The Shelters are Overcrowded with Foreclosure Evictees
As winter sets in the shelter are overcrowded with foreclosure evictees. The ordinary American is running out of alternatives, sandwiched by foreclosures and joblessness.
Cindy Almendarez is one of the many who had avoided shelters for the homeless for a long time. She had camped with her children in the basement of a friend and then shifted to a pest-infested apartment. Finally the back seat of her car was the home for sometime.
But the pretense of having a great time camping in winter did not hold out for long. With her two little ones she finally knocked on the door of PADS – Crisis Services homeless shelter last autumn.
Cindy was one of the first victims of this foreclosure crisis. She lost her house in Waukegan to foreclosure in February 2007 after her husband died. Depression made her lose her job, her financial security and self-respect. All this time she struggled to do the best for her children.
This is the picture right across Chicago according to those who provide social service. The present numbers are bad enough but the greatest fear is the potential number ready to join the ranks. Many have been evicted by foreclosing landlords while others cannot afford the requisite security money to move into new quarters.
Still others are suffering from less wages due to cut back in working hours. Marilyn Farmer of Morning Star Mission, Joliet bemoaned, “They were already just hanging on.”
From October the shelters in Chicago have reported increases from 5% to 39%. Among those are many homeless students – their numbers having gone up 28% in November 2008 as compared to November 2007. The numbers of those on the brink cannot be quantified but only guessed.
This is because people reach the point of seeking out refuge in homeless shelters after a certain point of time when all other alternatives have vanished. It does not happen abruptly and suddenly. Lynda Schuler of West Suburban PADS of Oak Park said, “People will use up every available resource, staying in a motel, staying with friends and family” and even in the car before knocking on the door of a shelter.
Social service providers say that some people first come asking for various kinds of help like assistance towards paying rent or clearing essential bills. There is a limit to how many days one can stay with grandmother and aunty – the latter group too under the same economic cloud.
