The city of Pekin is taking a new approach to interacting with its homeless population by hiring a social worker dedicated to working with unhoused individuals.
City manager John Dossey says Pekin was overdue to rethink its homelessness response, noting the addition of a social worker position was something he has wanted since he was hired as police chief eight years ago.
“One of the things that I guess I missed, that I had from Hanover Park, was the ability to have a social worker that worked for the city and provided a lot of resources,” Dossey said. “When you're on the law enforcement role of things, you're kind of the fixer of everything; you get called for everything. It was really nice to have a social worker on hand to bounce ideas off of, or to have a situation and they help resolve that issue because they have resources.”
Dossey said opioid settlement funds allowed him to include a social worker’s salary in the city budget, and Misti Cave started in the role just over a month ago.
“She hit the ground running, and immediately we started having some positive input for what she's doing and the conversations she's having,” Dossey said. “It's a work in progress, but it's probably one of the best things that we've implemented through the police department in the city since I've been here.”
Cave says she's trying to help people experiencing homelessness identify their barriers to housing and assist them in getting access to resources.
“There's a lot of great resources in Pekin and Tazewell County, and so it’s hooking those resources up to the people that can utilize them right away and identifying plans that we can put into place,” Cave said. “For example, a lot of the barriers faced or the presenting symptom may not be homelessness, necessarily; it might be addiction. So if that's the barrier that's keeping them from being housed, then how do we address the addiction and hook them up with that resource, and then identify how we’re going to get them housed?”
Earlier this week, WCBU got the opportunity to accompany Cave as she visited encampments to reach out to members of the homeless community.
“But really, it's just going out, meeting them where they're at, talking about what their needs are, what some of their barriers have been.”Misti Cave, Pekin social worker
Cave says she began her job with some outreach to members of Pekin’s homeless community, with help from some police department colleagues.
“There's a couple of officers that had established some pretty good rapport with them. That's where I started; they kind of made that soft, introduction transition,” she said. “But really, it's just going out, meeting them where they're at, talking about what their needs are, what some of their barriers have been.”
One of Cave’s first tasks was to conduct a census of Pekin’s homeless community, which she says stands at about 50 with another 30 people in at-risk situations.
Cave works out of a cubicle at the police station, where she typically looks over the incident reports from the day before to see if they include individuals she's already contacted and may want to follow up with. Sometimes she will bring a client to the station for assistance. This week, she scheduled time with a man who was referred over the weekend for help.
“I set up a meeting with him for the end of the week, just to kind of discuss what his needs are, to try and identify any resources that we might have to offer him immediately,” Cave said. “Actually, so much of what they're needing is paperwork-involved: you know, something that we can be submitting online applications or are doing that we can do that right on the spot. If they're in here, I can kind of help them fill out those applications or make phone calls or whatever it might be.”
As we leave the station for a tour of some homeless encampments, Cave explains what she usually takes with her. She's a non-smoker, but she brings cigarettes she can offer to make a connection. Noting that mental health and addiction issues are common among the unhoused, she also carries Narcan in case she finds someone who has overdosed.
Cave also brings a supply of garbage bags to distribute, which she says dispels a common misconception about unhoused individuals.
“One of those is that they're dirty, and that's not true at all,” Cave said. “Most of them keep a very clean space, and they want to keep their ‘neighborhoods’ or their encampments clean. It's just that they don't have any place to put (waste), or garbage bags are expensive and they can't acquire the bags.”
As we walk toward the first encampment area, Cave talks to a man she's assisted before. As their conversation ends, he hands her a coupon sheet for Hardee's.
“They're always wanting to give, like they hate to just ask for help; they hate to just receive,” Cave said. “So a lot of times when I run into folks, they're always wanting to give me something in return or as a ‘thank you.’”
At the first campsite in a wooded area near the Illinois River, we approach a row of about 15 or 20 tents.
“When I come out in the morning, I always try to announce that I'm here: ‘Anybody home?’ I don't want to just roll up on somebody who might be sleeping or changing,” she said.
A 48-year-old man who says he's been without a home for four years emerges from one of the tents
“I just want to say hi. You doing OK?” she asks him.
The man says during his time on the streets he hasn’t gotten much in the way of assistance, not because it wasn’t available but that he “chose not to.” But he says working with Cave and people with other organizations, like the Pekin Outreach Initiative, has been helpful.
“(They) get me the medical treatment. They offer housing, the POI offers some food and showers, a place to get cleaned up, just spend some time,” he said. “You’ve got the library and stuff over there, to look for jobs (and) to help you get your IDs, your birth certificate.”
Cave tells the man that “Riley” has been trying to contact him about possible semi-permanent housing. That's Riley Spokely, the Pekin Outreach Case Manager for Peoria-based Phoenix Community Development Services. Cave helps the man get Spokely’s number entered into the cell phone he uses.
Cave notes that a large part of her job involves working with other organizations that assist the houseless population, like Phoenix, Pekin Outreach, the United Way, and the Salvation Army.
