It had began to sprinkle, however Richard Vargas needed to squeeze in some Narcan coaching for yet another passerby Friday afternoon in East Garfield Park.
Inside seconds, a younger bicyclist stopped for a free pack of the overdose-reversing nasal spray and lowered his headphones to listen to Vargas, the neighborhood outreach director of the West Aspect Heroin and Opioid Job Drive.
“He stated he’s misplaced a number of members of the family to drug overdose,” Vargas stated later. “We gave him coaching on acknowledge when an individual is having an overdose.”
Vargas additionally offered the bicyclist free kits to check illicit drug provides for the artificial opioids fentanyl and nitazine and for the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine. Such outreach is taken into account a “hurt discount” method to illicit drug use — an method that goals to attenuate detrimental well being, social and authorized results even when customers will not be able to get clear.
However an govt order by President Donald Trump, issued Thursday and billed as “ending crime and dysfunction on America’s streets,” would shift funds away from the harm-reduction method and direct federal assist to states and cities to take away out of doors homeless encampments and forcefully institutionalize individuals.
Vargas and different Chicago advocates and care suppliers say the order targets homelessness visibility, not options.
“If there isn’t a funding for this work, how will we be capable of do it?” Vargas requested.
Redirecting funding
Trump’s order claims that “endemic vagrancy, disorderly conduct, sudden confrontations and violent assaults have made our cities unsafe.”
The treatment, in line with the order, is an overhaul of the nation’s response to homelessness. Funds would shift away from “housing first” applications that present properties with out requiring sobriety or remedy.
The order additionally claims that hurt discount efforts “solely facilitate unlawful drug use and its attendant hurt.”
The order doesn’t point out Narcan or distribution of unpolluted needles, pipes or snorting gear geared toward slowing the unfold of contagions corresponding to HIV and hepatitis.
Nevertheless it requires the U.S. lawyer common to assessment some federal grant recipients — these “that function drug injection websites or ‘secure consumption websites,’ knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia, or allow the use or distribution of illicit medication on property beneath their management” — and decide whether or not they’re violating federal legislation.
Advocates for unhoused individuals say stigmatizing drug and alcohol use can result in additional hurt.
“You assume they’re doing medication as a result of it’s only a enjoyable factor [but] they’re not,” stated Jackie Edens, CEO of Inside Voice, a Chicago group that addresses homelessness. “They’re self-medicating. They’re attempting to get by the night time.”
Nationally, as harm-reduction efforts have gained steam, overdose deaths have usually tailed off from an August 2023 peak. In Illinois, 3,502 individuals died from an overdose in 2023, in line with state information. That was 317 fewer than in 2022.
However homelessness has develop into extra seen throughout the nation. The unhoused inhabitants grew by greater than 18% final yr, in line with federal officers.
In Chicago, this inhabitants was formally 6,786 this previous January — the second-highest tally during the last decade and practically double the town’s 2022 depend.
Departing from the “housing first” method can be a grave mistake, advocates say.
Psychological well being and dependancy points can worsen with out entry to housing, stated Mark Ishaug, president and CEO of Thresholds, a Chicago service supplier. Ishaug, who has studied homelessness approaches for 35 years, known as Trump’s order a “travesty.”
Ishaug stated steady housing is important to “guarantee entry to well being care after which high quality well being outcomes and provides individuals hope they should work — to return to high school, to get reunited with household and associates and to reside full, productive lives locally.”
Institutionalizing and criminalizing houseless individuals is “the very last thing we want,” Ishaug stated. “It doesn’t work, it’s costly and, on the backside line, it’s inhumane.”
Advocates say the cash for institutionalization can be spent higher on inexpensive housing and well being care.
Edens questioned how the manager order might be enforced and stated she is nervous about mass arrests of homeless individuals.
And the order doesn’t handle homelessness causes corresponding to rising rents, stagnant wages or an absence of inexpensive housing, Ishaug stated.
In 2023, the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement accused the town of wrongly limiting inexpensive housing by permitting Metropolis Council members to reject inexpensive items of their wards by the usage of aldermanic prerogative. The federal investigation fizzled after Trump took workplace.
Housing teams have stated they may attempt to work with the town immediately on the problem.
Other than Trump’s order, advocates are nervous about his 2026 funds proposal, which might slash rental help, they are saying.
“A rising sentiment is that that is the best way to take care of homelessness — to punish individuals and conceal them, somewhat than actually give attention to options,” stated Doug Schenkelberg, govt director of the Chicago Coalition to Finish Homelessness.
