In 100 days, organizations across suburban Cook County, including in Oak Park, housed 117 individuals experiencing homelessness.
The goal, set by Re!nstitute — a nonprofit organization that supports communities tackling complex issues such as homelessness — was to house 88 individuals from Feb. 12 to May 21. That’s double the 44 individuals that were housed the last time suburban Cook County participated in this type of challenge, about six years ago.
“There’s something really special about suburban Cook County, and the way that they consistently come together across a diverse geographic area,” said Sarah Hennessy, senior facilitator and regional monitoring, evaluation and learning manager at Re!nstitute. “They face the challenges that they have with equity head on.”
Another 310 individuals experiencing homelessness were connected to shelter during this challenge. Troy Garcia, a street outreach specialist at Housing Forward, said the nonprofit will work to stay in touch with the individuals in their shelters as they work toward finding permanent supportive housing.
“You immediately think, ‘100-day challenge, that’s an awfully short period of time to accomplish something that is an issue in society that seems so difficult to tackle and to solve,’” said John Harris, facilitator for the Oak Park Homelessness Coalition.
But setting a deadline, while daunting, was a catalyst to achieving their goal, Harris said.
What is the 100-day challenge?
The 100-day challenge is an initiative communities apply to participate in, hosted by Re!nstitute, with curated goals to tackle homelessness. Re!nstitute facilitates this challenge across the United States. They’ve done more than 100 of these 100-day challenges, Hennessy said. In this term, the areas of focus were suburban Cook County, Rockford, Joliet and Springfield. This is the first time Oak Park has participated.
A focus was placed on this region of Illinois, Hennessy said, because of the increase of encampment homelessness in urban and suburban areas. But it’s a competitive application process, Hennessy said.
This year’s Point-in-Time Count, a report of sheltered and unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night in January, identified more than 255 individuals as unhoused in suburban Cook County, said Vanessa Matheny, special assistant to Oak Park’s village manager for community services.
A typical timeline from someone identified as unhoused to accessing permanent housing is more than two years, Matheny said. This initiative helped accelerate that timeline for the 117 individuals.
The initiative also had a specific focus on people ages 55 and older. Individual men ages 55 and older were identified as the biggest demographic within the 255 individuals from the area’s Point-in-Time Count, Matheny said.
In the last challenge in suburban Cook County, in which about 44 individuals experiencing homelessness were housed, only about 12% of them were ages 55 and up, said Katie Eighan, the Continuum of Care planning director at the Alliance to End Homelessness in Suburban Cook County. But about 22% of those staying outside were in that demographic.
On average across the country in 2023, about 25% of those experiencing unsheltered homelessness are ages 55 and up, Hennessy said. There was also a 73% increase in senior homelessness from 2019 to 2021, she said, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of income for many.
Eighan added that they also chose this demographic because of the impacts of homelessness on the body. Those 55 and up experiencing homelessness have health similar to those who are 75 and not experiencing homelessness, she said.
Part of the goal for this challenge, Eighan said, was that 30% of those housed in this challenge would fall in that age range. The final count was almost 34%, she said.
But the work isn’t done.
“Now we are working on how do we sustain that, how do we continue to reduce those barriers?” Matheny said.
How was the challenge funded?
No new money was associated with this initiative, Matheny said, but all individuals in the program had housing vouchers, entitlement benefits or other forms of rental housing assistance. The plan was to connect individuals who had these sorts of assistance already with landlords who can accept them. So, their rent will be at least partially paid for, Garcia said.
The Village of Oak Park and others hosted events to facilitate these connections. At an April 12 event at the Oak Park Public Library, 23 people were able to find housing and move in within 10 days. Some moved to Oak Park, but many moved around in the western suburbs, Matheny said.
Matheny said the village and others worked to help landlords understand that the individuals participating in this challenge were ready to be permanently housed and to gain employment.
“But they’re constantly being met with these roadblocks, because nobody wants to rent to somebody that is unhoused,” she said.
So, it’s important to remove barriers to housing and to correct misconceptions that renting to those experiencing homelessness is risky, Matheny said.
“People who are currently experiencing homelessness can be and are great tenants,” Harris said. “These are individuals who sometimes just need a fresh start.”
There’s still lots of work to do, Harris said, given the number of individuals still in shelters or experiencing unsheltered homelessness. But this challenge proves that more can be done.
“If you lay out a vision and a plan and get people together, this is a problem we can solve,” Harris said. “We can actually solve it reasonably quickly.”
This 100-day challenge and the resettlement of 201 migrants in and around Oak Park proves that when advocates rally around a crisis, successfully housing people is possible, Harris said.
“It gives me great hope,” Harris said. “We can, over time, solve the problem of homelessness, not only in our community but around the region or country.”
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