{"id":23802,"date":"2020-03-18T15:34:46","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T19:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=23802"},"modified":"2020-03-18T15:34:46","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T19:34:46","slug":"illinois-shelters-close-their-doors-to-the-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2020\/03\/illinois-shelters-close-their-doors-to-the-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Illinois Shelters Close Their Doors to the Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nMcHenry county PADS of the Pioneer Center for Human Services in Woodstock, IL.<\/h6>\n

The pandemic of COVID-19 is sweeping the globe and stress testing the inadequate mechanisms in place for dealing with public health and wellbeing.\u00a0 Here in Illinois, the increasing lockdown measures<\/a> have put people into a panic and changed social dynamics from town to town.\u00a0 Everyday working people and rich people alike are inconvenienced by stores being out of stock, increased traffic, crowded grocers, losing work or working from home, concern for loved ones, and isolation.\u00a0 Let alone the tragedy of those lost to the disease.<\/p>\n

The effects are felt by everyone, but some people are enduring a unique sort of hell in the wake of public panic and the state\u2019s failure to meet public need.\u00a0 The people in charge of the country immediately pumped 1.5 trillion dollars<\/a> into putting the stock market on life support so that big profits won\u2019t fall, while everyday people endure, and the struggle is amplified for the less fortunate.\u00a0 Despite the fact there are over seventeen million empty homes across America, and they\u2019re empty for no reason beyond the simple fact that Property means more than People under Capitalism.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve talked with former recipients of McHenry County PADS homeless aid to get a better picture of the situation they\u2019ve been hurled into.\u00a0 These people chose not to be named out of fear that they might be rejected from future applications for help as they struggle to get a roof over their heads.\u00a0 They range in age from early thirties to early sixties, notably some are of the demographic most vulnerable to COVID-19 symptoms were they to contract it – nothing is being done for them despite this.<\/p>\n

On a \u201cgood day\u201d, the Homeless endure unthinkable hassle to be able to compete <\/em>for assistance.\u00a0 In McHenry County there are a small handful of options available through the Pioneer Center for Human Services (which saw its funding cut under the governorship of Bruce Rauner).\u00a0 Most homeless people you\u2019d meet would actually qualify for Social Security Income or Disability benefits as well as Public Aid healthcare \u2013 but applying to such things with no address or ID is nearly impossible.\u00a0 There are success stories, but to say that there is any sort of legitimate opportunity here is not the reality on the ground.<\/p>\n

The most common assistance the homeless manage to get into is referred to as the \u201cRotating Shelter\u201d program.\u00a0 Every day a church in another town allows people who signed up to sleep for the night and leave in the morning.\u00a0 It rotates to combat abuse and drug use, but effectively punishes the unlucky.\u00a0 There\u2019s a small bus program, which costs money without the appropriate voucher, as every church is too far to walk to in a day.\u00a0 The next assistance offered is a waiting list to get into the PADS shelter which allows people to sleep on a mat on a floor in a room with several other homeless people from night until morning \u2013 chores are a requirement and disability will not waiver the responsibility.\u00a0 It is against the rules to remain in the PADS room through the afternoon. There is also a voucher program for a motel for people who have the money to move into a new apartment soon, some people get stuck in the motel program for upwards of decades through entanglement with the process, but it awards very few applicants yearly and was not budgeted for since 2019.<\/p>\n

Because these options are overburdened, underfunded, and understaffed, what they offer for people who do not aggressively push their foot in the door can get very basic camping supplies and a tent.\u00a0 It should be noted that this is a suburban county in Illinois, there is no free land, vagrancy is a criminal offense, and all property is private property.\u00a0 The PADS shelter workers and volunteers will tell you that, very clearly, \u201cdon\u2019t get caught, because you\u2019re in trouble if you get caught\u201d and then explain a short list of potential spots to sleep out for a night.\u00a0 We could list plenty that we heard here, but it would only serves help law enforcement continue to track them like sport.\u00a0 They are particularly adamant in advising these people in dire straits to pack up when daylight comes and find a new camping spot every day, stressing the fact that it is illegal, but still the only option they have.\u00a0 The capitalists provided no backup plan for the rug being pulled out from under their safety nets.<\/p>\n

As we began, these resources are available – with struggle, and endurance, and competitively, – \u201con a good day\u201d<\/em>.\u00a0 But since COVID, these already ill-prepared social welfare and charity resources are closing their doors to people.\u00a0 The bus route for the rotating shelter has been cancelled to combat spread of COVID by limited public transport to a minimum. The churches are giving up on the program because they would otherwise crowd people into a big room, and that\u2019s being prohibited with no solution or alternative.\u00a0 The PADS shelter is in quarantine, once you step out, you\u2019re not allowed back in \u2013 they do not allow people to stay in their room during the afternoon.\u00a0 The Motel voucher program has been dead since early 2019 with a several-year queue already and no foreseeable plans to supply more vouchers.\u00a0 The services were quarantined and locked down, but with nowhere for the afflicted aid recipients to be locked down or quarantined to.\u00a0 Due to the market panic, people with cars have emptied the food pantries for their own families.\u00a0 To contract the disease in such a situation is unimaginable to bear through.\u00a0 The systemic result is that no assassins could compete with how effectively the ruling class murders their oppressed strangle victims.\u00a0\u00a0These unfortunate people are asking themselves now, with a tent in their hands, “where do we go now?”<\/p>\n

The White House Administration is in favor of giving everyone a $1,000 check to pad the disaster, there is no humanism in this handout, it’s a convulsion of the imperialist beast desperately trying to stabilize its markets.\u00a0 But what good does anything like that do when you don\u2019t have an address anyway?\u00a0 Again, where do you go if you have no healthcare, no address, no roof, no money, no food, no openings, the churches close their doors to you, and the streets are flooded for panicked consumerism?\u00a0 What would you say when a billionaire \u201cleader\u201d tells you, as an \u201cAmerican\u201d, don\u2019t worry, \u2018we got your back, tell us where you live<\/em> and we\u2019ll send you help\u2019?\u00a0 These people in McHenry say \u201cI\u2019m sorry Mr. President, I don\u2019t live anywhere, I just survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those most vulnerable to the worst effects of pandemic are being systematically shut out, ostracized, and pushed into the public as assistance falters in the face of the COVID-19 crisis.\u00a0 Those once struggling are now drowning.\u00a0 People with stable careers are seeing upturn in their lives like they never predicted and even small-business owners are looking at the plight of the homeless in the face \u2013 because even they recognize, capitalism wants to put you in that place, so long as they get to keep their money, their factories, and their political power.\u00a0 This situation is deplorable, and tragic, but it’s happening on an incredibly larger scale in places all across the world right now.\u00a0 At every stage the common thread is the ineptitude of an economy which is not planned, which is not geared toward social goals, which can’t resolve social problems, exacerbating the catastrophic effects of a natural disaster.<\/p>\n

The unsustainability of this system has been objectively proven, time and again, from top to bottom, on a global scale and in your backyard. Surely, we can do better. A society, like the Soviet Union, that eliminated homelessness in 1936, provided universal, socialized medicine, and provided meaningful and gainful work opportunities for all its citizens would not produce the suffering that consumes all the country during this crisis, from New York City, to a quiet suburb outside Chicago.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McHenry county PADS of the Pioneer Center for Human Services in Woodstock, IL. The pandemic of COVID-19 is sweeping the globe and stress testing the..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}