(Photo: Brr, it’s been cold out there.)

Earlier this month, I blogged at length about a new Chicago Transit Authority initiative to roust homeless riders from late-night ‘L’ trains during frigid Chicago winters when such riders take to the rail system seeking warmth.  The initiative was supported by the installation of signs (like the one above) at rail terminals banning “continuous riding” of trains without exiting and paying an additional fare.  My writing elicited coverage from major print, broadcast, and Internet media and motivated the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to maintain a closer eye on the transit agency.

On the very snowy evening of Tuesday, December 9th, the Coalition invited me to tag along on a field-monitoring mission to see whether and how the CTA’s new policy was being put into practice at rail terminals throughout the system. I accompanied executive director Ed Shurna and Coalition staff to the Red Line’s North Side Howard Street terminus where we stayed from 10:00 p.m. to almost midnight, watching a steady stream of bleary-eyed homeless riders (two to five individuals per train) transfer from northbound to southbound trains.

One rider told us he’d go to a shelter if he only knew where to find one. Another told Coalition volunteers at the Red Line’s South Side 95th Street terminus that each night around 3:00 a.m., CTA staff now removes homeless riders from trains and demands that they pay a fare or risk expulsion.

We were heartened to see that CTA personnel were not actively ejecting homeless riders during the ongoing snowstorm.  But when I asked a CTA guard what kind of information they had available to lead homeless riders to alternative shelter, I was told the only recourse available was to call an off-site telephone number and let the supervisors try and locate a Chicago Department of Human Services outreach team.

The CTA can do better.  On December 2nd, I suggested that transit-agency staff hand out information cards at ‘L’ terminals listing the nearest available shelters and resources to at least mute the sting of a late-night expulsion from the system.

I’m happy to report the day after the monitoring trip, Shurna told me the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, itself, may adopt my suggestion and create such information cards and offer to supply them to the CTA for transit staff to hand out to homeless riders during late-night hours.

The Coalition may also take me up on another suggestion to survey homeless CTA riders to help better determine why these riders persist in seeking overnight shelter in the ‘L’ system–and what would need to change at the city’s existing emergency shelters for homeless riders to feel safe enough to go there, instead.

I’ll know more about these potential, wonderful new initiatives in the New Year–and you’ll know about them as soon as I do, so stay tuned…

(Photo: Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.)

Lest regular readers think CHICAGO CARLESS has become all CTA-homeless-controversy all the time, I aim for the blog to have a more diverse drum beat this week.  But it bears noting that the Chicago Sun-Times covered the controversy in a detailed and balanced piece this morning on page 8 of the paper.

For the first time, Chicago Transit Authority President Ron Huberman weighed in on the issue. He called the new signage barring “continuous riding” through ‘L’ terminals part of an overall “sign upgrade” at stations, and that given the economy, the CTA is going to “watch” whether numbers of homeless riders are on the rise.

That’s all well and good, but my question remains what it has been since I first raised the issue of the signage back on November 22nd: and then what are you going to do?

While I’m glad this blog helped push the CTA to publicly respond to the seemingly unfair signage (for my previous coverage, see my Homeless archive), the agency is still mum on several key issues:

• Why is a universal policy not being applied universally? No matter how many times CTA claims they aren’t targeting homeless riders with the new continuous-riding ban signage, as they told me in writing, agency staff decides whom to throw out of the system and whom to leave alone on a “case-by-case basis.”  That obviously includes homeless riders, yet doesn’t seem to include thousands of rush-hour riders who travel back to terminals to find seats in the other direction.
• How does CTA track homeless riders? There is still no word from CTA how–or even whether–they track numbers of homeless riders, including data on riders asked to leave the system overall, in sub-freezing weather, and on nights when all of Chicago’s emergency homeless shelter beds are full.
• What are the specifics of the outreach work done by agency staff before the homeless are ejected from the system? Are homeless riders asked whether they have money or means to make it to an alternative shelter? Given information on nearby shelters and other resources? Is the city’s Department of Homeless Services called each time a homeless rider is asked to leave the system? Your guess is as good as mine.

And those glaring omissions leave Chicago’s least-fortunate residents no better protected from Holiday-time harassment than before. I continue to maintain that as a publicly funded agency the CTA has a duty to show compassion to all members of the human family, to treat all with dignity and respect.

However, Huberman has circled the wagons here in time-honored Chicago style, allowing his agency to give answers that only appear to satisfy the real questions and brushing off any responsibility for the agency’s own actions. That’s no surprise, but lifelong Windy Citizens may suspect something more at work here. I’d bet money on it, myself.