A downstate ‘human rights disaster’
In downstate Illinois, Trump’s order may trigger much more injury, in line with Christine Kahl, CEO of Phoenix Neighborhood Improvement Providers, which serves unhoused populations within the central Illinois counties of Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford and Fulton.
“What may need been a homeless disaster simply turned a human rights disaster,” stated Kahl, a 40-year veteran in social providers.
She stated the order led teams like hers to wonder if their federal grants would disappear because the feds pull the rug from beneath extra everlasting “housing first” initiatives, in favor of “transitional” housing — an method largely deserted years in the past amid findings that it didn’t work, very like pressured institutionalization.
If the cash is pulled, Kahl stated it will be disastrous for downstate applications that have been already underfunded.
This yr the unhoused inhabitants depend in Phoenix’s four-county space is its highest ever, Kahl stated. The world’s housing ready listing already consists of 400 individuals.
“We have been already struggling maintaining, so to now see a number of the elements of this order utterly pull all the security nets, I really feel our restoration from this will likely be nearly insurmountable,” Kahl stated. “The funds already weren’t maintaining with the necessity. … It erodes all of the progress we’ve remodeled a long time.”
Trump’s order builds on a U.S. Supreme Courtroom resolution final yr that allowed cities to punish individuals for sleeping outdoors, even when they’ve nowhere else to go. That ruling sparked laws banning “out of doors tenting” on public property in additional than 100 municipalities throughout the nation, together with a number of in Illinois.
A Peoria ordinance final yr arrange steep fines and doable incarceration for individuals who repeatedly “camp and retailer private property in public areas.”
Underneath Trump’s order, cities with such bans may now be prioritized for federal funding.
An Illinois Home invoice would stop cities from enacting these legal guidelines. The laws, launched in January, has stalled in committee.
Kahl stated she worries that Trump’s order may weaken public assist for funding social providers.
“We had communities right here undertake that [Peoria] ordinance that by no means had a homeless individual within the 21 years I’ve been at this company,” Kahl stated. Some landlords and donors additionally stop working together with her group.
“Individuals who have been tolerant earlier than may not really feel like they must be anymore,” she stated.
Stability and entry to care
Chicago hasn’t outlawed sleeping outdoors however handle homelessness stays a sizzling matter.
Final yr, a majority of Chicago voters rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Convey Chicago House referendum, which might have raised the actual property switch tax on high-end properties to herald cash to sort out homelessness.
An announcement from the town’s Public Well being Division stated officers are monitoring the affect of Trump’s order and have considerations about results on “entry to essential well being providers” for homeless and addicted individuals.
“Public well being options should be rooted in proof, compassion and fairness,” the assertion stated. “We stay dedicated to approaches that prioritize housing stability, hurt discount and entry to care — methods that save lives and strengthen communities.”
Ald. Invoice Conway (thirty fourth Ward), who described a homeless encampment in his ward as a magnet for medication and violence two years in the past, stated fast rehousing providers and different sources are important to addressing homelessness.
“We now have to attach individuals with housing, and Trump’s govt order does the other,” Conway wrote in a press release.
On the Northwest Aspect, a homeless encampment at Gompers Park that had grown quick final yr caught the eye of neighbors who stated the encampment made it unsafe to convey their children to the park. Ald. Samantha Nugent (thirty ninth) pushed Metropolis Corridor for an “accelerated shifting course of” to get individuals into shelters and flats.
Again in East Garfield Park on Friday, the bicyclist rode off together with his Narcan however shortly circled again to ask Vargas, the opioid outreach chief, about remedy prospects for heroin customers.
“We’re going to make a referral for him Monday to go to a detox program,” Vargas stated. “So the Narcan is the draw [that leads to] connections that we attempt to make for people.”
The final word objectives could also be well being and sobriety, however Vargas stated his staff lets individuals resolve for themselves what they want and what they’re prepared for.
“No matter that’s, we attempt to present it,” he stated.
Vargas pointed to the current decline in deadly overdoses.
“My worry is that, if there will not be individuals out offering prevention, that we will see an uptick in these numbers.”
Chip Mitchell stories for WBEZ Chicago on policing, public security and public well being. Observe him at Bluesky and X. Attain him at cmitchell@wbez.org. Violet Miller and Mary Norkol are reporters with the Chicago Solar-Occasions. Observe Violet on Bluesky and Instagram and attain her at vmiller@suntimes.com. Observe Mary on X and call her at mnorkol@suntimes.com.
