Officials concerned with homelessness in Lake County are searching for a location to build a fixed-site shelter for the unhoused. One place it isn’t welcome is Gurnee, if turnout at recent village meetings is any indication.
Proposed for the shelter is what some may kindly describe as a shabby motel a block east of Route 41, at the corner of Grand and Waveland avenues in the village’s so-called East Side. Nearby residents and businesses are none too happy — actually pretty upset — that officials are targeting their neighborhood for the homeless facility.
As the fluid plans are unfolding, Waukegan-based PADS Lake County would be in charge of the facility, with help from government agencies, including funding from the County Board, to turn the Gurnee Motel into a permanent shelter for about 90 people. The proposal has generated opposition from homeowners worried about the impact such a facility would have on their neighborhoods, safety and property values.
PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) and county officials can expect the same reception in other locales. Yet, what do we do about Lake County’s homeless population?
Perhaps Gurnee officials were hoping PADS would rehabilitate the current building, or at least spruce it up. Surprisingly, the land and structure, next to the Gurnee Garden Center and across Waveland Avenue from the U-Haul outlet on the former Handy Andy home improvement center property, hasn’t been red-tagged.
In its heyday, it was headquarters for a well-known garage company and then a destination motel with rooms of various themes and motifs. Village officials, at least under former Mayor Kristina Kovarik, were working to improve commercial business in the corridor and even came up with an upscale-sounding monicker — East Grand Gateway.
Those unhoused on Lake County’s streets are now estimated at 701 persons, according to the county’s “point-in-time” survey in January, about double the 467 discovered last year. While the number has increased, it’s still a small portion of the 700,000 people or so who call the state’s third-largest county home.
Homelessness is a complicated issue not only here but across the region — Chicago lists 18,800 unhoused — and nation. Some of the reasons for homelessness include job loss, substance abuse, mental health struggles, domestic violence and the lack of affordable housing.
Everyone knows Lake County has a dearth of affordable housing. A study commissioned by the economic development group Lake County Partners found the county is short more than 19,000 new housing units, including more than 7,000 affordable units.
Nationwide, homelessness has risen more than 12%, with demographers targeting increasing rent costs and the reduction in COVID-19 rental assistance during the pandemic as key reasons. Still, those involved with homeless populations are finding proven solutions and strategies that help people exit homelessness and that prevent homelessness are problematic.
Hence, the fixed-shelter proposal, a pivot from the program PADS, founded in 1972, used to encourage. In late 1987, the agency opened its first overnight emergency shelter program at Waukegan’s Wesley Free Methodist Church on the city’s North Side.
This was the model until recently, using rotating churches across the county staffed with volunteers to house the homeless for overnight stays out of the elements from October to April. That is of little consequence to Gurnee residents on the village’s East Side.
Growing numbers of opponents to the project keep showing up at Gurnee public meetings. At the Village Board session of June 3, they lined up to voice disapproval for the proposal. Usually, Gurnee Village Board meetings are sedate happenings.
What type of impact such a groundswell will have on village officials will be determined in the near future as the proposal becomes more lucid. Into the mix is that the posts of Mayor Thomas Hood, along with three trustees, Jeanne Balmes, Karen Thorstenson and former Police Chief Kevin Woodside — who coincidentally happens to be president of PADS — expire in April 2025.
If the quartet want to be re-elected to additional terms they may be facing an angry electorate made up of their neighbors in next spring’s municipal election. That’s never a good thing for those who consider themselves public servants.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
Twitter: @sellenews