As I wrote on December 4th, every city that has won the right to host an Olympic Games in the past 25 years has cracked down on its homeless population, downtown, near venues, and on the local transit system.  Los Angeles did it.  Atlanta did it.  Beijing just did it.  If the CTA’s new signage–and remarkable tenacity to defend it–are part of the City of Chicago’s ongoing strategy to prettify this town in advance of a potentially successful Olympic bid, both policy and attitude should be changed here and now. No human being deserves to be swept under the civic rug in order for others to gain.

Luckily, that’s becoming increasingly hard to do.  Take note, CTA: in the 21st century court of public opinion, a single blog post from a well-meaning citizen can spark a firestorm of attention with the power to push ill-conceived public policy and the agencies who make it into the limelight.

That may not change anything–at least not initially (especially not at an agency whose president refuses to communicate via email).  But as traditional media continues to contract and citizen journalism continues to rise to the fore, the days of the unquestioned official response are unquestionably over. It would do well for agencies like the CTA to think about that in the future. Especially during the run up to a potential Chicago Olympics.

Because the bullshit meter is pretty finely tuned in the virtual public realm.

(Photo: And the social-justice beat goes on…)

The following is cross-posted on my Huffington Post Chicago byline.

[UPDATE: Welcome once again to my visitors from Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog!]

According to a WBBM Newsradio report on the ongoing controversy over the Chicago Transit Authority’s continuous-rider policy, the agency considers thousands of its paid, daily ‘L’ riders to be violators of the policy.  This holiday season, signs banning the practice of riding a round-trip through an ‘L’ terminal without getting off the train have gone up around the system.

Homeless advocates (unexpectedly, like me) believe the signs are aimed directly at homeless riders, who take to the CTA’s rail system in droves during frigid Chicago winters in order find overnight warmth.  However, this morning on WBBM, a CTA spokesperson labelled as “violators” all rush-hour riders who take ‘L’ trains back to terminals in order to find seats for their morning trips downtown.

I kid you not. Hands up how many ‘L’ riders among you ride back to Howard, or Linden, or 95th, or Harlem and Lake to get a seat in the morning? Or how about all those folks who ride Brown and Purple line trains around the Loop from Merchandise Mart in the evening rush?

Why the CTA would want to pick a fight with its regular riders is beyond me. Given that trains end their runs or turn-around at 11 terminals–not to mention on the Loop itself–that sounds like thousands of potential “violators” to me.  I say potential because, as the CTA told me in writing, station staff get to choose to whom to apply the policy.

The CTA remains adamant that its continuous-rider policy is not aimed at homeless people. But unless the agency intends to apply the policy equally to all riders–and in my book, that includes putting its manpower where its mouth was this morning and ejecting every single one of the above-mentioned riders from the ‘L’ system during next rush hour and every rush hour that comes after–the hypocrisy behind the agency’s policy is brutally evident.

The agency also announced that 229 homeless riders have accepted rides to shelters–-through the third-party Chicago Department of Homeless Services, mind you–in the past year.  Let’s do the math on that.  Given 8 ‘L’ lines, 2 running at all times, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, in a city of 3,000,000 people, if that’s all the people the CTA has helped get to shelters in the past 12 months, that’s almost no help at all.

Here are the numbers I’d be more interested to hear from the agency: How many homeless ride the ‘L’ system each night?  How many homeless are ejected each night?  How many of them are ejected on nights when every available emergency shelter bed is taken?  Especially when the weather is below freezing outside?

I’d also like to know exactly what resources and assistance the CTA offers to homeless riders before ejecting them from the system.  And I’d like to know why the CTA isn’t sharing this information already, unless it simply doesn’t care to track it.

There’s something more. Every city that has won the right to host an Olympic Games in the past 25 years has cracked down on its homeless population, downtown, near venues, and on the local transit system.  Los Angeles did it.  Atlanta did it.  Beijing just did it.  While the continuous-riding ban may not be new, I worry whether the signage–which is new–is part of the City of Chicago’s ongoing strategy to prettify this town in advance of a potentially successful Olympic bid.

If that’s the case, this policy must be stopped and amended here and now.  Homeless people are just that, people, like you and like me.  For that matter, like Mayor Daley, like Chicago 2016 Committee Chairman Patrick G. Ryan, and like CTA President Ron Huberman, too.  Not a single one of us deserves to be treated as less than human, to be swept under the civic rug in order for others to gain.

