Homeless hotline partly restarted 2 months after closing

A hotline to help Chicago’s homeless population find housing is up and running this week after being shut down at the end of June, though the service has been scaled back.

The Sun-Times reported last month that a call center — an important first step toward getting unhoused people off the streets — abruptly shut down June 30 with little warning.

A taxpayer-funded contractor called All Chicago Making Homelessness History promised to bring the service back with a new operator. The hotline provides an avenue for people to do a housing assessment by phone that puts them on a waiting list for government-subsidized housing.

Without the hotline, people had to find a way to go in person to one of the social service groups that can do the housing assessments, which put more demand this summer on those organizations.

Now that the hotline is back, it’s operating Monday, Wednesday and Friday instead of five days, and the hours were cut to 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will expand to include Thursdays beginning Sept. 19.

The call center can be reached at 312-971-4178.

The new operator, the United Way’s 211 Metro Chicago service, intends to add Tuesday services beginning the week of Sept. 23. Tuesday hours will be from 4 to 9 p.m.

The city’s number of unhoused people has exploded.

Chicago’s homeless population increased by more than threefold from last year to almost 19,000, a number that includes recent migrant arrivals.

“I’m glad it’s finally up and running,” said state Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, who has advocated for improving services for the homeless. “It is a critical tool.”

LaPointe added that communication between the city, All Chicago, United Way and homeless services advocates needs to improve.

For instance, she said, it’s unclear what the city plans to do to provide shelter for unhoused people this winter.

The city has been clearing out some homeless encampments, including a highly visible tent camp near the Dan Ryan Expressway before the Democratic National Convention.

Sheldon Echols, the manager of resource advocacy at the Broadway Youth Center, said he’s glad the additional resource was restored.

“The convenience of the call center is what people enjoy the most, versus having to go to an office building and meet with someone in person,” Echols said. “The call center option is convenient for our population and convenient for our staff because at times our workload is pretty high.”

The North Side organization had seen a higher demand this summer for people who wanted to do a housing assessment to get on the waiting list, Echols said.

“A lot of our younger people have been more frequently matched to housing this summer, too,” Echols said.