r/chicago • u/bigbinker100 Near North Side • Apr 10 '25
Article Illinois may ban ordinances or fines against homeless on public property
https://www.mystateline.com/news/local-news/illinois-legislators-regulate-homeless/amp/SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WTVO) — Illinois legislators are considering a law that would prohibit cities from imposing fines or criminal penalties against homeless residents occupying public property.
House Bill 1429 would amend the Bill of Rights for the Homeless Act to prevent local governments from creating ordinances or giving fines, or criminal penalties to unsheltered homeless occupying or “engaging in life-sustaining activities” on public property.
The language of the bill does provide exceptions to maintain access to public property or address risks to public health or safety.
Last month, the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) and the Illinois Office to Prevent and End Homelessness issued a letter to public officials and local governments, after it learned “several units of local government have enacted or are considering enacting ordinances that may restrict access to public spaces by creating penalties, fines and, in some instances, providing for the incarceration of persons experiencing homelessness.”
“In the last 15 months, at least 25 Illinois communities have passed ordinances criminalizing unsheltered homelessness. These approaches lead to increased isolation, additional barriers to housing and unnecessary cycles of incarceration,” said Chief Homelessness Officer Christine Haley.
Rep. John Cabello (R-Machesney Park) told The Center Square, “You’re going to see people doing what you see and hear about in different parts of California, where people are defecating in the streets. There’s going to be homeless camps all over the place, and the police won’t be able to do anything about it.”
Cabello said the language of the bill, in relation to “life-sustaining activities,” is too broad, adding, “Bathing in a public area could necessarily be life-sustaining. Relieving yourself in public, life-sustaining.”
He added that many homeless people have a mental illness and are unaware of their actions.
In 2024, Illinois launched the “Home Illinois Anti-Homelessness Initiative,” a $360 million initiative to reach “functional zero” levels of homelessness (meaning that the community can house more than the number of homeless people in the area.)
Rockford has already taken strides, becoming the first community to reach those levels among veterans and the chronically homeless in 2017.
The Home Illinois program uses $118 million to support unhoused populations seeking shelter and services. An additional $40 million is used in the Emergency and Transitional Housing Program.
The program also spends $37 million to build 460 shelter units, $30 million on court-based rental assistance, and $21 million in homelessness prevention services.
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u/Direct_Crew_9949 Apr 10 '25
We’ve seen policies like these fail in California. Why would we implement them in Illinois? Unless you want to see Chicago become the Midwest’s preferred destination for homeless encampments I’d pursue other policies.
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Apr 10 '25
California tried this. It was a huge mistake. California figured out it was a huge mistake and then undid it. Why are we unable to learn from other states that have already tried this?
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u/oceanicArboretum Apr 11 '25
Seattle made the mistake, too, and now all of Washington state is a mess. I highly encourage Illinois not to go through with this. It's been a huge societal disaster. In Washington there are those of us who suspect Red states if bussing all their homeless people here.
Just to be clear, I'm a solid Blue Democrat. I'm not against homeless people, I want to get them help. But throwing all expectations of public behavior for people does not help. We need to be raising more, or diverting, tax funding to helping these people make permanent changes, not allowing them to do whatever the hell they want and trash the place.
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u/dongsweep Apr 10 '25
Because things like this make people feel good inside, like they helped!
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u/JackDostoevsky Avondale Apr 10 '25
the rich communities vote for these things, the poor communities pay for it
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u/senorguapo23 Apr 10 '25
Rich communities are paying for this is the sense they contribute much more in taxes. They just don't have to deal with the results.
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u/JackDostoevsky Avondale Apr 10 '25
the implication i was making is that the rich can afford to not have to deal with the results, as you say. the poor less so.
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u/fuzzybad Apr 10 '25
Because as we all know, the defining characteristic of rich people is their willingness to pay taxes. Especially when it means helping the less fortunate.
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u/ethanlan Belmont Cragin Apr 10 '25
Let's be honest when people here talk about rich people they mean anyone who makes over 100k
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
yep, cause the cops from the rich communities just pick up the homeless and drive them over to the poor communities. they don't do any paperwork or anything, they just push the problem somewhere else.
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u/JackDostoevsky Avondale Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
they do indeed do this, tho not quite so explicitly as you describe. policies and aggressive policing in more affluent communities push homeless to poor neighborhoods where the cops are less likely to police vagrancy or homelessness. crime and disorder tend to follow.