And if that’s the real reason behind the continuous-riding signage, how poorly do you think our city’s homeless will be treated if we really do get the 2016 Olympic Summer Games?

On a more positive note, WBBM also reported that the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless will be riding the rails next week to monitor the CTA’s overnight treatment of its least fortunate riders.  I bet you can guess which blogger’s already been dialing Executive Director Ed Shurna for permission to tag along.

(Photo: Next time, I’ll take a taxi.)

UPDATE 9:45am: Ed Shurna, Executive Director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, is quoted today in the Chi-Town Daily News:

“They should take those signs down and find a way to take care of people, not punish people. These are people who are cold, these are people who are poor, these are people who are suffering already. Why slap them in the face?”

____

Ten days ago when I first blogged in these pages and on Huffington Post Chicago about what looked like a crackdown on homeless riders by the Chicago Transit Authority, I could not have hoped for the citywide surge of interest in the welfare of the transit agency’s least fortunate riders that continues to coalesce.

Yesterday, I was invited to discuss the issue on two of Chicago’s most important radio programs: WBEZ 91.5 Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight morning show with Richard Steele; and WVON 1690-AM’s late-afternoon Cliff Kelley Show. (How I managed to run between WBEZ’s Navy Pier studio and WVON’s digs at 87th and Cottage Grove in little more than an hour while taking a number 87 bus the wrong way across the South Side is another story in itself.)

You can hear my Eight Forty-Eight interview with fellow former New Yorker Richard Steele in its entirety over the air on today’s show (airing at 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.), live-stream it at any time, or subscribe to the podcast. As always, Cliff Kelley’s show was live and there’s no podcast option here, but suffice it to say I was honored to meet both beloved radio icons and gratified at their interest in the issue.

RECAP
And what an issue it is. To recap for new viewers, just in time for the holiday season and the frigid Windy City temperatures that go with it, the CTA has implemented a seemingly grinch-inspired policy to eject homeless riders from the ‘L’ system. New signs recently installed at rail terminals demand that riders exit the system and pay an additional fare before attempting to ride back in the other direction, an act called “continuous riding” by the transit agency. Chicago homeless advocates have little doubt who the new policy is aimed at.

Regular CTA customers––Like Yours Truly––know to expect a surge in overnight homeless riders during Chicago’s harsh winter months. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who this ominous signage is aimed at.

THE CTA SPIN GAME
The new signs, pictured below, are currently installed at all 24-hour rail terminals in the CTA system and at Midway Airport. According to the CTA, these facilities have the highest numbers of continuous-riding “violators”, although the agency says it plans to install the signs at all ‘L’ terminals.

In a detailed written exchange with the CTA regarding the signs that I published on November 22nd, the CTA denied the signs are aimed at homeless riders, telling me, “CTA does not make a distinction between homeless and any other fare paying customers.” Instead, the agency claims the signage was installed as a “customer service reminder” and that the continuous-riding ban applies equally to all riders.

However, when I noted that some CTA riders might have legitimate reasons for riding back from a terminal without exiting the system––for example, missing one’s stop or simply deciding not to continue with one’s trip––the transit agency responded that station staff are advised to “use their discretion” to make an “on-the-spot decision based on the circumstances of each customer” before asking a rider to leave the system.

It’s this case-by-case, discretionary application of a rule supposedly applying to all CTA customers equally that now has homeless advocates wondering who exactly the agency is trying to target with the new signs––and who will be singled out for expulsion from the ‘L’ system.

Shannon Moriarty, editor of the national homeless watchdog campaign at Change.org, is among those casting a doubtful eye at the continuous-riding ban. “If you ask me, there’s no question that this message is intended for the city’s homeless population,” writes Moriarty. “Why else would someone continuously ride the trains unless they were without a home and in need of a place to stay warm?”

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) shares Moriarty’s suspicion about the CTA’s motives. In response to the growing controversy, on Wednesday the organization publicly announced on its blog, “CCH will track any efforts to crack down on homeless people riding the CTA.”

OUT IN THE COLD WITH NOWHERE TO GO
Whether or not homeless riders are the explicit target of the continuous-riding ban, they stand to be the riders most impacted by it. In its written response regarding the new signage, the CTA told me that riders to whom station staff chooses to apply the continuous-riding ban will be asked to leave the system immediately, potentially by law enforcement.

