Chicago seen as safe haven for homeless youth in uncertain climate: 'I wouldn't trade it for the world'

CHICAGO — Bri Johnson’s ambition is hard to miss.

The 20-year-old is studying to be a medical assistant and will soon start applying for externships at several local hospitals. Her next big goal is buying a car — “a nice car that’s going to get me from point A to point B.”

But the thing that topped Johnson’s list of priorities on a fall afternoon, days before she moved into an apartment in Little Village, was getting a white desk and decorating her place, where she was set to live with a roommate. After years of temporary living situations, she was “happy and excited and ready to be on my own.”

Johnson, who until late October had been one of estimated thousands of homeless young people in Chicago, spent years in foster care and later on staying with relatives in Illinois and Mississippi. She was matter-of-fact about where that left her: “Long story short, I didn’t have nowhere to go.”

Homeless youth like Johnson tend to be less visible than other segments of the city’s homeless population, typically sheltering with friends or family in temporary living situations as opposed to the tent cities that have drawn significant attention from media and residents. Experts say this group, whose ages range from 18 to 24 and tend to be disproportionately Black, have needs distinct from their school-age counterparts and older people without homes.

That has begun to be recognized. Last month, Chicago and Cook County officials, advocates and social service providers initiated a 2½-year planning process to overhaul their approach for this age group.

Advocates say the work has become more urgent after the reelection of former President Donald Trump, who in the past has demonstrated hostile views toward the LGBTQ+ population, which makes up a large portion of homeless youth seeking refuge in Illinois and, more specifically, Chicago.

“You go from a sense of potential and possibility to a real sense of protection and mitigation,” said Andrea Durbin, CEO of Illinois Collaboration on Youth. “I think that adds a sense of urgency to make sure that we have capacity in our systems to be able to respond to that.”

Indeed, as attitudes and legal protections toward LGBTQ+ populations have deteriorated in other parts of the country, some Chicago-based organizations have reported a spike in the past two years of unaccompanied youth from outside Chicago who seek their help.

“We’re at a moment where national policy and state policy are pushing people out of their communities,” said Niya Kelly, director of state legislative policy, equity and transformation for the Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness. “They may end up in the state of Illinois or in Chicago because it feels safe, or safer, like you can build a community here.”

Nyxx Ramsey, 24, is one of them. Ramsey, originally from West Virginia, had been in Chicago for a year as of Oct. 18.

“I love it here,” said Ramsey, whose pronouns are they/them. “Even though my situation isn’t the best, at least it’s in Chicago.”

Although Ramsey is still looking for work and a place to live, they are here to stay.

A system that puts young people first

Ramsey, like many other young people without a place to go, spends quite a bit of time at the Center on Halsted in the Lakeview neighborhood.

Unlike school-age homeless people or chronically homeless adults, homeless youth are extremely likely to cobble together their living arrangements by “couch surfing,” the jumping among the homes of relatives and friends and shelters. The Center on Halsted offers them a place to shower and charge their phones and a clean place to sit.

The transient way of life, combined with the fact that many runaway or unaccompanied youth don’t want to be found, makes them very difficult to count, experts say. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counts only literal homelessness — someone sleeping in a shelter, a car or out on the street — in its tally of homeless people. The Chicago point-in-time count uses the same definition, leading advocates to argue that the city’s official number of young homeless people is likely a serious undercount.

The city’s most recent count of its homeless population reported that about 10%, or 495 people, of its homeless population were 18 to 24. The Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness estimated in a 2023 report using 2021 figures that about 11,885 people ages 14 to 24 were homeless, factoring in the high likelihood of couch-surfing.

Betsy Carlson of Covenant House Illinois said the disparity between the estimates could have a negative impact on addressing youth-specific homelessness.

“If it’s a severe undercount, and it certainly has been, then those resources are just simply not going to be there,” she said.

Carlson is part of the steering committee for what is known as a needs assessment, funded by a roughly $1.3 million HUD grant and meant to help homelessness organizations in Chicago and nearby suburbs coordinate and adjust their services to the needs of the young people who use them.

Durbin, of the Illinois Collaboration on Youth, said that between the yearslong budget impasse that has hamstrung funding to social services and the pandemic, the youth homeless response system has been through a lot and is still rebuilding itself.

