Heartland Alliance’s Street to Home Initiative

January 15, 2008

Tom Glennon and his colleague Chris Robinson, Heartland Alliance outreach workers, are hardly out the door of their Uptown office building on Sheridan Road in Chicago before they run into an old friend. "Bruce! How are you?" Glennon asks, extending his hand for a handshake.

Homeless and often unemployed, Bruce is stabilizing his life, working with Heartland Alliance to find a safe, affordable apartment and steady employment as a carpenter.

A group of Heartland Alliance outreach staff seek out men and women who are homeless and work to develop trusting relationships with them, all the while encouraging them to come in from the cold. Estimates put the number of people homeless in Chicago at about 9,600. Of those, nearly 2,500 spend their days without shelter or protection.

Homelessness in Chicago

In 2003, Mayor Richard M. Daley launched the City of Chicago's Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. The plan represents a fundamental shift in approach for the city — away from moving people who are homeless to shelters and instead endeavoring to find them permanent, stable housing with public benefits and support services.

While homelessness can be found throughout the city, Heartland Alliance's outreach staff focus on Uptown and Lower Wacker Drive, a subterranean haven since the Great Depression for those without shelter. While once home to hundreds, currently about 20 people live on Lower Wacker Drive.

Heartland Alliance's work on Lower Wacker Drive is in conjunction with the City of Chicago's Street to Home initiative, one element of Chicago's Ten-Year Plan. The Street to Home program is based on a successful model implemented in New York City. Prior efforts to move people from Lower Wacker Drive to shelters have been unsuccessful. Aware of Heartland Alliance's track record in successfully housing people who are isolated and hard-to-reach, the City selected Heartland Alliance as the best — and currently only — partner to work with women and men living on Lower Wacker Drive. Chris Robinson is now a regular visitor to the shadowy street, building friendships with the people who live there.

Obstacles and Outcomes

Many men and women who are homeless have been approached by social service agencies in the past, according to Robinson.

"A lot of service providers don't talk very kindly to people who are homeless," he says. "They judge. So a lot of individuals who are homeless haven't sought any services for years."

Glennon, Robinson, and Heartland Alliance's other outreach professionals are patient in their approach, cognizant of peoples' skepticism, and respectful of their right to determine their own needs. In fact, when Robinson first started visiting Lower Wacker Drive, he was not welcomed.

"People were promised a lot of things that never came through," he explained. "For three or four months, I was out there every morning at 6 a.m., and I told them, 'I'm going to house you guys.' After the first two were housed, then they could believe me. Now when I come down, I'm surrounded. They say, 'You haven't forgotten me, have you, Chris?' People from other parts of the city have started going down there because they've heard what we're doing."

Once participants decide to leave the streets, finding affordable housing is the next step. Heartland Alliance builds relationships with area landlords to create greater housing options for participants. To date, Heartland Alliance has placed 28 people in housing as a result of the Street to Home initiative and has provided referrals for health care and employment.

"This is my man, right here," says one participant as he pats Chris' arm.

"The job is not done," Robinson says. "The reward is seeing somebody a couple of years later. You see the growth, the self-esteem. They know when people sincerely care about them."

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