The Rundown Podcast - PM Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. WBEZ Chicago
The Rundown Podcast - PM Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. WBEZ Chicago

If you ride the CTA, you probably noticed the system has a crisis on its hands. More and more, the city’s unhoused population is using trains and buses as a last resort to find a place to stay. WBEZ’s Anna Savchenko explains the cause: a serious shortage in shelter beds combined with a pandemic-related increase in homelessness. Savchenko tells us about the roots of the crisis, what the city’s doing to intervene, and she talks about the social service agencies working to help the unhoused.

The Rundown Podcast - PM Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. WBEZ Chicago
The Rundown Podcast - PM Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. WBEZ Chicago

If you ride the CTA, you probably noticed the system has a crisis on its hands. More and more, the city’s unhoused population is using trains and buses as a last resort to find a place to stay. WBEZ’s Anna Savchenko explains the cause: a serious shortage in shelter beds combined with a pandemic-related increase in homelessness. Savchenko tells us about the roots of the crisis, what the city’s doing to intervene, and she talks about the social service agencies working to help the unhoused.

Erin Allen: What's up Chicago? I am Erin Allen, and this is The Rundown. In the past couple of years, especially since the pandemic began, more and more in house folks are sleeping on CTA trains. Nonprofit groups that work to support Chicago's own house population have been drawing attention to this, but you have probably noticed them yourself, especially if you frequent the red line and the blue line. 

Anna Savchenko: The CTA is basically the most public facing window of the crisis

Erin Allen: That's my colleague WBEZ metro reporter, Anna Savchenko. She's been reporting on the city's crisis with homelessness, talking to outreach workers, city officials and unhoused people about where they may end up when there's nowhere else to go, including on the CTA, which is usually the last resort. There are a lot of factors contributing to homelessness in Chicago and sometimes it seems like the folks who have the power and responsibility to address this are not doing enough about it, which means homelessness continues to have implications for almost every part of our society. For mental health and physical health –– to safety to employment, to transit. Anna is here to update us on what's happening now with a new house folks on Chicago's trains in shelters and at O'Hare starting with the reminder that it may seem like a lot now, but it's nothing new. 

Anna Savchenko: You know, when it gets cold in the windy city, you just see more people looking for shelter on trains at CTA stations, at the airport. That's nothing new. What was new or has changed since the pandemic is that we've seen a rise in homelessness and also new this year were some images that went viral of unhoused people sleeping at O'Hare to the point where that may not national headlines, like there was even a story is in the New York Post, which described these dystopian housing encampments taking over O'Hare. Which is why Mary Lori Lightfoot stepped in mid February and said that she was going to do whatever it took to remove on house people from O'Hare. So the issue of homelessness is not new, but what's new is just how much attention it's been getting this winter.

Erin Allen: Okay. And naturally that attention people think that requires them to take action.

Anna Savchenko: Oh, absolutely. I mean, since the mayor made that statement in February Now, when you arrive to the airport at night, you can't get in unless you show a working badge or a boarding pass. So, if you are experiencing homelessness, that's not an option anymore basically.

Erin Allen: And those boarding passes and employee passes are required if you're arriving on the train.

Anna Savchenko: If you're taking the blue line to your hair. 

Erin Allen: Okay. How else is that affecting what's happening on the trains right now with unhoused folks?

Anna Savchenko: Yeah. Well, the CTA is basically the most public facing window of the crisis. So, there have been customers that have complaints and there incidents where customers have felt unsafe because somebody's being rowdy on the train, that's understandable. But there is also just so much going on in terms of what is pushing more of these people to sleep on trains, buses CTA stations, you name it.

Erin Allen: What is pushing that? 

Anna Savchenko: Well, during the pandemic, a lot of shelters had to limit bed capacities, you know, for social distancing purpose is to stop the spread of the virus. So the number of available beds just decreased. And what that meant was is, it more pushed more people out into the streets. And the although we've sort of recovered from the pandemic, the shelter beds system never recovered. So, there is still significant bed shortages which are contributing to the problem.

Erin Allen: So there are thousands of in house folks in the city. But how does this city actually calculate that.

