Local Suburban Church Provides Shelter for the Homeless

From Oct. 1 to Apr. 30, every Saturday night, the local homeless line up in the St. Alphonsus cafeteria at a stretched-out table filled with homemade food. They eagerly await bacon and cheese-stuffed burgers, onion rings, beans, chicken-dumpling soup, and chocolate coconut cake.

The St. Alphonsus gymnasium is covered with twenty air mattresses with cotton sheets, and the early birds are hurrying to claim a mattress and pillows. In the morning, the volunteers feed them breakfast and give them a meal to go.

The organization sponsoring this event is Providing Advocacy, Dignity, and Shelter Crisis Services (PADS), a Cook County homeless treatment program.

According to one PADS volunteer, they expect anywhere from 10 to 30 homeless people to show up.

When the homeless leave St. Alphonsus, some go to the PADS shelter in Palatine, on Northwest Highway. Others go to additional shelters or are forced to live on the streets.

Living on the streets is a fear among the homeless. No one wants to live out in the cold this year, but with the economic crisis, it is inevitable.

Some of the homeless are eager to tell their stories.

Brian struggled to find a home after living two years as a crack addict in Chicago. His wife divorced him back in 2002 and he became severely depressed. He lived on the streets for several years, before a friend offered to share his apartment in Buffalo Grove.

Stacey frequents the Prospect Heights PADS station. She comes every Saturday night for food and to socialize with the other homeless people. Stacey has two daughters, one of whom attends University of Illinois. She has an excellent sense of humor. She said they should let the psychology majors from the local schools come to the shelter. “They would have a field day.”

According to St. Alphonus PADS sponsor Mark Naughton, the Palatine PADS shelter “does an excellent job helping the homeless people get off the streets.” There is a lot of coverage in our area. “There are about 20 sites that house the homeless” in Cook County.

The homeless shelter in Palatine is titled Journeys from PADS to Hope. It is a designated treatment center for the homeless.

PADS representative Ron Freeman spoke at a PADS training session about the services they offer for the homeless. They provide a nurse, legal counsel, and social workers, who work on engaging the homeless with the community.

According to Freeman, the PADS staff members use an intense method of treatment.

“We’re going to be in your face trying to solve your problems,” he said. “We don’t mess around. We give them all the tough love that we can.”

Sometimes the homeless people get out of line and the PADS volunteers have to set them straight. The volunteers make sure they don’t bring in any contraband.

“If there’s any kind of criminal activity, we call the police,” Freeman said.

He said they won’t admit any violent felons, or people with a record of heavy offenses. They run background checks on all their homeless before admitting them.

According to St. Norbert Pastor Bob Heinz of Northbrook, the PADS program does not allow foul play at any of their locations.

Heinz spoke about the strictness of the program regarding the homeless people’s behavior at the PADS events.

“If they break the rules, they are evicted,” he said.

One of the fastest ways to get kicked out of the program is to fight with another homeless person.

“There were a couple people like Kevin, who got in a fight with a guy and was evicted,” he said. “I represented him in court a few times.”

The PADS staff focuses on getting homeless people off the streets.

“We have clinicians working with the homeless trying to make that happen,” Freeman said.

The PADS representative said they try to motivate the homeless people, because many of them have given up on life.

“When you become homeless, you lose your hope. We’ve got to give them hope,” he said.

Freeman said they try to encourage the homeless by giving them incentives for working.

“We give them $5 gift cards to McDonald’s if they help clean up at the center,” he said.

Pastor Bob Heinz led the St. Alphonsus PADS program during its early years. He said there was a lot of protest among the parishioners when PADS was founded in 1991.

“The parishioners didn’t want homeless people there when children were around,” he said.

According to Heinz, PADS was desperate to open up its facilities to the Prospect Heights community. He said “there was a gaping hole” with the amount of PADS centers in our area.

Heinz said there is no talk about starting up a PADS program at his church in Northbrook. People question whether or not there are homeless people in their community.

“People think there are no homeless in Northbrook, but I think there are homeless people everywhere,” he said.

State Rep. Elaine Nekritz talked about PADS’ attempt to open up an additional venue in Park Ridge. She said “they were shut down ultimately,” most likely from a local land use issue, or the PADS organization failed to receive a permit from the city.

Freeman said there are a lot more homeless people in the suburbs than people think. They try to blend in with their peers, with the way they dress and the way they talk.

Heinz talked about some of the more common factors that lead to homelessness.

“People who are mentally ill or are mentally disturbed or have hit the wall with employment seek help with PADS,” he said.

Nekritz said that the Illinois government indirectly causes homelessness.

“In Illinois, we do a very poor job of providing community based mental health care, so a lot of our homeless have mental health issues,” she said.

She explained some of the problems with the mental-health care program.

“There was a big push to deinstitutionalize mentally ill people and get them serving in the community, which was less expensive, more humane, and more personal. We deinstitutionalized people in Illinois but we haven’t really built up our community based mental health system,” she said.

The Illinois state representative said that when the mentally ill people leave mental institutions, they often become homeless.

“We basically said, ‘yes you’re out of the institution, but there’s nowhere for you to go now,’” she said. “We have not rectified this situation.”

Organizations like PADS do the best they can to shelter the homeless, but many people like Brian and Stacey will be left out in the cold this year.

As they leave the church with their meal to go, the homeless leave with a sense of hope. They eagerly await Saturday nights and the warmth the home-cooked meals bring them.

--Mark Naughton: St. Alphonsus PADS director

--Bob Heinz: Pastor of St. Norbert Church in Northbrook

--Elaine Nekritz: State representative

--Pat Herrington: PADS shelter director

--Ron Freeman: PADS representative

--Journey from PADS to Hope website: http://www.padstohope.org/boardofdirectors.html