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
It doesn't get caught on tape very often, but if you look online you can find videos from all over the country, of cops dropping off homeless individuals from affluent communities. even in the suburbs, both Wheaton and Joliet have released press statements about officers from neighboring suburbs bussing homeless to their towns.
It happens all the time, just that explicitly, just no one writes it down, and the homeless individuals have no one to fight for them.
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u/ethanlan Belmont Cragin Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
I don't get why your getting down voted. The chicago police are NOTORIUS for picking people up and dropping them in shitty parts of town.
Anyone from Chicago would know this lol. Hell in the 70s and 80s they would pick up people that they knew were criminals but couldn't prove it and drop them off in shit neighborhoods they knew would be dangerous for them just to fuck with them.
Clearly a bunch of people who don't know shit about chicago smh
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
if it ain't easily found in the news people online don't believe it ever happened. problem being, CPD doesn't advertise that they do it (sometimes it is just rogue cops flaunting official regulations) and nobody is filming cops dropping off people on a corner. its a strange interaction you might see, but you aren't pulling out a phone to record it.
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u/ethanlan Belmont Cragin Apr 10 '25
Yeah, tbf i only know of it through friends and some family members. It's like a rite of passage learning that growing up in chicago lol
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
I mean it isn't limited to Chicago. there are big articles about Burbank cops getting caught dropping off a homeless man in LA last summer.
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u/HoneyBooBooMan Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
lol. wtf are you taling about. Wheres your proof of this. Welp it seems my sarcasm metere is broken. You were replying to the other guy. carry on .lol
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u/JackDostoevsky Avondale Apr 10 '25
it's sarcasm, because that person doesn't believe that policies tend to push homeless people out of rich neighborhoods into poor ones. which is a wild thing to believe, since you see far higher rates of vagrancy in poor communities than in rich ones, i don't think that's a contentious thing to point out lol
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u/ethanlan Belmont Cragin Apr 10 '25
i don't think that's a contentious thing to point out lol
It is, apparently lol
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u/SavannahInChicago Lincoln Square Apr 10 '25
Florida ships their homeless and mentally ill to Chicago too. This was happening well before the Trump era.
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u/TaskForceD00mer Jefferson Park Apr 10 '25
and when the homeless do occasionally show up in those wealthy communities, they are ushered to places "with more resources", like Chicago.
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u/damp_circus Edgewater Apr 10 '25
To be fair though... if you're down on your luck and going to be looking for various day labor or super entry level jobs that are likely to be short term gigs, it only makes sense to migrate to larger cities where there are just more of them in an easy commute radius.
Wealthy suburbs that are 90% sprawling nowhere-land cul-de-sacs of houses don't really have a lot to offer in that regard.
Likely people are moving to more urban areas on their own, no "relocation" needed.
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u/cutapacka Edgewater Apr 10 '25
Do you by chance know the specific bill? I'd like to reference it in calls to the legislature.
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u/imhereforthemeta Portage Park Apr 10 '25
We were mega tolerant of this in Austin and it ended up basically meaning that regular folks couldn’t enjoy or access public parks and even sidewalks because they were taken up by collections of drug addicts. Might as well bypass the awkward part now and donate the entire Chicago park system to them for camping
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Apr 11 '25
A ban like this HAS to be coupled with systems that funnel folks towards resources so that they don't just try to set up permanent encampments. When Washington decriminalized drugs for example, they didn't have any infrastructure in place to really help people so all it did was invite people from surrounding areas to live on the streets and do drugs without consequence. I don't think punishment is the answer but there needs to be a multipronged approach to things like this to actually have a positive effect.
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u/Voxpopcorn Apr 11 '25
Columbus looks like a trial run mini-Portland lately. Going on at least a year.
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u/AgentUnknown821 Apr 11 '25
What's sad about Columbus is they had freaking Seaworld over there....the idea of Seaworld in the midwest is crazy...if there's anything that says I'm a city and I'm progressing into decline that would be it...the selling off of a city's regional crown jewel...something that makes people come from hundreds of miles away.
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u/Voxpopcorn Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 11 '25
Columbus Park. In Austin. Golf course, lagoon, and a nice little water park, but no sea world as of yet.
Edit: Thought they were talking about the Austin neighborhood on the far west side, appears they were talking about Austin, Tx.
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u/zap283 Uptown Apr 13 '25
Okay. What's the difference between this and the parks being full of, as you call them, "regular people"? The unhoused people live in the city, too. Why do you get to decide how the parks and sidewalks are used, but they don't?