Anna Savchenko: Well, the city has this thing called a point in time count. Also in January every year, people are basically sent into the streets and they count how many people they see that don't have a place to go. That number has fluctuated in recent years during the pandemic. In 2020 it was around five thousand. In 2022, which is the latest data that we have, the city counted about four thousand people as part of its point in time count. But this is extremely interesting because then you have organizations like the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which they have their own way of calculating the amount of people in Chicago that are experiencing homelessness. Their most recent report outlined that in 2020 about 65 thousand Chicagoans were an housed. So how do you go from the 65 thousand number to the three thousand number? Well, basically the best way to explain it is that the coalition, the way they calculate their number is that they include everyone who may be sleeping on in cars, sleeping on somebody else's couch. They may not be necessarily sleeping on public transit, but they are still technically unhoused. So that's why the number is so high. Whereas the point in time count only includes those people that they see on the streets

Erin Allen: Wow, that when you first said that that just sound sounded so incredibly imprecise. 

Anna Savchenko: Yes, exactly. 

Erin Allen: Can you get a little bit more into the situation with the shelters. What is the state of shelters in Chicago? How has that evolved in, and what's the situation with the beds?

Anna Savchenko: Yeah. So right now there are about three thousand available shelter beds citywide. But the system that manages those shelters, it currently has more than 11 thousand active client. So people that are already in the system That our clients and return to, to ask for beds, that's four times the amount of available beds. On top of that, you have a waiting list, which is more than four thousand people long and the wait time to get a bed. According to city data is about three and a half months. So, you know, if you're on the street and you're looking for a bed tonight, three and a half months is not the answer you're hoping to hear. And I was recently at an outreach events organized by an outreach agency that helps those experiencing homelessness. This was at Forest Park, one of the locations that they set up shop on the CTA, and I spoke to Malcolm Reed, who's this 52 year old father, he's been experiencing homelessness for about 10 years now. And I asked him, you know, what's the situation like on the ground? Is it hard to get a bed? Have you tried to get to bed?

Malcolm Reed: Absolutely. I was at 10 South Kedzie, the other day, which is a place we go and get shelter referral, but they don't have beds all the time.

Stephanie Schreiber: And as far as the beds go, there's just not availability

Anna Savchenko: That’s Stephanie Schreiber, the case manager on duty.

Stephanie Schreiber: We call 311 to try and find a shelter, and I personally have never successfully been able to get someone a bed.

Anna Savchenko: So that woman at the end there is the case manager that was on duty the night that I visited the outreach events and she's been working as a case manager for a year and she says that she's never been able to successfully get someone a bed. And she works with dozens of clients like this on a daily basis.

Erin Allen: Wow. So when you spoke to Malcolm, he was accessing services from the Knight Ministry. Is that right? Can you talk about what that program is?

Anna Savchenko: Yes. So the Night Ministry is one of the three outreach programs that the city has expanded its long standing partnerships with this year. specifically to increase their outreach on the CTA to assist those that are experiencing homelessness. And the Night Ministry, they set up at the Howard Station on the red line and Forest Park. The last stop on the blue line twice a week. And they have a medical station, they have a food station so you can go there, you can get a med kit, you can get medical assistance, you can get a hot meal. They do clothing donation sometimes. So if you're lucky and you get there on time, you might get a coat or something, but that's rare and donations run out very quickly. And as far as the other ones, uh, they operate mostly on the blue and red lines.

Erin Allen: These are other organizations besides Night Ministry.

Anna Savchenko: Yes, yes. Thresholds and Haymarket Center. So they have outreach teams that they've placed now this year on the red and blue lines. These outreach teams, ride the train after rush hour and anyone that's there that they see that person needs help or they're sleeping on the train or they need mental health treatment or any sort of medical assistance, they'll assist those people there and then. So they kind of cover the CTA in different ways. These three organizations.

Erin Allen: A lot of community work going into that. I'm wondering what the city officially is doing about this. I heard you say that they're working with some of these organizations, but they have other efforts that they're taking.

Anna Savchenko: Well, these are specifically the city's most recent efforts to address homelessness. In the past, the city spent about $400 thousand annually on homelessness outreach, specifically on this CTA this year they're ramping that up to $2 million. And that's specifically for outreach on the red and blue lines. And these are, you know, full time teams that have now been placed in these locations is to help the and housed at major public transit hubs. Yeah.

Erin Allen: The conductors and the drivers, have you been able to engage with them at all or get a sense about how they're dealing with this?

Anna Savchenko: That is a great question that I should follow up on in my future reporting.

Erin Allen: Haha okay. Anna Savchenko is a metro reporters here at WBEZ. Thank you for being here. 

Anna Savchenko: Thanks for having me.

Erin Allen: Anna did a whole feature story about one house folks on the CTA. You can check that out at WBEZ.org and that's it for today. Thank you to Justin Bull for producing the Rundown and to Ariel Van Cleave for editing the show. Haley Blomquist engineered this episode. Our theme music is by Louis Weeks. I'm Erin Allen. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you tomorrow.


WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.