An Oak Lawn Resident's FAQ on the Proposed Shelter Ordinance

The Village of Oak Lawn posted responses to frequently asked questions about its proposed ordinance to regulate overnight homeless shelters. They left very little time for a meaningful response before the ordinance goes before the Village Board of Trustees on Tuesday, November 14th at 7:30. But I wanted to post an FAQ of my own that addresses some lingering questions.

Q: According to their comprehensive FAQ, the Village has worked with us to refine the ordinance point by point. Surely, our concerns have been addressed, and we're all satisfied, save for noisy Patch members with nothing better to do than criticize local politics?

A: No, the FAQ isn't objective or complete, regardless of how comprehensive it looks. I feel like the Village is trying to limit the conversation. These aren't the most important questions, just the ones that it wants to answer and the ones on which it wants us to focus. If we only parse specific clauses on eleven pages of regulations, then we're already accepting the idea of an ordinance. The Board could very well grant us a few minor concessions on Tuesday, but the Village will still be able to arbitrarily close existing shelters and prevent new ones from opening.

Q: But the FAQ describes a “rather collaborative effort” (Introduction). “Discussions with BEDS Plus and others have been going on for several months,” right (Question 1)? See, look right here, some of our objections have been resolved through “compromise dialogue” and “cooperative discussions” (Question 13, Question 14). Doesn't that reassure you?

A: Remember the origin of the ordinance. It seems to have sprung from fears of a guerrilla social service agency secretly converting a residential home into a homeless shelter. In the Daily Southtown, Village President Sandra Bury worried that, “Oak Lawn would be powerless to stop such a plan.” That scenario is ludicrously unlikely.

But it was enough to cause the Village to rush to out the ordinance, the terms of which became the sole basis of all subsequent conversation. BEDS Plus leadership, church representatives, and other concerned parties did not play any role in developing the regulations; they could only react to them (often with very little time to respond). That does not seem like a “collaborative effort,” which would involve equal contributions from all concerned. Outside of an early meeting between the Village President and clergy, most of this “dialogue” seems to have occurred through one-sided email exchanges.

Q: Even if all that's true, the Village must have a good reason for moving forward so aggressively. You seem to think that they are only discriminating against the homeless?

A: Yes, but not overtly. So, you don't hear Village officials talking about the homeless as “bad hombres." At least not publicly. [Laughs]. I think we're experiencing a subtler suburban classism, one which shows itself in people feeling resentment when they look at—or think about—the homeless. It's easy to believe that the homeless deserve it; that they're potentially dangerous; that they make an area look bad; that they're rejecting responsibility; that they're too lazy to work; that they're conning naive nonprofits, policymakers, and, by extension, us honest, hardworking taxpayers.

Like I've written before, those perceptions are just untrue. The diverse people we lump together as “homeless” come from some of the most vulnerable groups in our society: veterans, victims of domestic violence, the mentally and physically disabled, the working poor, and single-parent families. Instead of being violent criminals, they're more likely to be the victims of violent crime. They're the people we should care about the most.

Q: Come on now, our Village leaders are rational and compassionate. You can't seriously be implying that they're writing ordinances because of resentment. I mean, the FAQ explicitly says that the Village isn't acting out of “ stereotypes and fears” (Question 18).

A: It does. But the rest implies the opposite. See all the language about “safety concerns,” “safety and welfare of the community,” etc. The threats to safety and welfare come from homeless criminals, who are presumably responsible for the “past incidents” alluded to in the FAQ (Introduction). The specific nature of these threats and incidents remain ambiguous, of course, but the Village's concerns about shelters being able to respond to “request[s] for information made by the Police Department" confirm their thinking (Question 2).

In other places, the document seems blatantly casual about its bias. Like, when the Village expresses its commitment to “preserving [its] aesthetics” (Question 8). It sounds noble and kind of pretentious, but, in the context of the ordinance, it's saying that the homeless are unaesthetic (read: ugly). Restricting shelters and forcing their users to travel to neighboring towns ensures that residents don't have to see them in public.

And then we get to the part about keeping shelters away from schools and daycares, which the FAQ absurdly rationalizes (Question 17). Traffic concerns? Really?! You'd think a homeless shelter letting out looked like the parking lot right after a Beyonce concert. It doesn't. But either way, let's try this: shelters near schools close half an hour after the schools start. Far-fetched hypothetical problem averted. (Of course, the Village's real worry is that homeless people might do terrible things to kids, but they don't want to say that or back down. So at this point, the FAQ writer's just throwing things at the wall and hoping they'll stick).

One last thing. No one can determine whether they themselves act out of “unfounded fears and stereotypes” or not. The people who hear what they say and see what they do get to make that decision. You've heard the proposal and seen how it's being pushed through. Speak out at the Board of Trustees; meeting on Tuesday, November 14th at 7:30 in the Village Hall. Or contact Village President Sandra Bury and/or your Trustee (see lefthand sidebar).