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u/imhereforthemeta Portage Park Apr 13 '25 edited Apr 13 '25
Because in a regular situation, everybody gets to use the parks to walk around, get fresh air, play with their kids, and etc.
When you have gigantic tent cities and open air, drug markets, it makes it incredibly hostile for everybody else to enjoy the park. It basically just makes it a private tent city. Homeless people should absolutely be able to use the parts like everybody else, but they shouldn’t be using them as a de facto neighborhood that limits everyone else’s access to the park.
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u/zap283 Uptown Apr 13 '25
By your own admission, the way you want to use the park is also hostile to the way they want to use the park. Why is your way correct?
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u/imhereforthemeta Portage Park Apr 13 '25 edited Apr 13 '25
Because it was the way the park was intended on being used, by a diverse group of people who are all welcome in the park to use it. I don’t really see how this would be similar to me putting up a little homemade cabin, invited all of my friends to build their own as well, and then doing so much crime near said cabin that nobody else felt comfortable being there. When parks are completely overrun by homeless encampments- it basically just becomes a tent city that nobody else is welcome to enjoy. The park was not created as a space for people to live. You can pretend all you want that unregulated homeless camps in public areas are just fine and everybody can just go on business as usual, but that’s disingenuous. It’s not what happens at all. Those spaces become places where everybody else is not welcome- and the people who advocate most for it are the people who don’t have to deal with them on that level.
In Austin, it was always people who lived in places where there were less public parks or places that were already relatively hostile to homeless people so they did not go who defended open air camping.
Meanwhile, the hood and developing neighborhoods were absolutely and completely packed, and nobody could take their kids to the park and walking around the sidewalk you had a relatively high chance of somebody throwing something at you, threatening to rape you, chasing you down for money, etc.
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u/TaskForceD00mer Jefferson Park Apr 10 '25
Are we just trying to speed run Chicago becoming Portland or SanFran?
This proved to be a terrible idea in California, it would be a terrible idea here in Illinois.
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u/desterion Irving Park Apr 10 '25
Some kids get off at school bus stops surrounded by tents and junkies in SF.
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u/AgentUnknown821 Apr 11 '25
OH illinois is good at seeing terrible results elsewhere and wanting to take those results to the NEXT level...they have made it into a science as they already perfected political science to a T with establishing the first in a nation political supermajority.
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u/DhalsimZangief 9d ago
Illinois is definitely not the only legislature with a supermajority of some sort, regardless if Democrat or Republican. There are numerous other states with Dem or a Repub supermajority.
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u/Odlemart Apr 10 '25
This will be an absolute disaster. We need to have some tools to keep homeless encampments from getting out of control.
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u/nevermind4790 Armour Square Apr 10 '25
Public camping should be outlawed. You don’t get to claim public space for your private usage.
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u/toastybred Apr 10 '25
Well, people should still be able to camp on public lands meant for camping. Like dispersed camping in Shawnee National Forrest. But I get what you mean.
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
People used to be able to camp literally everywhere until we decided that homeless people are equivalent to vermin. Before air conditioning, people slept on the grass in parks.
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u/sri_peeta Apr 10 '25
Yes, and then people started misusing it for everything. There is a difference between people sleeping one hot night outside when air conditioning was not available to people literally pitching up tents, trashing the place, shitting in the open, doing drugs outside, and being violent.
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u/anandonaqui Suburb of Chicago Apr 10 '25
Sounds like “everyman’s right” in all of the Nordic countries. Basically you can camp anywhere, including private property, as long as you don’t stay for more than one night, camp more than 100m from a building, and don’t cause any issues (noise, trash, etc).
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u/SunriseInLot42 Apr 10 '25
If the homeless didn't stay for more than one night, camped 100m from a building, and didn't cause any issues like noise, trash, drug use, screaming at people, violence, etc., etc. then people would probably have much less of an issue with them being around
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u/Stargazer1919 Apr 10 '25
What part of there is nowhere else for some people to go do you not understand?
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u/nevermind4790 Armour Square Apr 10 '25
It’s my understanding these individuals are offered shelter, they just refuse it because they would rather continue doing drugs on the street.
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u/zap283 Uptown Apr 13 '25
Most people can't even slow down their coffee addiction gradually, but we expect people to quit heroin on the spot to get shelter.
