What the Proposed Ordinance on Homeless Shelters REALLY Means

On Monday, November 7th, the Village Planning and Development Commission voted seven to one to approve this ordinance to regulate temporary homeless shelters, despite hearing two hours of objections from Oak Lawn residents, faith leaders, and shelter volunteers and staff. In a previous post, I described a number of reasons to reject the proposal. Here, I list the major implications of its passage, which increasingly seems to have been predetermined.

The Board of Trustees will vote on the ordinance at their next meeting on Tuesday, November 14th at 7:30 in the Village Hall. Please attend and voice your objections. Or contact Village President Sandra Bury and your Trustee (see lefthand sidebar).

The Village doesn’t care about homeless people anymore. Village leaders invited PADS, a nonprofit homeless shelter administrator, to begin operations more than twenty years ago (the organization was recently replaced by BEDS Plus, but the model remains the same). They did so out of acute concern for the health, safety, and welfare of the homeless population in Oak Lawn. With the hurried ordinance and rubber-stamp approval, the Village seems to have lost its earlier compassion for these individuals, who include some of society’s most vulnerable.

The Village now sees the homeless as criminals. Members of the public often stereotypes the homeless as lazy, dishonest and criminal. They actually include veterans, domestic violence survivors, the physically and mentally disabled, the working poor, single-parent families and members of other incredibly vulnerable groups. Unjustified concerns about “resident safety” motivated the Village to pursue this ordinance, which will effectively enshrine these stereotypes in law.

And, in a larger sense, the Village treats the homeless like ugly nuisances who should be kept out of sight. A person occupying a public space is NOT committing a crime or somehow acting immorally, regardless of their social status or appearance. (Think about it: why would the Village be worried about homeless shelter sites being “located within five hundred feet of a child day care, nursery school, or grammar school” unless it believed the homeless represent a criminal threat or bad influence? As an aside, overnight shelters only operate at night, when day cares and schools are typically closed.)

The Village ignores the calling of faith. We are called to care for society’s most vulnerable. Six Oak Lawn churches--Mount Zion Lutheran Church, Salem United Church of Christ, Wesleyan Community Church, Pilgrim Faith United Church of Christ, Calvin Christian Reform Church, and Trinity Lutheran Church--currently host shelters on different nights of the week. The ordinance limits our ability to live one of the most fundamental principles of our faith. If any additional church wished to host a homeless shelter, it would face nearly insurmountable burdens.

The Village will go far for the few who resent the homeless, but it will ignore the many who advocate for them. After several Oak Lawn residents heard an area minister simply gathering opinions about the possibility of using an empty parsonage as part of a shelter program, a Trustee rushed to have this ordinance developed. The Village barely gave us time to respond, and officials have obfuscated in response to resident emails. Even after hearing extensive objections at Monday’s Planning & Development Commission meeting, they did not change a single item.

Ultimately, the Village seems to think it has been calm and reasonable throughout this process. Suddenly introducing this ordinance and forcing us to scramble to respond created a completely uneven playing field from the outset. It could have engaged us in conversation from the outset and developed a mutually-beneficial regulation that addresses everyone’s concerns.

Instead, a nonresident attorney drafted the ordinance, and the Village is trying to ram it through as intact as possible. That violates the entire concept of “community”--everyone working in unity for the common good.