Kristen Thometz | July 14, 2021 4:47 pm
(WTTW News)
Chatham resident Edrika Fulford knows what it’s like to be homeless. After quitting her job as a family case manager to take care of her ailing mother, Fulford became homeless in 2015. She had by that point lost her mother as well.
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“When I experienced homelessness, I was just dumbfounded,” she said. “I got a college degree. I know this is not supposed to be happening. I was wandering, I was sleeping on the train, and I would get up and wash up like in McDonald’s or White Castle – whatever little restaurant.”
SOUTH JACKSONVILLE â Even with Social Security, her late husband s pension as a former Jacksonville police chief and her own pension, Wanda Irlam says she would have a hard time paying rent for most two-bedroom apartments. I think it would be very hard to find a place, said Irlam, 84, a retired school food service worker who lives in the Jacksonville Affordable Housing development. This is just a good place to live, and it s very affordable and very safe.
Her $382-a-month rent, which covers water and sewer service in this Morgan County village adjacent to Jacksonville and 36 miles west of Springfield, compares with other rents for similar apartments in the area that can cost $800 or more per month.
SOUTH JACKSONVILLE Even with Social Security, her late husband’s pension as a former Jacksonville police chief and her own pension, Wanda Irlam says she would have a hard time paying rent for most two-bedroom apartments.
“I think it would be very hard to find a place,” said Irlam, 84, a retired school food service worker who lives in the Jacksonville Affordable Housing development. “This is just a good place to live, and it’s very affordable and very safe.”
Her $382-a-month rent, which covers water and sewer service in this Morgan County village adjacent to Jacksonville and 36 miles west of Springfield, compares with other rents for similar apartments in the area that can cost $800 or more per month.
During COVID-19, many people who were homeless lived in Chicago-area hotels Here s what was learned msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
When COVID-19 halted the world a little more than a year ago, one group of people appeared to be particularly vulnerable to this new, little-understood coronavirus: the homeless.
Often suffering from poor health and packed head-to-foot in shelters â known as congregate housing â homeless individuals were one of several groups of people who, it was feared, would be decimated by the spread of COVID-19.
While those experiencing homelessness did suffer COVIDâs aggressive spread initially, a silver lining has emerged out of the deadly pandemic. Hotels, abandoned by business travelers and tourists, were used to house people who would otherwise be sleeping in congregate shelters or on pads arranged on the floor of a church basement. Social service agencies, doctors and those who stayed in the hotels are now calling it a game-changing model for how to stabilize people experiencing homelessness and get them into permanent housing and off the street for good.