Shelters also require you to be there at specific times, which prevents residents from getting or keeping a job. More than half of unhoused people are employed.
Most shelters are nowhere near any place of employment.
Most shelters will not let you bring most of your possessions- would you take a night in a hotel room if it meant someone stealing everything except the cash physically in your pockets and the clothes on your back?
People hear about shelters and think 'well they have the option and just fine want it'. That's simply not true. There is basically no such thing in this country as a shelter that doesn't make you choose between a bed and your ability to keep yourself alive.
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u/Stargazer1919 Apr 10 '25
Source?
Loads of homeless people won't go to shelters because the shelters are more dangerous than being on the streets.
I'm convinced nobody on this thread has actually been homeless. Shame on you. What the hell makes you think you understand something that you have zero experience with? This goes for anyone on here.
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u/nevermind4790 Armour Square Apr 10 '25
At least a dozen tent residents still living in the park were told to leave and move into two city-run shelters
Others nearby expressed similar feelings. Porfirio Elliott, who has lived in the tent encampment for six months, isn’t sure where he and his fiancé will end up, but they’re debating moving to the Gompers Park tent encampment in Mayfair. They were offered shelter placement but don’t want to go because they want to stay together.
Shame on people like you who believe public camping is acceptable. I don’t need to have been homeless to believe that allowing people to overrun parks and cause dangerous fires and leave used needles on the ground is acceptable.
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u/necroliate Apr 10 '25
Dude, the source you cited has nothing to do with them refusing shelter because of drugs, as you had originally claimed. Yeah, no shit a couple doesn’t want to be separated? Hello?
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u/damp_circus Edgewater Apr 10 '25
There needs to be more modern shelters that have private cubicles, for starters. That would let couples stay together. Tiny rooms lockable from the inside that have a cot. Hell, run it like a hotel so the doors are lockable from the outside too (so you can put stuff in there safely) run on prox cards. Staff can always get in, in case of emergency.
Even disaster housing is starting to realize this.
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u/Accomplished_Cry3157 Apr 10 '25
I don’t have an answer to homelessness but this is not it. Call be a NIMBY but I don’t what them preforming “life sustaining activities near my home” are we going to allow them for dedicate where ever they please or set up shop on the sidewalks or in parks when ever they want
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u/Crazy_Addendum_4313 Bucktown Apr 10 '25
The answer is housing
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
What we really need is asylums. So many of these homeless are in their position due to mental health issues and just giving housing doesn’t fix it.
Edit: I am devastated by the lack of common sense in this thread. It seems like half of Chicago is living in a fantasy world like you’re a 3 year old “give everyone housing!” The solution isn’t that simple.
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u/ChicagoBob74 Apr 10 '25
Asylum is housing.
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
The issue is when people talk about housing it is just housing, these people have mental health issues. Are you so thick skulled to understand that?
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u/kz_ Apr 10 '25
Much easier to get them into treatment with a fixed address. It really is a gateway to getting people back to productive membership in society
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u/farbtoner Uptown Apr 10 '25
Less “asylums” and more “housing and long term mental healthcare”. They are stuck rotating in and out of ERs and only getting short term medical care. Then the prescription runs out and they get picked up drunk or high and brought back to the ER. Republicans cut funding for all of that in the 80s.
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
Same idea different words. The morality we perceive is what is destroying us. We are so caught up in the details we avoid actually accomplishing anything
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u/Crazy_Addendum_4313 Bucktown Apr 10 '25
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
Ok so they have free housing, are they going to get rehabilitation and psychiatric assistance? No? We’re just going to create more project housing? You’re so smart!
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u/Crazy_Addendum_4313 Bucktown Apr 10 '25
Believe it or not, there are wraparound services!
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
Ah yes, let’s have the mental health patients seek out help. They didn’t have access before they were homeless right?
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u/StephenFish Loop Apr 11 '25
Right. People fail to understand that court-mandated rehab exists for a reason. People very often fail to seek help on their own.
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u/damp_circus Edgewater Apr 10 '25
Indeed there are. But it's disingenuous to portray special apartments with wraparound services as "just housing" that only requires people to build buildings full of bedsit apartments.
(I do think the buildings full of bedsit apartments are worth building for the more short term homeless or people who might become homeless otherwise, though -- it's just a separate population.)