“That's been the bulk of the work that I've done so far, is meeting the key players,” she said. “Engaging in the community meetings, and really finding out: What do your agencies offer, and what are the qualifying standards, and how can we work together? Everybody's been extremely receptive to me and my role, and I have quadrupled my toolkit, my knowledge of resources. There's even more than I even knew about coming into this position, for sure.”
“I think the city notices that there are people who need help, and they're doing everything that they can to help them.”Candace Burdette, The Salvation Army of Pekin
Candace Burdette is the director for The Salvation Army of Pekin, which operates the Rust Transitional Center, a shelter that can accommodate 36 individuals.
“I think it speaks volumes, that Pekin is really trying to not just get rid of a ‘problem;’ I shouldn't say it's a problem,” Burdette said. “I think the city notices that there are people who need help, and they're doing everything that they can to help them.”
Burdette says the organizations assisting unhoused individuals have the same goals, and that Cave’s assistance helps clients develop trust in these agencies.
“Since we work directly in our office, we don't always have the opportunity to get out and go to the different encampments to meet people kind of where they are on any given day,” Burdette said. “So she has the ability to contact clients that we can't always seem to find or contact, and then she gets in touch with us and we figure out a way to work together to either get them into our emergency shelter for warming, or if we have a bed available in our transitional center, or kind of what we can do to work together to place that individual.”
Cave takes us to another camp a little further south with more tents. A man peeks his head out of the tent to talk, but he doesn’t come out because he’s getting cleaned up. Cave tells him Riley Spokely is trying to contact him as well, and she leaves a roll of garbage bags and a business card for him on a rock a few feet in front of the tent.
Cave says another big challenge the unhoused individuals face comes from the weather. While winter is approaching and will bring cold temperatures, other conditions can also be problematic.
“If they know that rain’s coming, they might be asking for rain gear or tarps or something to keep their area as dry as possible. That's a pretty significant need that we hear a lot of,” Cave said. “Or when even like if a damaging storm comes through; you know, if something comes through with a lot of wind that wreaks havoc on the camp, that can be really troublesome, too, if tents get broken.”
We then visit the Pekin Outreach Center on Elizabeth Street. The facility serves as a day shelter where individuals can get some food, take a shower, do laundry and even watch some TV. Darla Koonce, the vice president of the Pekin Outreach Initiative, says the city’s new approach through Cave’s outreach is a positive step.
“It's been very, very much needed, so it's wonderful to see that they're taking that approach to help try to work together to have a resolution,” Koonce said. “Because the end result is you want to try to get them off the streets and move forward with their life, and it's been very instrumental just in the short time she’s been here.”
Dossey says there’s many reasons Pekin has struggled in the past to get a grasp on homelessness.
“I think it's just easy to turn a blind eye to it,” Dossey said. "I kind of equate it to when I worked up north: there was never a gang problem until you admitted there was a problem. I think it's kind of a perfect storm that's hit us, and we don’t know all the answers."
“It's been very, very much needed, so it's wonderful to see that they're taking that approach to help try to work together to have a resolution.”Darla Koonce, Pekin Outreach Initiative
“On our end, a lot of it for the general public is education. The unhoused have rights, just as you are I do. So that's our biggest struggle, because I think a lot of people – and we hear from business community that, ‘I don't like them sitting on the park bench; I don't like them here.’ Well, I can't remove them; they have just as much right to sit on that bench as you or I do. So if they're not committing a crime, I can't go tell them to move along.”
Cave says many of the individuals she's encountered have grown accustomed to their situation.
“A lot of them don't necessarily regard it as a problem; it's not something that necessarily needs to be fixed,” she said. “There are a lot of folks that are very comfortable and they've been doing this for a very long time, they’ve learned to accommodate to it.
“Just like when you think of trauma survivors who have learned to accommodate in great adversity so have they, and now they're used to this. So you ask, ‘Where are you struggling?’ or ‘Is there something that I can help you with?’ And they say, ‘No, I'm good. I'm all good.’ So that was very surprising to me, and I think that's a fairly large misconception: that everybody who is unhoused wants to become housed.”
But Cave also notes that’s not to say these individuals have given up.
“Another misconception, I think, is that people think that they're not trying or they're not working to better their situation. That's not true at all,” said Cave. “We have some folks that, for example, they've been court mandated to engage in some sort of substance abuse treatment, right? And they're struggling to be housed or struggling to maintain employment, and to engage in the (treatment) processes that they need to do to better themselves or to put themselves in a better situation, they can't afford to do any of that. Just an initial substance abuse assessment costs $60 before Medicaid will kick in. I'd really love the luxury of being able to say, ‘OK, let's get that assessment done; we'll cover the cost of that assessment. Let’s get you enrolled and get your treatment started so that we can move forward.’”
Cave shared a story of a colleague who encountered a former high school classmate who had been a star athlete and now was without a home.
“Say this gentleman's name was John. I wish that everybody would look at the homeless population as a whole bunch of Johns, because that's who they are,” Cave said.
“I think we're doing injustice to the people affected by saying that it's a problem, and I also think that it's unrealistic to say that you can fix it. This is an issue that has a lot of moving parts and a lot of contributing factors.”
