The Crib, The Community & The Blue Box

Most recently, I was an observer at a community meeting on Monday, August 5, 2013 that dealt with the friction between the Night Ministry's "The Crib" (located at the host, Lake View Lutheran Church) and the surrounding residents of that community.

For the record, I do not live in the immediate area of The Crib; but I am aware of it as it tends to come up in routine CAPS meetings often enough.

Here we go:

With the request of assisting the immediate community, I worked hard to post notices on their behalf here on the Patch, twitter and The Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown blog. The hard work payed off. We filled just about every seat. I would guess about 40-50, when normally they host 6-7 people.

The meeting started late (as seems to be the usual). The community was ready to go at 7PM, but the Alderman, and a sundry of other people were nowhere to be seen (except for a police officer putting chairs at table upfront).

7:15pm rolls around and the Alderman and rest of the crew came into the room. One of the first things that was dictated was that they were "sorry for being late" and they would try to wrap up the meeting by 8-815pm. The Community was having NONE of this. The community wanted to be heard, and heard they were - until 9PM!

In what seemed, IMHO, to be a ploy to take up some time, a history was spoken about The Crib: how it was started in the 1980's, it was controversial (even back then), it was (adult) men only for overnight stay; pretty much what it is today, except that there was not the constant issues as it is today. This basically lasted about 10(ish) minutes before Tammy Cole was introduced.

Tammy was representing the Department of Human Services, who just happens to fund The Night Ministry. The DHS tends to work with community groups to set up shelters, such as The Crib, all across the city.

Also at the meeting were representatives from The Night Ministry, the coordinators from The Crib (who, as nice as they were, were basically thrown "to the dogs" as it were, because they could not speak directly for the Crib, to make decisions, etc.).

I'm going to continue on here to use bullet points as there was a lot of discussions from Alderman Tunney who is quoted as saying:

* He's committed to the Crib's success first, and THEN the community.
* The Center on Halsted is a good neighbor.
* He wants to work through the concerns with the community

Please note, it's been revealed at the meeting that there have been 6 to 7 meetings over a 1 to 1-1/2 year time period. The meetings have been ongoing.

Nathan, who is one of The Crib coordinators educated the community about how the program works:

* The Crib is for low-threshhold youths who:
 * Don't have IDs
 * Can't go anywhere else (no family or friends to take them in, perhaps from another city, or a different part of Chicago, even)
 * Can't access normal City services (see no IDs above)
 * The clients of The Crib are referred to Case Managers who can help them
 * At certain nights when the crowd of clients exceed the number of beds, a lottery is placed to see who gets a bed

The Crib defined the term "youth" as an individual who is 18-24 and possibly in high school or college.

Many issues were brought up. Many different people spoke, sometimes out of turn, sometimes just making a simple statement, or speaking something so simple and profound, that applause would erupt.

There seems to be two major issues going on as I see it:

* Non-respecting the neighborhood from the clients of The Crib.

It's been reported that clients of The Crib would, at different times of the day or night, harass and or threaten residents in the community; having loud conversations outside the church entrance going into the late night; constantly having clients come out for smoke breaks to meet up with their friends; loitering around the neighborhood after the "lucky winners" for the beds were chosen.

* No responsibility or oversight from anyone at The Crib, The Night Ministry or The Department of Human Services or Lakeview Lutheran Church. I'll add the Alderman's office too, because he approves in the city council what monies get allocated where.

* Even the police department, who are sworn "To Serve and Protect" seem to be serving and protecting themselves behind something as simple as "It's private property. We can't go to the church and investigate a complaint because it's private property."

* When an altercation between a local resident and a Crib client took place on a public sidewalk, the local resident took the lead and invited the Crib client to go to the Police (which, by the way is directly across the street) and as it was reported at the meeting: both were laughed off by the police officer behind the desk as was told to "sort it out yourselves."

To sum up, residents are looking for solutions to four things that can easily be implemented within 2-3 weeks. No need to wait another 6 meetings and another 1 year:

(1) Eliminate 10 PM smoke breaks to prevent parking lot fights, excessive noise, and additional loitering by friends of those staying at the Crib.

(2) Bring the lottery process in doors to prevent the same issues noted in smoke break elimination request.

(3) Limit intake process to 9 PM only to prevent the adults coming to the shelter at all hours expecting beds and screaming to be let in.

(4) Hire trained, professional security to patrol the area for the hours the shelter is in operation (The money can come from the fee the Lakeview Lutheran Church receives from the Night Ministry (or Kickstarter if they want to go that route.)

This will hopefully end the current issues of neighbor harassment, destruction of neighbor property, and trespassing in or near residential property.

Whatever good the Night Ministry thinks they are accomplishing with their services is being overshadowed by all of the issues they are failing to manage on the periphery, and the neighbors are fed up and unsympathetic.
By failing to manage their shelter, they are destroying any credibility they would like to have as an organization that deserves to be funded.

RELATED
http://www.thenightministry.org/001_programs/040_youth_services/030_youth_housing/040_the_crib/
http://www.lakeviewlutheran.com/

TheDoctor1963