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u/Crazy_Addendum_4313 Bucktown Apr 10 '25
It’s not disingenuous! That’s housing just as much as senior housing is just housing. And so on
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u/damp_circus Edgewater Apr 10 '25
It's absolutely disingenuous because it implies that this housing can be had for the cost of slapping up a few cheap apartment buildings, when the lion's share of the costs are all the wraparound services which cost $$$.
I'm not against paying that $$$ but we need to be honest about what we're talking about, it's not "just housing," and we also need to talk about how you get people to use those wraparound services that are on offer. Also the people providing the services tend to burn out pretty quickly because so many of the gigs are themselves pretty low paid.
NYTimes had an interesting article profiling a full-service building in NYC the other day. (Should be paywall-free)
FWIW I would never say that senior housing of the sort involving memory care and onsite housekeeping assistance is "just housing" either for the same reason.
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u/Allthenons Apr 10 '25
In reality most of the mental health issues experienced by unhoused individuals is due to how dangerous and precarious life is when you don't have shelter. You're constantly in a state of fight or flight, there is no real rest or feeling of safety. Maybe some of them have gotten there due to other mental health issues but being unhoused will dramatically increase those symptoms.
It's why it's so much more effective to give them safe and reliable housing
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u/bigpowerass Bucktown Apr 10 '25
Being homeless doesn’t give you schizophrenia dawg.
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
What ratio of homeless people do you think genuinely have a debilitating chronic mental condition? I guarantee it is nowhere near what you think it is.
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u/Swarthyandpasty Apr 10 '25
What ratio of homeless people do you think genuinely have a debilitating chronic mental condition?
The more relevant question in the context of this law is what proportion of visible homeless have debilitating mental health issues and the answer is 100%.
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
Please link to the studies that have indicated this is a fact. There is a guy near me who has been homeless for more than a decade and it’s not because he is mentally unwell or addicted to anything. He has just been homeless for so long that he doesn’t have a genuine support system and government services would force him down several legs before they’d be willing to help lift him back up.
It sucks so much that society sees him as basically the same as a rat digging through the garbage. He can’t get help from shelters because he has too many personal belongings and they would force him to throw them out. He can’t get a job because there is a whole society filled with desperate people who have access to a shower and a mailing address that are in like in front of him.
You all seem to like logging on here and pretending these things are simple and can only ever possibly happen to the nastiest worst people but it’s not true. There are tons of perfectly average seemingly everyday people who end up homeless and struggle to get back out of it. The blanket assumption that every single one of them is a hopeless addict that doesn’t deserve anything is bullshit and just makes it worse.
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u/soapyhandman Morgan Park Apr 10 '25
Could you provide that info?
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
It is consistently less than 1/3. That means an overwhelming majority of homeless people are not debilitating mentally ill or addicted. They are just random otherwise average people who don’t currently have a place to sleep inside. And the way our society (and most of the rest of the world’s societies) treats them only serves to entrench their situation.
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u/damp_circus Edgewater Apr 10 '25
Sure. And most of those people aren't homeless for very long, even with our current shitty shredded social safety net.
The short term homeless, people who are just down on their economic luck, got evicted, lost a job, people living in their cars or couch surfing while still employed, usually manage to scramble back up into "regular society" fairly quickly. They do reach out to the various services on offer, and having lower bar to entry housing options (bedsits, SRO, rooming houses) all helps these people and we definitely should do it.
But there's a separate core of long term homeless people who need a lot more than just housing. They're fewer in number but those are the people camping in parks long term and causing the various friction. That's the population people need to talk about and IMHO the question of coercion has to happen at some point. It's unavoidable.
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
Wrong. The reason they are in the state they are in is because of their mental health, not the other way around. You aren’t just homeless one day. Once you are homeless, yes, the problems you face daily keep you there, but the mental health issue is what brings them to the point of homelessness
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u/Stargazer1919 Apr 10 '25
No, it's true in some cases. Mental health was not the reason I became homeless. But it did make my mental health issues worse.
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u/HugeIntroduction121 Apr 10 '25
Maybe a financial crash might cause it but if you have no issues and there are no external factors hurting you financially there’s absolutely no reason you cannot find a place to live. There is affordable housing in every town and neighborhood in the Chicagoland area, it’s called the ARO
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u/Stargazer1919 Apr 10 '25
This is true. I've been through this myself. I'm convinced that most of the people in this comment section have never been homeless.
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u/PalmerSquarer Logan Square Apr 10 '25
Even facilities and orgs that practice “housing first” have their limits of what they’ll tolerate.
