, testing, connections to food stamps (LINK SNAP), and other referrals and listings. They do use a van, but they are best known for their mobile home—or what she and a lot of other people call a “huge truck”—full of bandages, shoes, card tables, chairs, pads of paper, syringes, and everything else you can possibly imagine that might be needed in a neighborhood at night.
“The big thing about Night Ministry is that there is NO bs or red tape,” Janie tells me. “If somebody needs something—even something weird—those folks will fight to get it for them.” Janie insists that it is one of the very best resources for teens who are homeless and who need a safe place also. The Night Ministry workers and volunteers do not judge; instead they help. Janie tells me further, “They have all kinds of success stories to their credit and have helped dozens and dozens of people—especially young folks who do not have resources and safety.”
The Night Ministry folks treat the homeless and other street persons with respect and work very hard indeed to get them what they need. Janie tells the story of a gentleman who one night showed up at the van and needed a good pair of winter boots. The people in the truck came up with a plan. Although there were no boots in the truck that particular night, there were some three nights later at a location where the people met the man and gave him a pair of size 11 wide, black, winter boots. The man was elated, Janie says.
Janie has helped bring people to this and other agencies and is a spokesperson for “her kids” in Edgewater. “Don’t ever mess with my kids,” she warns. She does not say if she has ever been homeless or if she herself has children. She is anonymous and quiet about herself. When I press her to tell me her story, she asks if I am “writing a book, or what?” I remind her I am going to write up this interview, and she reminds me in turn that I should not use her real name.
“I got enough to do and cannot help any more young people!” she jokes, but is smiling when she says this. It is not true. She will go on helping. She is retired and now has more time to help. She refers people to churches, to food pantries, and to an apartment building manager who is looking for a part-time employee. She knows maybe hundreds of people in her network.
Asked how the city can help get all the homeless people off the street, she ponders this. She responds carefully, “There are probably one or two people who would not go…but everybody else wants a nice little apartment that is easy to clean and that is safe and sound so they will be okay.”
Janie goes on to explain: “What homeless people want is a basic and clean apartment with good locks on the door and nice people in the building. You don’t want to live in a building where people will steal your mail. You might want to get a little dog or a bird. You need to get a job, keep busy, and go to church. And you need to stay away from people who act stupid and sell drugs or do other things we do not want to get involved in.” Janie seems to be good at getting people to behave—she reminds people constantly.
I say that people like her should be rewarded for being so helpful and so generous with their time. She laughs. “I just do what I do,” she responds. I ask her what she would buy if she won a million dollars. She tells me, “Well, I better give some money to my church!” I say, I would buy a brand new car—one that has new tires and a new engine and that always starts in cold weather.
She thinks about this and says, “Well, I guess I would put some money away for a rainy day because we never really know what is coming.”