Out In The Cold: Where Do Chicago’s Homeless Go In The Winter?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2017

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Coffee shops, hospital waiting rooms and train cars are a few of the places Chicago’s homeless go to escape the cold.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.
0:13.6	Hi there, I'm Odette Yousaf, WBEZ's Northside Bureau reporter, and I'm here to tackle a question that Jake Riley sent us.
0:20.8	My question was, where do all the homeless people in Chicago go during the Bureau Reporter, and I'm here to tackle a question that Jake Riley sent us.
0:25.5	My question was, where do all the homeless people in Chicago go during the wintertime?
0:27.9	Jake lives in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood.
0:35.7	He told me he's noticed that around Halloween time, the homeless folks he usually sees at L stations or on the sidewalks seem to disappear.
0:40.1	I guess that they stay in the city and they go into shelters, but then my question would be,
0:42.8	well, why can't the shelters help those people all the time?
0:48.7	So two questions. Where do folks go when it's cold? And why don't they stay in shelters year-round?
0:53.3	To answer this question, we went to someone who's spent a lot of time being homeless.
0:55.9	My name is Bryant Cunningham.
0:57.3	Bryant with a tea.
1:01.1	Bryant used to have a job in a home, but then life happened.
1:02.3	Eh.
1:06.0	So you want to talk about the unhappy times?
1:06.4	Okay.
1:08.6	Those started in 2013. I had in a three-month period four heart attacks.
1:12.6	He spent a stretch of time in the hospital.
1:14.6	When I got out, I was a little hard to get back in the saddle.
1:19.6	I got behind in the bill.
1:21.6	Including his rent, because his medical condition kept him from working.
1:25.6	Bryant's landlord let him go, and he was homeless for three winters.
	...

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