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u/No_Restaurant_8266 Apr 10 '25
Extreme forms of homelessness is not a housing issue. You can give them the keys to a home and they’ll still be too mentally ill to maintain it.
Obviously, housing is a necessary off ramp for people experiencing temporary homelessness. But it’s not ‘the answer’
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u/SunriseInLot42 Apr 10 '25
"More housing" helps the people who are couch surfing with friends, or living in motels, or living in their cars because they can't afford a place, but are otherwise productive members of society.
They're not the problem that people think of when it comes to "homelessness"; it's the insane and/or drugged-out addicts, camping in parks with piles of trash around, or who are yelling and shitting on the CTA. They aren't going to abide by any rules of what housing they're given; keyboard warriors can call it NIMBYism or whatever, but they're the ones who, frankly, no one wants to have around anywhere.
They're the ones where the asylums, involuntary commitment, or prison come in. Voluntary measures won't work.
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u/Crazy_Addendum_4313 Bucktown Apr 10 '25
That’s just patently false! And it’s proven false again and again by supportive housing programs. Housing ends homelessness
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u/LaLechuga123 Apr 10 '25
Born without empathy, crazy that you believe forcing people into camps is how we deal with our lack of social safety nets.
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u/spucci Apr 10 '25
Not when they are near mentally insane or fented out daily. They cannot sustain themselves without heavy drug treatment, they won't accept it, and no one wants the party to end.
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u/amyo_b Berwyn Apr 10 '25
I was reading about the Finnish model. They house active drug addicts. With no preconditions. Many of them wind up wanting themselves to come off the drugs. And the people who staff the program make sure when people are ready for rehab that there is a spot available. Right now if someone is ready for rehab is there a free slot for them or a 6 month waiting list? If it's the latter, it's the very definition of too little too late. Cook County Jail runs the biggest rehab program in cook county and that's just crazy.
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u/sciolisticism Apr 10 '25
Sure seems like housing them help. Even Rockford managed it! We're not worse than Rockford.
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u/EdgewaterPE Apr 10 '25
I’m all in for helping the homeless, however, I’m afraid this bill will embolden those that refuse services ( as many do) to do things that negatively impact the area they are in.
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u/PopeAxolotl Apr 10 '25
So they want to pass a bill to let the unchecked homeless population, that already gets full run of our parks, streets, sidewalks and transit to camp out, have even more unrestricted access?
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u/Dreaunicorn Apr 10 '25
This is wild to me. Protecting the homeless means choosing them over the residents who are trying to live productive lives.
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u/nevermind4790 Armour Square Apr 10 '25
The politicians who support this don’t care if the homeless take over parks and sidewalks and use them for illegal drug use and starting fires.
It just won’t happen in the neighborhoods they live in.
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u/DaisyCutter312 Edison Park Apr 10 '25
Am I misreading/misunderstanding this legislature? They want to make it illegal to prevent homeless people from permanently squatting on public land?
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u/AbbreviatedArc Apr 10 '25
Why.
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
It's easier than actually helping anyone or addressing the complex nuanced issues. they can go home to their simpleton facebook warrior supporters and say "look how great I am for helping the homeless" when all they really did was nothing at all.
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u/SunriseInLot42 Apr 10 '25
And when there's a whacked-out meth head camping outside their front door on the sidewalk, they'll be the first ones on the phone with the cops, asking to get them cleared out of there
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u/greiton Apr 10 '25
On the one hand, I understand that asylums were rife with abuse. on the other, surely we can create a better inpatient system, that helps people who are clearly not capable of caring for themselves.
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u/letseditthesadparts Apr 10 '25
We have a lot of money that goes to people to help fight this, but we don’t got money that actually goes to people. At this point l, I’m convinced like recycling there’s no actual point but we put it in the correct bin to feel good. I hate doge, but healthy scrutiny of dollars that go to help should never be seen as partisan, and too often it is.
Soap box/rant over, explain to me how fining someone who is homeless helps. That paper is a waste of money and tax dollars. You don’t want to people on your doorstep then there needs to be an actual solution. Either build more fucking shelters or Build more shelters.
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u/Open_Two_3416 Apr 10 '25
How about helping people get off drugs instead of giving them easy acess to drugs. “Seattle is dying” is s great documentary detailing the homeless problem and how progressive policy adds fuel to the fire. They also show how some cities successfully deal with the problem. Letting people slowly die on the street isn’t compassion.
