Housing

CHAMPAIGN — A group of local homeless people will again be seeking shelter.

Abby Harmon, a graduate instructor at the University of Illinois and member of the Safe Haven board of advisers, said a small, “really core” group of Safe Haven members hopes to find property owners and managers who will accept “sweat equity” in trade for shelter beginning next month.

The Safe Haven community began late in the spring of 2009 when a small group of homeless people began pitching tents in a backyard near the Catholic Worker House in Champaign.

The organizers were seeking a sense of safety and community in a group, supporters said.

CHAMPAIGN -- Rental property is big business in Champaign County.

With nearly 35,300 units, Champaign County has the highest percentage of occupied rental housing units among the state’s metropolitan counties, according to 2008 Census Bureau estimates.

CHAMPAIGN -- Jon Jones and Isela Guerra moved to Champaign from Texas in November 2007 for a construction job Jones was certain he had. But the job fell through, and Jones couldn’t find any other work.

The couple spent that Christmas on the streets and lived homeless over the next few months sleeping by day in local libraries and spending the nights trying to stay warm.

“We have no family here,” Jones said.

In February 2008, Jones and Guerra found a place to live, along with a roommate to split expenses. When the roommate didn’t pay his share of the rent, they were evicted.

CHAMPAIGN -- In some housing cases in Champaign, landlords have been granted years to make repairs and have not been fined, according to city housing records and a Sept. 3 property maintenance report.

“It’s not always easy,” Assistant City Attorney Laura Hall said of the housing inspection and enforcement process. If it were, “we wouldn’t have cases that start in 2006 and end in 2009.”

A tenant at 613 W. Church St. filed a complaint with the city in June 2006, noting that the carpet was dirty and the ceiling above the stove was sagging, according to city housing records.

CHAMPAIGN -- Alveta Henderson struggled with homelessness for 10 years.

Some nights she slept in her van while her two younger children stayed at Crisis Nursery in Champaign.

Henderson’s homelessness was sometimes due to domestic violence situations or living beyond her means, but she blamed it mostly on work or lack of it.

“There was no job or a job not paying enough,” Henderson said

A single mother, she sporadically lived in a women’s shelter for up to two months at a time. At one time, she moved into a house in Champaign, but it was later condemned because it had raw sewage in the basement, among other problems.

CHAMPAIGN -- The profile of Bloomington-Normal closely mirrors that of Champaign-Urbana.
They are twin cities that boast a major university – Illinois State University, which has an enrollment of nearly 20,000 students.

Bloomington has 73,026 residents, and Normal has 52,056, compared with Champaign’s 79,389 residents and Urbana’s 39,641 inhabitants, according to 2008 Census estimates.

CHAMPAIGN -- A family whose house was seriously damaged in an electrical fire Monday say they cannot afford to rent a new home because their landlord refuses to return their deposit or refund the remainder of January’s rent.

Trinidad Morales’ family – which includes her husband, 2-year-old daughter, pregnant sister, brother-in-law, and 1-year-old nephew –is now sleeping in a friend’s living room. Morales’s other two daughters were visiting their sick grandmother in Mexico when the fire occurred and cannot return to Champaign until the family finds a new place to live.

CHAMPAIGN --  David Nash knows how dangerous life can be for homeless people living alone on the streets.

While Nash was serving time in state prison for forgery in August 2002, his father was beaten to death by three teenage boys in a grassy area near the Martin Luther King subdivision in Champaign.