Lake County reports record numbers of homeless; ‘There are a lot of solutions that we’re working our best to scale up’
Lake County experienced the highest numbers on record for people experiencing homelessness, according to multiple reports of local data from the northern collar county.
A census count from a single night in January revealed 701 people living without permanent housing, a 50% increase compared to the 467 last year.
More than half of the people were in families, and 68 were considered chronically homeless, meaning they have a disability and their homeless history is at least 12 months.
“Two things are true at the same time, which is the county is doing more than it’s ever done (to address the problem) and homelessness is at higher levels than we’ve ever seen,” Brenda O’Connell, Lake County community development administrator, said.
The majority of unhoused people in Lake County were staying in motel shelters or transitional housing, but 75 were sleeping outside – more than double the 30 reported last year.
National trends reveal a similar pattern. The United States experienced a 12% increase in homelessness, the most since the country began using the point-in-time survey in 2007, the Associated Press reported in December. About 653,000 people are homeless nationwide, an increase of about 70,650 from a year earlier.
“A commonality of everybody counted in all these reports is that they lack a safe, stable place to live,” O’Connell said. “We know that housing is a primary driver. Most people who have mental health, or even serious mental health issues are not homeless.”
In Lake County, more than three-quarters of households reported their homelessness was caused by an experience of abuse or trauma, revealed another annual assessment from the Coordinated Entry, a monitoring system managed by the Lake County Coalition for the Homeless.
A data point that stuck out to O’Connell, and has grown every year, is the percentage of people encountering homelessness for the first time. For 2023, 85% of the people experiencing homelessness were doing so for the first time.
“What we know is that rents are higher, (and) we know that we’re not building enough housing to keep up with demand,” she said. “Inflation isn’t felt equally across all people. Rising rents are a big driver of inflation.”
The rate of new housing construction is “woefully” below projected population growth and the county could be short more than 19,000 needed housing units by 2027, revealed a study commissioned by Lake County Partners, a nonprofit economic development agency that works with the county government.
The study also anticipated the county would need to build over 7,000 more affordable housing units to accommodate low-income seniors and families. Fifteen municipalities in Lake County were found to have critical shortages of available affordable housing by the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
More households were assessed for housing needs in 2023 than in previous years, meaning the household meets the county’s homeless definition. However, not all who are experiencing homelessness are assessed for housing, O’Connell said.
The county saw a 75% increase in the number of families assessed for housing, an 18% increase in the number of youths and a 40% increase in parenting youths assessed.
O’Connell said the county did not screen for immigration status during the point-in-time count in January.
“We are keeping a close eye on it,” she said. “There are people who meet the newly arrived, asylum-seeker definition in our homeless facilities, but in no place is that a large enough population that it substantially is driving these numbers.”
The transition from shelter to housing
In 2019, a county homeless gap analysis identified the county did not have adequate shelter facilities. At that time, a rotating church-stay model was the prominent method for sheltering people without a home.
Now organizations use motels as shelters, since the county still lacks a permanent, fixed-site shelter.
Since the assessment, the Lake County Board has set aside financial resources to build a fixed-site shelter. O’Connell said the county is close to reaching agreements with municipalities about where to build the facility.
“The county is committed to making sure that we have the facilities that we need to address this issue,” she said. “We’re farther than we’ve ever been.”
Data from the county’s Homeless Management Information System showed there were 1,158 people in emergency shelters, and 169 people in transitional housing from Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 30, 2023 – an increase from the 1,149 people in shelters and transitional housing the previous year.
In that same time period, the average shelter stay dropped to 110 nights, compared to 129 last year. O’Connell said that is “a bright spot” in the data.
“If the average length of time is going down, people are getting housed faster,” she said. “(In) a high performing system, the average length of stay in shelter is 30 days, and that is our goal.”
Households that exit shelter stays either enter into permanent housing, temporary supportive housing like transitional housing or they disappear from the county’s tracking.
For the 2023 fiscal year, there were 548 households that exited the system over the course of the year; only 37%, or 205 households, left to a permanent destination, a decrease from the 47% in the year prior, according to the Coordinated Entry assessment.
The number of people exiting to a permanent destination is “not as high as anyone would want it to be,” O’Connell said, and is identified as an area for improvement.
Moving forward, she said the county is working on a number of solutions, including creating more permanent-supportive housing units, building a fixed-site shelter and addressing policy barriers to constructing more low-income and disability housing facilities.
“We have more units in our affordable housing pipeline than we’ve had, in terms of like actual production of affordable units,” O’Connell said. “We have investments from the County Board in fixed-bed shelter. We have funding set aside for permanent-supportive housing. There are a lot of solutions that we’re working our best to scale up.”
chilles@chicagotribune.com