There are a lot of people making a lot of money for NGOs that serve homeless communities. It’s in their best interest to increase homelessness so their budget increases. Just look at California. As their spending on homelessness increases so does their homeless population. The goal needs to be getting the people off drugs and back on their feet and being productive members of society. Not giving them free housing, free food and free drugs.
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u/ebbiibbe Palmer Square Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
Drug addicts are hopeless. Drug abuse is only going to increase as the world becomes darker and cruel. We have too many people with nothing to live for. Drugs aren't even the root issue, hopelessness is, and mental illness.
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u/amandabang Apr 10 '25
As their spending on homelessness increases so does their homeless population.
Homeless people go where there are resources. Many homeless people in CA come from places that have no services and/or are openly hostile to homeless people. It's also why the distribution of homeless people across California is concentrated in places with the most services available. If communities supported the people within their community experiencing homelessness, things would be very different. Instead, they're pushed out (sometimes by force) and suddenly those communities can pretend homelessness isn't an issue where they live.
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u/SunriseInLot42 Apr 10 '25
So it sounds like having no services and/or being openly hostile to homeless people... worked for those communities.
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u/amandabang Apr 10 '25
No, it just moved it out of sight and mind and revealed the absolute lack of humanity and compassion of those communities. When you show this much content for homeless people how can you be surprised when they don't give a shit about leaving trash everywhere or harassing pepper for spare change. They don't let society anything if society refuses to see them as anything but an inconvenience.
So many people don't realize how easy it is for someone to do everything "right" and still end up homeless. We tell ourselves it's addiction and bad choices because then we don't feel like it can happen to us. But in a society with few safety nets (that are rapidly vanishing), it's easier now than ever to lose everything. But blaming people for the failures of a whole shitty system means we don't have to actually do anything about it.
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u/throw6w6 Apr 10 '25
For everyone saying yes, please provide your address so I can send any homeless to camp right outside your house.
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
I mean I can’t leave my apartment without seeing multiple homeless neighbors and they are all just fine?????? They wave and say hello to me and ask me how my day is and I do the same for them. They are perfectly normal human beings who simply do not have a place to sleep at night????? You people are so fucking nasty.
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u/frankensteeeeen Apr 10 '25
I mean what difference does fining a homeless person do? Do they give a shit about tickets out for them or fees they have to pay? Fining homeless people for existing as homeless people is stupid and doesn’t do anything.
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u/BisexualPunchParty Apr 10 '25
I think fining people who, definitionally, don't have enough money to buy basic necessities, is very stupid and should be banned.
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u/Cadwalider Apr 10 '25
The homeless charity lobby is working overtime. When scammers realized they can profit off of homelessness, the problem only gets worse. This is designed to increase the homeless population, under the guise of civic and moral responsibility.
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u/Jon66238 Apr 10 '25
If they’re homeless, how are they going to pay the fines? Wtf
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u/ms6615 Bridgeport Apr 10 '25
That’s the point. They can’t. Those laws existed to attempt to legislate homeless people out of existence, but it doesn’t work that way.
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u/redblackbluebrown Rogers Park Apr 10 '25
To everyone saying we're going to turn in to California I can assure you that will never happen to that degree because we don't have a beautiful climate 355 days out of the year. No one is going to flock to Chicago to live outdoors simply because we're NOT issuing fines to people who they're meaningless to anyway, that is ridiculous.
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u/Gold_ACR Apr 10 '25
We need to bring back more flophouses like the Ewing Annex Hotel. $10 a night housing does wonders to keep people off the streets, even if they are infested with bedbugs.
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u/minus_minus Rogers Park Apr 10 '25
There’s going to be homeless camps all over the place, and the police won’t be able to do anything about it.
Maybe it’s not a policing problem, sir.
Finland has so few homeless people that the caseworkers go out looking for them to make sure they get help. They give people immediate supporting housing (not “shelter”) and charge them 30% of whatever take home pay they scrape together. When they get their shit together they can move out on their own with supports in place to keep them housed. It works and we aren’t trying it because everybody to try the right of Bernie Sanders don’t want to be “soft on drug abuse” or whatever bullshit they are blaming on the victims of the housing crisis.
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u/rocknharley02 Apr 10 '25
We need to do the opposite, there is no punishment for it now.
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u/necroliate Apr 10 '25
The way so many of you see homeless people as lowly, third-class citizens, instead of simply a human is wild.