If such expulsions occur during even a typical Chicago winter, the implications are pretty dire. Although the city’s Department of Human Services (DHS) deploys late-night homeless-outreach teams across the CTA rail system, the transit agency currently specifies no provision for a DHS team to be contacted before a rider is ejected from the system. Instead, under the current policy homeless riders can find themselves put out in the cold, in far-flung neighborhoods, with no care given to whether they have adequate means to make it back to warmth and shelter.

The stakes are particularly high for homeless riders who may be put off at the Red Line’s northern Howard terminal. The North Side’s only emergency homeless shelter (the REST facility at 5253 North Kenmore) closed its doors on Monday (December 1st) after losing its lease, making a trip on foot to an emergency shelter an impossibility. With no nearby shelter, an expulsion from the Howard terminal during the height of a Chicago winter could prove deadly for any homeless rider unlucky enough to be caught up in the CTA’s continuous-riding crackdown.

“What’s the problem with having someone just sitting on a train? Shall we try to throw homeless people off…because we don’t like the way they look or smell, or [because] they make us uncomfortable?” asks editor M. Leblanc on the widely read national feminist blog, Bitch Ph.D. “If [Chicago] is concerned about the city’s homeless riding on the trains all night, perhaps [it] should fund additional shelters instead of spending money on enforcement of a law that is unfair, cruel, and almost certain to be disproportionately applied.”

A COMPASSIONATE WAY FORWARD
While it’s clear that spending the night on Chicago’s transit system is not a sustainable option for the city’s homeless, opportunity exists for the CTA to update its continuous-riding policy to make it less cruel and more constructive.

New options could include having station staff contact DHS outreach teams and other agencies with the means to transport homeless riders to shelters with the capacity to take them, providing homeless riders with a pre-printed list of the nearest shelters and resources in the vicinity of each terminal, and guaranteeing that no homeless rider will be ejected from the ‘L’ system during life-threatening outside temperatures.

Unfortunately, the CTA remains silent on any alternatives to the current continuous-riding ban. Until the agency comes up with something better, you can guess which blogger intends to keep a spotlight on the issue.

Just because some riders don’t want to be reminded that they share this city with citizens less fortunate than themselves, the CTA doesn’t have to cater to their cold-heartedness. CTA President Ron Huberman should rescind the current continuous-riding policy and replace it with one that treats the homeless with the compassion and dignity all human beings deserve.

No matter where they’ll be sleeping tonight.

[For all updates on this story, please see my Homeless archive.]

(Photo: Hear ye, hear me.)

Today, interested readers can listen to my interview about the Chicago Transit Authority’s ill-considered holiday crackdown on homeless ‘L’ riders on WLUW 88.7-FM’s independent weekly news and features show, Outside the Loop RADIO.

OTL team Mike Stephen and Andy Hermann invited me by to discuss my opposition in these pages and on Huffington Post Chicago to the CTA plan to throw “continuously riding” homeless people off trains and into Windy City winters at terminal stations.

The interview (OTL #114) is available immediately via iTunes, or you can listen over the air or live-stream the station at 6:00 p.m. tonight or download the show from the  OTL archives.

Since last weekend, my efforts to raise the issue have resulted in coverage by a wide variety of traditional and Internet media, including Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax Blog, Chicagoist Chicago’s NBC 5 and the web-based Chicago Examiner, the international Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), major transit industry resource site TransitTalent, Seattle-area indie newspaper The Stranger, national feminist blog Bitch Ph.D., Progressive Rockies blog Colorado Hummingbird, socioeconomic pundit Marco A. Garcia, and most recently, the national homelessness watchdog page of Change.org.

In response to the issue, on Wednesday the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless announced on its blog that it will “track any efforts to crack down on homeless people riding the CTA.”  That’s wonderful news.

Even better would be for the CTA to rescind it’s cruel and discriminatory policy–as the agency told me in writing, the continuous-riding ban may apply to all riders, but CTA staff will decide for themselves which riders to remove from the system.

At 3:00 a.m. at the northern Howard Terminal of the Red Line, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who those CTA employees may be ordering to exit the system. Considering budget cuts are causing the north side’s only emergency homeless shelter to shut down for the winter, that’s a pretty mean-spirited hardship to force onto this city’s most needy citizens.

The agency can do better than such a poorly compassionate policy. I’m calling on CTA President Ron Huberman to switch tracks here and implement a policy that treats homeless Chicagoans with the dignity and respect all human beings deserve.

I’ll let you know if and when that train ever leaves the station.

(Photo: Never underestimate the power of compassionate thinking.)

