This story launches a new accountability series, Just Neighbors, examining the city’s homeless encampment sweeps and focusing on the human impact of a fragmented, interdepartmental process. At their request, the unhoused people who spoke to the Reader for this story are identified by their first names only.
Jay and John are two unhoused Chicagoans who live in an encampment under the Sacramento Avenue viaduct just south of Chicago Avenue in Garfield Park. The men, both middle-aged, said they’ve survived years of homelessness in the city by learning to rely on and be there for others. To them, this encampment, like others across the city, is more than a spot outdoors where one or more unhoused people live. It’s a community where people share resources that save each other’s lives: tents and blankets, clothes and food, phones and the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan. In an encampment, people split car rides to the emergency room and watch each other’s pets.
Encampments are “camaraderie,” said Jay. “You obviously want to stay more with people that you know versus people that you don’t.” He pointed to his friend John. “Now that he’s staying here, I trust him.”…