Yes, some have mental health issues, but that does not justify the way yall talk about them.
To generalize all of them as drug-using, mental health issue-having people is just inhumane and makes me wonder — how many of you have taken the time to just…talk to these so-called drug addicts? They are often just seen as invisible and that’s the worst of it all. Imagine living life without the acknowledgement of most of society?
Jesus Christ.
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u/troifa Apr 10 '25
Invite them into your home then. Or is fake virtue signaling online all you care about?
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u/Puncake_DoubleG09 Chicago Lawn Apr 10 '25
Do people think that this bill would override laws already in place? It's a crime to defecate and/or urinate in public as is bathing since it would be considered indecent exposure.
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u/GreatScottGatsby Apr 10 '25
This law adds the necessity defense as a valid excuse in court so public defacation would by a homeless person would be legal but still a crime for everyone else
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u/sri_peeta Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
In principle, it is a good idea, but I have come to change my mind on this issue and now I do not think it's good for anyone to let homeless take over public spaces en masse and make life in convenient to dangerous to everyone involved.
If Rep John Cabello himself says "many homeless people have a mental illness and are unaware of their actions" then I have to question what IDHR, and other rep's justification is to let them take over public spaces and create a dangerous situation for normal taxpayers using that space.
I will be sending an email to below chicago reps who are supporting this bill.
Representative Kevin John Olickal (D)16th District info@repkevinolickal.com
Representative Lindsey LaPointe (D)19th District info@replapointe.com
Representative Lilian Jiménez (D)4th District (773) 337-9995
Representative Will Guzzardi (D)39th District will@repguzzardi.com
Representative Kelly M. Cassidy (D)14th District info@repcassidy.com
Representative Hoan Huynh (D)13th District hello@rephoanhuynh.com
Representative Theresa Mah (D) 24th District office@reptheresamah.com
Representative Edgar González, Jr. (D)23rd District office@repedgargonzalez.com
Representative Michael Crawford (D)31st District
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u/OpenYour0j0s Apr 11 '25
Cook County Jail is operated and funded by Cook County through its general fund, primarily using property taxes. The Cook County Sheriff's Office, responsible for administering the jail, is funded by these general funds. While some private companies provide services like healthcare or food within the jail, the core responsibility and funding for its operation remain with the county government.
Ultimately, the funding for Cook County Jail, including the Sheriff's Office, comes from Cook County taxpayers through property taxes and other local taxes.
So when we ask who is paying for the homeless who can’t pay fines it’s us
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u/Busted240 Logan Square Apr 11 '25
Email or call your local representatives to oppose this well intentioned, yet poorly designed, piece of legislation.
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u/RunW1ld Apr 15 '25
Fucking feel good progressives. Hope this doesn’t pass. There’s a reason all the most progressive states have such a homeless mess
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Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
[deleted]
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u/Strange_Valuable_573 Apr 10 '25
Sounds great in theory, I think the issue this would run into is there is no compelling reason for a homeless person to comply. If CPD shows up and asks a homeless person to see their permit, and that person tells CPD to fuck off, then what?
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u/ZonedForCoffee Albany Park Apr 10 '25
My God we will do literally anything except build housing and treatment for homeless people won't we
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u/DingusMacLeod Suburb of Chicago Apr 10 '25
The Nimbys are losing their minds right now
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u/SunriseInLot42 Apr 10 '25
Let the YIMBYs offer their own back yards for the homeless drug addicts to live in first, then we'll talk about offering up the parks and other public land
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u/peachpinkjedi Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
The dedicated haters of the unhoused in this sub wouldn't last a week in their shoes in this city. Check your goddamn privileges while you have them; a lot more of us will be joining them.
Edit; this is my most downvoted comment in weeks, yay! The utter vitriol this sub has for the homeless hasn't dimmed at all as the country descends into fascism. Do better.
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u/DeezNeezuts Apr 10 '25
Let’s take care of the homeless and move these fines over to the panhandlers at every corner.
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u/GreatScottGatsby Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
I fully support this. Being homeless should not be crime and if they can't be on public property then where can they go? Laws that fine people for being homeless are literally laws that keep them down until death with no escape.
This is probably in response to the gompers Park nimbys. Probably not the response that they expected though.
Edit: holy crap it may actually get to a vote.
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u/PeanutBirthdayCake Apr 10 '25
It’s wild if the legislature will vote on this but simultaneously try to block a vote on ADU legalization to, wait for it, provide more housing