Yesterday, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless announced on its blog that the organization will “track any efforts to crack down on homeless people riding the CTA.”  The statement highlighted and was in direct response to my recent opinion pieces here and on Huffington Post Chicago decrying recently installed Chicago Transit Authority signage barring “continuous riding” that the agency appears intent on applying only to homeless riders.

On Tuesday, I reported on a slew of local and national blog and media coverage generated by my original post. I’m even more thrilled at the Coalition’s response–as I write this post in the wee early hours of Thanksgiving morning, I literally have tears in my eyes to know that my pang of horror at clueing in to the CTA’s intentions has translated into increased oversight by Chicago’s leading homeless advocacy organization.

I remain steadfast in my contention that Chicago’s homeless, whether riding the CTA or not, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Such treatment definitely does not include being ejected from the rail system in far-flung corners of Chicago during zero-degree Windy City winters by an agency not seeming to care whether these less fortunate citizens have the means to find their way back to warmth and shelter.

I am grateful for the Coalition’s Thanksgiving gift, and I fully intend to continue highlighting this issue in every venue available to me until the CTA comes to its senses. (And regular readers are well aware, I’m just the grassroots communications strategist to do it, too!)

I have a Thanksgiving present to give as well.  That will be welcoming six dear friends to my postage-stamp Marina City studio later today–Thanksgiving orphans, the lot of us–for a from-scratch feast to celebrate the good that we are lucky enough to have in our lives. Friendship. Health. Abundance. Spirit.

And most importantly, home. Happy Thanksgiving Chicago, wherever you may be sleeping tonight…

(Photo: The Chicago Transit Authority’s holiday train––no room for the homeless? Credit: morydd.)

No, the Chicago Transit Authority has not yet budged from its thinly veiled discriminatory policy of throwing homeless people out of the ‘L’ system at terminals.  Over the weekend in these pages and on my Huffington Post Chicago byline I posted a series of questions about the policy that I had submitted to CTA’s media relations department along with the seriously spin-meistered answers that I received back.

Yesterday, those posts unexpectedly made waves locally and nationally.  I awoke to coverage of the story in Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax Blog, the most important and widely read political blog in the State of Illinois.  I was next contacted by popular citywide newsblog Chicagoist which featured the story and in turn tipped off a slew of other coverage–not to mention comment wars–on sites including Chicago’s NBC 5 and the web-based Chicago Examiner, major transit industry resource site TransitTalent, Seattle-area indie newspaper The Stranger,  national feminist blog Bitch Ph.D., the Progressive Rockies blog Colorado Hummingbird, and socioeconomic pundit Marco A. Garcia.

(Oddly, CTA Tattler, Chicago’s main independent transit blog, remains silent on the issue.)

The whirlwind day culminated with a studio interview by Outside the Loop RADIO, the independent weekly news and features program hosted at WLUW 88.7-FM, Loyola University’s community radio station. (Check for my interview Friday, November 28th at 6 p.m. or visit their website to download it to iTunes.)

(UPDATE: And today, M. Leblanc of the aforementioned Bitch Ph.D. was interviewed about the signs by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio’s community radio project, Vocalo.)

All that’s the good part.  The bad part is that as of this writing, the CTA still intends to throw homeless riders off trains and into frigid Chicago winters at rail terminals, seemingly just to assuage the sensibilities of a minority of ‘L’ riders who don’t want to be reminded that they share the planet with individuals less fortunate than themselves. Not for nothing, those riders can move to another seat or another car a lot more easily than a homeless rider can wave a magic wand and instantly find a home or a job.

Let me be as clear as possible: this is a human rights issue.

In my opinion the CTA has made a covert and discriminatory decision to remove homeless riders from trains and is trying to hide that decision behind a policy applying to all riders (“No continuous riding”) that–as the CTA told me in writing–it has no intention of applying to everyone.

What it clearly looks like the agency does intend to do is eject the homeless into zero-degree Chicago winters in far-flung corners of the city without any care for their physical safety (such as whether they have the means to get to a place of warmth or shelter).  Causing pain and hardship like that to fellow human beings for no good reason is a pretty bad way for the Chicago Transit Authority to ride into the holiday season.

I ask my readers to think about needlessly shivering Chicagoans the next time you see the CTA Holiday Train roll by.  Decide for yourself which image of Chicago you’d like the CTA to portray to the world.

Especially a world to which Mayor Daley is attempting to pass off Chicago as an enlightened, Progressive, 2016 Olympics-ready city.