1 week Ago By TOM LOEWY [email protected]
Lucas Dwyer packs his sleeping bag with all his belongings. Extra shirts go in. His back-up coat.
A couple of hoodies. All the blankets he acquired before winter really hit. It's how Dwyer survives the night when temperatures dip into the single-digits.
The 34-year-old Davenport man is one of hundreds of unhoused individuals throughout the Quad-Cities forced to sleep outdoors, in abandoned buildings, in doorways, or — if they're "lucky" — in a vehicle. Shelter space is sparse, and could be harder to find than in past years after a winter emergency shelter did not expand this year. Dwyer spent some frigid nights outdoors this month.
The early morning hours of Dec. 12 saw a low in the area of 3 degrees. The morning of Dec.
13 registered a low of just 7 degrees. People are also reading..
. Dwyer and his sleeping bag were camped behind a dumpster in an alley between Fifth and Vine streets in the near-west end of Davenport. It is a place populated by a number of other unhoused people and packs of feral cats.
"I get all my stuff in my sleeping bag, that's one of the steps to staying warm," Dwyer said. "And you have to have a good pair of socks. Gloves.
It helps to layer. You have to keep your clothes dry. Then you get in the sleeping bag and pull it up over your head.
And that means you need a safe place so no one comes up on you. People don't really go around the dumpsters, so it's usually safe there. "You can make it.
You just have to hope it doesn't get too windy." Meager extra shelter According to estimates from the outreach workers who try to count the number of unhoused people in the Quad-Cities, there are between "500 and 600 people" living on the streets in the metro area. Like Dwyer, a number of those people will spend cold nights outdoors.
The number of emergency beds available at local shelters is limited, after Humility Homes made the decision to not expand its emergency shelter this year. The decision eliminated a minimum of 36 beds. Humility Homes Executive Director Ashley Velez said as of last week, Humility Homes has three open beds in its women's shelter and two open beds in the men's shelter.
"That could change," Velez added. "We know from the counts we did in the summer and fall that there were more unhoused people in the Quad-Cities than there were available beds." For the past five years, Humility reconfigured its lower-level space at 1016 W.
Fifth St. from Dec. 1 to April 15 to increase its number of emergency shelter beds from 88 to 124 to handle a seasonal influx of people seeking shelter from the elements.
Velez said the extra capacity during the winter required additional resources — such as more staff, including another safety officer — amid greater demand for services and basic needs. Humility estimated the bare minimum needed for the additional beds in 2023 was about $352,800. Velez is one of the voices calling for more affordable housing and permanent solutions to the Quad-Cities housing instability.
"We completed our five-year agreement, tracked data, tracked the pieces we knew we could, and we really tried to get the community to help support it and there wasn't enough support in actually creating the additional affordable housing," Velez told the Bettendorf City Council during a meeting earlier this month. "We ran a deficit for the last two years from our own donor dollars and we didn't want to do that again because we want to be able to put our money into the actual solution, which is housing." Outreach on a cold winter morning Dwyer grabbed another sleeping bag during the Dec.
13 resource fair in an empty parking lot near the corner of Fifth and Vine streets in Davenport. It was just before 9 a.m.
and the temperature was 12 degrees. Dwyer added a coat and a few more items he found on one of the 14 folding tables piled with clothes that came out of the back of a short U-Haul truck parked on Vine Street. The resource fair was attended by a number of agencies, including Project NOW, Humility Homes, Community Health Care, Inc.
, First Presbyterian Church's Caring Closet, Iowa Total Care and Veteran's Affairs. Chris Dunn is an outreach worker with Humility Homes. He said people started showing up before the fair's scheduled 9 a.
m. start time. "We are seeing a lot of people on the street," he said.
"And there are people in cars, people who are with friends, but those folks might be out of a place to sleep tomorrow or next week. "Hopefully this will help keep people warm." Dwyer collected his new belongings and placed them not far from a half dozen feral cats who curled up next to a fence at the back of parking lot.
He turned his back to the resource fair and relieved himself against the fence. "Sorry," he said after he finished. "I live out here.
That's what my life looks like. When you don't have a house, you don't have a bathroom." Surviving the night Dwyer said he's been "on and off the street" since he was 22 years old.
"I lived in Davenport the whole time," he said. "So I know people, and I've stayed a lot of places. "I've been to all those cheap hotels, sometimes I stay with friends, sometimes in abandoned houses.
I'm along Fifth Street quite a bit, there's some houses here I can get in. But I'm outside quite a bit." Justin Kirk attended the Dec.
13 resource fair. He spent a better part of a decade on the streets, mostly in Des Moines. After a seven-month jail stint in Muscatine County, he has found a spot in Humility Homes' shelter.
