After visiting a couple of homeless shelters in downtown Chicago (dscribed earlier in this blog), four of us (Damon J, Gosia D, and Kathy T and I) went out on a Sunday afternoon to see where people who didn't stay in shelters were living around the city. It was 10 degrees Farenheit.
We started at the only open field in the city. It's right in the shadow of the downtown business district and is crisscrossed with railroad tracks. Chicago's inital growth during the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds was because it was the hub for all major railroads crossing the country.
A tent city had developed over the last few months on the land in the remnants of the prairie brush. The tallest silver building in the picture below is the Trump Tower. The other building are the homes of major Chicago based corporations.
The living accomodations ranged from simple tarps as shown below in the brush to much more elaborate setups.
This couple had a firepit and a couch and had even added a shelf with some cooking materials.
Last week though, new fences were put up, the brush was cleared, and all the residents evicted. (Apparently, the land had been sold and a new development is going up in this rapidly growing section of Chicago). Their belongings were mainly still in place but they were not able to retrieve them. It was very much like a ghost town.
Each of the tents had a large red "X" painted on it's side, indicating that the residents had been moved out. If you look carefully, you can see the "X" on the green tent below and also see how almost all the brush and trees had now been cleared away. It was discouraging to think that these people who had next to nothing, lost the little they had.
