Thank you for the editorial on the challenges of our current homeless service system and the call from the Tribune Editorial Board to rethink what we do (“Frigid temperatures highlight harshness of Chicago homeless experience — and the need for new ideas,” Feb. 24).
The editorial board comments that “without a strategic plan that prioritizes affordable housing … the cycle will persist.” True. But we also have to think about how we get that housing and who gets paid for providing it.
Here is a cost summary that was drawn up during the conversation around the Bring Chicago Home initiative.
The number of unhoused individuals you could help annually in Chicago with $100 million:
- Build affordable housing units in the Invest South/West model: 153
- Purchase single-family homes to give to families in Englewood: 617
- Nursing home setting: 1,923
- Prison: 2,631
- Permanent Supportive Housing services in a private home setting: 5,000
- Number of one-bedroom apartments in Avondale: 5,200
- Number of one-bedroom apartments in Englewood: 8,300
- Emergency fund services: 20,000
All of these are approaches that either return people to housing or keep people in housing, but the costs and impacts are vastly different.
For example, purchasing and gifting homes, paying rents and funding emergency services move money directly into the communities that are most hurting for capital and could stimulate the production of new units and the maintenance of older units. However, building concentrated units for very poor people in very poor neighborhoods risks duplicating the public housing catastrophes of the past.
And here’s the real thing. The Chicago Help Initiative serves eight locations around our city. When we ask those who have escaped homelessness about who helped them most, it is never the consultants, lawyers, bankers, financiers or architects who build this housing. It is the relatives of unhoused people — the grandmothers and aunts and sisters and nieces.
The most cost-efficient solutions, those that would leverage the market system to move us forward, are also those that help, monetarily, the loved ones doing the most important work.
Enough. It really is time to rethink this.
— Doug Fraser, executive director, Chicago Help Initiative
Stop Medicaid defunding
Across the many neighborhoods that make up the metropolitan Chicago area, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) rely on an array of support services to live, work and thrive.
Nationally, 69% of the community providers that deliver these services are turning away new referrals while 39% are discontinuing existing services because they lack the funding needed to recruit and retain qualified workers. This puts access to services in jeopardy at a time when nearly 512,000 disabled Americans are on waiting lists in their states.
Now, another crisis looms. Community-based services are almost exclusively funded by Medicaid, and in Congress, the House recently approved a budget resolution directing the committee that oversees Medicaid to slash $880 billion in spending. Such a drastic cut would all but dismantle the federal Medicaid program, leaving hundreds of thousands more Americans without the services they need.
As a provider of these services, I know firsthand that every community, including this wonderful city of Chicago, is better when it includes everyone — regardless of their disability. If U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Rep. Sean Casten agree that our community is stronger when it includes people with disabilities, then they must reject any proposals to cut funding from the federal Medicaid program.
— Gerard S. Beagles, Chicago
Interstate Massage Compact
I am writing to strongly encourage support for Illinois Senate Bill 1756, the Interstate Massage Compact, sponsored by Sen. Elgie Sims Jr., who represents the 17th District in Chicago.
This important legislation would not only help our military families get back to work sooner and Illinois massage therapists to have more choices in their careers, but it would also serve as a powerful tool in combating human trafficking. With passage of SB1756, Illinois would gain access to a comprehensive database designed to ensure individuals guilty of trafficking and licensure fraud are unable to practice in our state or any other state in the compact.
Massage businesses are often used as a front for human trafficking. Law enforcement faces numerous challenges in closing these establishments, and municipalities are forced to create burdensome ordinances to try to keep these illicit practices out of their communities. By becoming a compact state and having access to this crucial database, Illinois would enhance public safety and increase access to legitimate massage services.
Ohio and Nevada have already passed the compact, and others including Montana, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, New York, Connecticut and Maine have pending legislation. I foresee a growing trend of trafficking becoming more prevalent in noncompact states if this issue is not addressed.
The first seven states to pass the compact will play a pivotal role in establishing the rules for the compact commission. Not only is SB1756 sensible legislation in the fight against human trafficking, but it also marks a historic step in addressing this critical issue.
I urge support for SB1756 to help make Illinois a leader in this important cause.
— Colleen Grabow, A.A.S., LMT, Ottawa, Illinois
Setting prices of drugs
When my son Maxwell was just a year old, he was diagnosed with a disease so rare it didn’t even have a name. Since that time, I have worked tirelessly to find a cure for his disease, SLC6A1, which was known only by its genetic location. Today, I am proud to say that hard work paid off, and we are very close to having a cure for this disease — for Maxwell and every other child who may have it.
Getting here took a lot of time and money. The research and development of any new treatment or cure is hugely time-consuming and expensive, and there are far more failures than successes. In the case of rare diseases such as SLC6A1, the development of new treatments can take even longer. After making it through the research and development process, I am incredibly disappointed to learn that the state of Illinois may throw another obstacle in our way.
Illinois is the latest state to propose creating a board to review the cost of prescription drugs, and when it deems that cost too high, to set an upper payment limit. While this sounds good in theory, to parents like me, and anyone who has or loves someone with a rare disease, this sounds incredibly worrying. By arbitrarily setting the price of a medicine, the Prescription Drug Affordability Board would be not only stepping between physicians and patients, but also between researchers and the cures of tomorrow.
Beyond the potential to dampen investment into research, price setting by this board could prevent patients from accessing needed treatments. Implementation of government price setting would have a negative impact on the availability of rare disease treatments. By setting a price in just Illinois, the board would run the risk that payers in our state would not be able to purchase a drug for the price set here, since the pharmaceutical market is nationwide. If pharmacies and clinics in Illinois could not obtain the drug at the government-set price, how would Illinois patients access it?
Many rare diseases have only a single treatment option: SLC6A1, cystic fibrosis and Fredrick’s ataxia. What would patients with these conditions do if they could not get their medications in Illinois?
Rare disease patients are already dealing with extremely limited options. We cannot allow a government board of bureaucrats to limit these options even further. It could mean the difference between life and death.
— Amber Freed, Glencoe
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