Why isn't Chicago housing hotline working?

Nayra, a former business owner who's now homeless in Chicago, struggled to pay her bills for more than a decade after her husband killed himself.

Then, in early 2022, she lost her house to a bank foreclosure. The new owner of her longtime home agreed to let her stay for a short time. But, when the building was set to be demolished, she was on the street.

“It was the bottom of the bottom,” she says.

At 62, Nayra now is living in her late-1990s Ford Windstar van. It needs a new transmission. Because of the car’s condition, she says she stays within just a small part of the North Side.

Nayra — who's an American citizen born in Mexico and who asked that her last name not be published — says that, between her Social Security and disability checks, she makes less than $11,000 a year. She hopes to get back to work. But first she needs a new home.

A taxpayer-funded Chicago nonprofit oversees a housing hotline to help people like Nayra. Homeless. In crisis. Needing help to navigate government and get on a waiting list for subsidized housing. And, because of her age, she should be able to get a spot on a priority list to get that housing through the Chicago Housing Authority and other government agencies.

But, since the end of June, the hotline that's been aiding hundreds of people in Chicago every month has been down. And it's unclear when it might be back, leaving some of the city's most vulnerable residents on their own.

The shutdown of the call center for what officials describe as this “coordinated entry system” has disconnected homeless people who include seniors, veterans, the disabled, people with mental health issues, children and teens from a key avenue to getting help to find somewhere to live.

They've been left to find and get to one of seven offices around the city or hope to be fortunate enough to find an advocate to help them to get added to the waiting list for government-subsidized housing — and to check back every few months to see whether they've lucked out.

The coordinated entry system is part of a government-funded "continuum of care" effort to tackle homelessness in Chicago that's overseen by the not-for-profit organization All Chicago Making Homelessness History. For several years, All Chicago had contracted with Catholic Charities to run the call-in hotline.

Then, in March, Catholic Charities announced it no longer would provide the service as of June 30 because it was withdrawing from government contract work.

Trying to avoid any interruption in service, All Chicago sought proposals from other social service organizations to step in and agreed to contract with the United Way’s 211 Metro Chicago service. But 211 Metro Chicago and All Chicago still haven't signed the deal.

That's left the homeless housing hotline out of service, with no date set to reopen.

The number of homeless people living in Chicago is estimated to be about 19,000. Advocates for people who ae homeless say that each program aimed at reducing that number is critical.

They say it's frustrating that the shutdown of the hotline has left people in great need unable to take the first steps toward securing housing because they no longer can do that just by making a phone call.

“We can’t expect many people with barriers, including physical and health barriers, to travel across the city,” says state Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, who represents the Northwest Side. “The phone component of it — given that we have a really big city — is very important."

City housing officials referred questions about the program's interruption to All Chicago, which is funded by federal, state and local government money and some private funding. In 2022, it reported revenue of $115 million.

All Chicago says it would have liked to have gotten more time to find a replacement for Catholic Charities.

Asked when the call center is expected to again be operating, Beth Horwitz, All Chicago's vice president of strategy and innovation, says she hopes the group will be able to announce a return "soon." She referred further questions to 211.

“While we are in discussions to take over the coordinated entry system, we do not currently operate the line,” says Rich LaPratt, executive director of 211 Metro Chicago, declining to say when that might happen or how long it might take after a contract is signed for the call center to return.

Catholic Charities says it gave plenty of notice to All Chicago.

“We exceeded the required 30-day notice, as we gave four months’ notice, and, while we have assisted as we can in the transition, we were not asked to extend our wind-down time,” says Mary Krinock, Catholic Charities’ chief of staff.

She says the call center and Catholic Charities' other government contracts didn’t pay enough "relative to the expenses required to meet the terms."

Terms of the Catholic Charities contract or the pending agreement with 211 weren't disclosed.

The call center got more than 18,000 calls during its 2023 budget year, according to a report in April.

For now, anyone who calls the numbers hears an automated message that tells them, "Please call 211 to be directed to your nearest in-person coordinated entry access point."

LaPointe says that All Chicago at least should have warned people that an interruption in service was coming.

“What prevented you from communicating this gap? Because you knew it was coming,” LaPointe says.

The coordinated entry call centers were established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a way to centralize where people can go to access subsidized housing. HUD officials won't comment on the Chicago shutdown or its impact.

For Ben Handy, a housing resource specialist with Chicago's Phoenix Foundation, the hotline's shutdown has left him inundated with calls from 211 and from people who pass along the number for his office on the Southwest Side. Handy says a woman with five children recently came to the office, which is sandwiched between a tattoo shop and a quinceañera dress shop, needing to get on the housing waitlist.

"There's been so much confusion," Handy says. "It almost appears to someone like me — and I'm on the inside — like they didn't really do a lot of transitional planning for the people who take over the call center."

At the Phoenix Foundation, people facing housing instability speak with a specialist like Handy, who guides them through a series of questions to enter their information in a database that's eventually used to match the person to subsidized housing.

“This is actually a pretty good application,” Handy tells someone who's calling back after submitting an application a month earlier.

Handy says he’s juggling doing the assessments while also making referrals that typically would be made by the call center. He says that's because people often have complex situations that could require tracking down government documents and connecting them with help for medical or mental health problems.

“A lot of people have finally gotten my number, and they’ll just be exhausted,” Handy says. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, thank God you answered the call, and you’re answering all my questions, you’re putting me in contact with all these [services] — this is what I was hoping for.’ But it’s just not happening.”

Matthew House, a South Side organization that runs a daytime shelter, has seen an increase of about 30% in the number of people coming in to seek a housing assessment in July, according to Sanja Rickette Stinson, the organization’s executive director.

“We’re busier in the summertime than we have been in some of the years that we can remember because there is this transition that’s going on,” she says.

On the North Side, the Broadway Youth Center has also seen more people coming in for a housing assessment, according to Sheldon Echols, the center's manager of resource advocacy. That’s a change for the center, which works with 18- to 24-year-olds who Echols says typically come in for other, drop-in services.

Echols says he and his staff have been able to keep up with the increased demand, though this summer has been tough because everyone also had to be recertified to be able to handle the housing assessments.

“Having the call center closed, as well as [needing to be] recertified, like citywide, that was pretty interesting,” Echols says.

The changes to the hotline comes at a time when more people are facing homelessness. Chicago’s annual count of people experiencing homelessness showed an increase from 6,139 people in 2023 to 18,836 people in 2024.

“There’s not enough housing,” Rickette Stinson says. “We have a housing crisis in Chicago and everywhere, where there’s just not enough housing for those individuals that are experiencing homelessness.”

Handy says the people he used to work with were primarily single men but that he's seen a shift in that, with more younger people, families and newly arrived immigrants needing housing assistance.

“It’s just really a challenging situation,” Handy says.