City Council hears possible solutions for preventing weather-related deaths

Maxica Williams remembers the days she and her three children had to scramble to find refuge during the daytime hours when the family wasn’t allowed to stay in a shelter.

A worker at a local Subway restaurant noticed the family and often allowed them to stay in the restaurant during those days, she said.

“Because of that kindness, we had a place to stay in while it was raining and wet, and also during the wintertime,” Williams said, recalling the period of her life when she experienced homelessness from 2015 to 2016. “And we didn’t have to stay outside and wait for that first bus to start running so I could get my children from the North Side shelter to the South Side to their school.”

Her testimony was part of a hearing Tuesday for the City Council’s committee on public safety, which approved a resolution to be brought to the Council that calls for a subject matter hearing to examine the city’s response to extreme weather. The city was criticized when cooling centers and libraries were closed on Juneteenth when the area was experiencing a heat wave.

Last week, a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson was made public calling for the formation of a working group to dig into the city’s extreme weather response. Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) initiated the letter and during Tuesday’s hearing acknowledged the push comes as the city faces tough budget decisions.

“It’s not lost on a number of us that we’re heading into a budget season with a — it’s an understatement to call it a substantial gap,” Vasquez said during the hearing. “So I think looking at even some of the policy changes in the immediate would be important.”

The speakers, ranging from social service groups to public health experts, gave a range of solutions, from using buses as warming centers near encampments to advertising extreme weather events at bus stops to keeping libraries open during dangerous temperatures.

Lee Friedman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, is one of the authors of the “Illinois Homelessness Morbidity and Mortality Report.” He told the committee that their analysis found there were 100 people experiencing homelessness who died during a six-year period whose deaths were tied to weather conditions. The majority — 96 deaths — were tied to cold-related injuries, and a majority of the deaths happened in Chicago, he said.

“Chicago really does bear a disproportionate burden in terms of the scope of temperature-related injuries statewide,” he said.

However, Friedman cautioned that heat-related deaths could be undercounted because of how those injuries are coded and those incidents may not be fully captured in death certificates.

Isabella Mancini, from Healthcare Alternative Systems, said a survey conducted last year in Chicago found that people would be more willing to seek shelter during extreme weather if the options involved fewer restrictions, were cleaner and had better on-site services.

“They’re just looking for resources that maintain dignity and autonomy,” Mancini said.