Making the Impossible Possible!
When I first came to Chicago about 18 years ago, I got to know this chronically homeless couple who lived in Uptown. At that time, I was helping run a soup kitchen, so every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, this fragile couple would stumble into our cafeteria and eat. They would occasionally sleep at Cornerstone, but most of the time, you'd find them sleeping outside in various uninhabitable places; you could find them either in the park, in abandoned buildings, under a local viaduct or, if it was really cold, I'd find them sleeping in the entrance way of our building. This couple was out there! They were out there bad! It's hard to describe what I saw every time I bumped into them. They were normally drunk and high, hunched over and looking very sickly. Barely able to move; they would shuffle along with their shopping cart, assisting each other. Due to the harsh reality of their lifestyles, addictions and homelessness, they would rotate in and out of jail,...