She sees the evaluation as an opportunity to ask two questions: “How do we build a system that puts young people first, and what is it that they want?”

”I think people have very good intentions, but I think when you know better, you do better,” she said.

She said any changes to homelessness services should be based on the needs and experiences of the young people meant to use them.

She thought it was likely that problems arose when young people’s trust in systems meant to help them eroded — either because of a safety concern or a lack of follow-through on services.

“For example, a lot of times, young people who have been in foster care, don’t want to be identified as having been in foster care,” she said. “Even though I might say, as an adult, ‘Hey, because you were in foster care, you’re actually legally entitled to an education, housing, health care.’”

Asked what input she would give as providers try to rethink services for homeless youth, Johnson said she’d prioritize spreading information about the resources that are already available.

“I feel like 90% of the young people that get out of the system don’t know what’s available, so they start going toward other things,” she said. “Some people don’t even know that they can apply for Link or medical insurance, but that kind of thing would help out a person so much.”

By late October, Johnson and a roommate had been living in a third-floor apartment on a tree-lined Little Village street for about a month.

Hardware waited on the wall for a mounted TV. A box of Fruity Pebbles sat on the fridge. The apartment was immaculate.

“I have to have it clean,” Johnson said. “It’s getting cold; mice will be looking for a home. It just won’t be this one.”

Johnson was already thinking about her Christmas decorations — possibly a Hello Kitty theme for the tree. She sat on the couch in Tim Burton pajama pants and a red sweatshirt. It was warm and sunny and quiet.

“It’s usually quiet like this,” she said. “I come straight back from school to this.”

Johnson still had a lot to do. She needed to get some things from storage with a relative. Externship applications loomed. But she plans to keep going.

Finding their way to Chicago

Ramsey describes their journey from West Virginia to Virginia, downstate Carbondale and finally Chicago as an escape.

Ramsey has held onto a lot from their youth in Appalachia, both good and bad. They’ll eagerly explain legends around cryptids and recount moments where their use of the word “toboggan” to describe a hat rather than a sled created serious confusion. When they find stable housing, they plan to decorate it “like back home — a lot of camo, a lot of woodsy stuff, like antlers on the wall.”

But when Ramsey left in 2021, it was in part because they’d reached a breaking point with attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people in their hometown, in their family and in the church they belonged to.

“I was just public enemy No. 1 in my family,” Ramsey said.

When Ramsey was discharged from the treatment program that originally brought them to Chicago and dropped off outside the Night Ministry’s Crib, they said their first thought was “the inevitable happened.”

They were intimidated by the city at first. They got lost a lot. Shortly after Ramsey arrived, a friend took them to the Northalsted Halloween parade, which they described as a culture shock — but a good one.

“Back home is very ‘Don’t say gay,’” they said. “But then here it’s like, rainbow crosswalks, rainbow flags. The first time I saw a rainbow crosswalk, I cried.”

Ramsey curled up on a couch in a friend’s Lakeview apartment with a large iced coffee and a bag of crumpled clothes to catch their breath before they went to inquire about another job. They were trying to build a life in the city, they said.

Milo Miles and Lunar Bowen are trying too. Miles, originally from South Carolina, and Bowen, originally from Indiana, met at the Broadway Youth Center shortly after they both arrived in Chicago.

Bowen, 23, was having a conversation with someone else in a communal room at the center when Miles, 25, approached him.

“He asked me, ‘Were you talking to me?’ and I said, ‘No, but I can be!’” Bowen said.

The couple has navigated the often-turbulent network of resources and social services together, starting with housing. But they said it seemed like the importance of internet access and phone service was often overlooked.

Besides the fact that many jobs are remote and internet-based, they said, a phone was a lifeline for a person navigating the patchwork of logistics and safety concerns that accompany homelessness.

“While I was homeless, it was like, ‘At least I have my phone,’ Bowen said. “I could text people. I could call people if I got into a situation or a part of Chicago where I didn’t feel safe.”

Despite how much the pair still needs to manage, from health care to education to making friends, they said they’d rather be figuring it out in Chicago than anywhere else.

“I have not wanted to leave. Even after being homeless, I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” Miles said. “Both of us decided Chicago is home.”