Like Dwyer, Kirk said there are methods that "get you through the coldest nights." He said he has lived in campsites for extended periods of time. "The key there is a tent, obviously," he said.
"And you have to get as many mattresses as you can. Get off the ground. "Then, pillows.
Lots of pillows can help you stay warm. It's like insulation. And blankets, of course.
Blankets are gold. If you can get a tent, you have a chance in just about any cold. Because you can pack it to stay warm.
" Kirk said he is hopeful he can find an affordable, permanent home. "I'm working on getting disability, which is a partial thing," he said. "And I want to work.
I can work and I want to have a job. A big part of my problem was drugs, but I've gotten clean and I would like to get out of the shelter, stay off the streets and find a job. "It's so hard to find a home.
" Karen Abendroth, the coordinated entry specialist for Veteran's Affairs, attended last week's resource fair. Like Velez, she said while emergency winter shelters are crucial in the effort to keep unhouse people safe, they only offer short-term answers. "We need affordable housing," she said.
"We need housing and we need to get people access to it. "Until people have a safe, permanent place, we are going to be doing these kinds of events, hoping to keep people alive." Gathering to remember Six days after the resource fair, dozens of people stood outside Zion Lutheran Church near the corner of Marquette and West Eighth streets in Davenport to remember unhoused people who died during 2024.
It's a tradition called the Community Homeless Memorial. The temperature on the Dec. 19 evening hovered in the mid-30s, and a light drizzle added a chill.
Dunn, who later sang a song for those who attended, said he felt it was important to meet outside to remember those who spent portions of their lives without any place to call home. "I feel like maybe we shouldn't be warm and comfortable for this," he said. Pastor Janine Johnson of St.
Mark Lutheran Church opened the memorial with a prayer. She encouraged those gathered "to bear witness to what demands to be seen." John Cooper, pastoral associate from St.
Anthony's Catholic Church, offered the story of a homeless man he knows. The man lives in a tent and recently landed in a hospital with internal bleeding. Cooper called the man "my friend.
" "Without help, this man faced dying alone in a tent," Cooper said. Then he asserted "every person has a right to a safe home." Cooper said he has tired of local elected officials who tell him "programs for homeless people create homelessness.
" He then offered a story of hope. Cooper said the homeless man now in the hospital was often visited by members of the Davenport Police Department. "They checked on my friend," he said.
"And when my friend woke up in the hospital, he was surrounded by (Davenport) police officers who came to check on him. "There is hope." Zion Lutheran Church's Pastor Clark Olson-Smith read the first names and last initial of 26 people who died in 2024.
All them experienced homelessness during the year. "Illinois needs to quickly and dramatically ramp up our efforts to approve and build new housing, and to give more affordable options to working families," Gov. JB Pritzker said during a news conference to announce new housing initiatives on Wednesday, Dec.
11, 2024. Half of renters pay more than 30% of their income on shelter amid worsening affordable housing shortage Half of renters pay more than 30% of their income on shelter amid worsening affordable housing shortage The portion of Americans contributing more than a third of their income to rent has been rising for the past two decades, and today, it sits at around half of all renters, according to recently released Census data collected in 2023. Since 2021, the cost of housing has been one of the most persistent and potent forces driving a rising cost of living around the nation.
Even as the rate of price increases has neared previous norms, the remaining upward pressure on inflation is almost entirely made up of housing cost increases, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Netspend analyzed the latest Census data to illustrate the portion of renters in every state considered rent-burdened, paying more than 30% of their income toward rent. Rent-burdened residents are now found in large numbers not only in high-cost-of-living states like California but also in states like Nevada and Florida.
The percentage of the renting population that was rent-burdened grew from 40% to nearly 50% between 2000 and 2020. Almost half of all households, at 49%, were rent-burdened in 2023, according to the latest housing data released by the Census in September. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies noted in a report published earlier this year that the rent-burdened population in the U.
S. was at a record high . Not only do high rents make it difficult for low-income renters to afford other necessities like utility costs, food, and clothing, but it also makes building wealth even more difficult.
For instance, a renter hoping to save money to purchase their first home—an asset that can be passed down through generations of family members—may struggle to set aside enough money as the cost of rent rises. The National Low Income Housing Coalition tracks the availability of affordable housing available to low-income renter households. It found that the amount of housing that low-income renters can afford declined nationwide from 2019 to 2022 , and that the trend has the biggest impact on extremely low-income Americans—a majority of whom live with disabilities, are caretakers for someone else, or are older adults.
Rental markets in Texas, Florida, long thought of as affordable, are costly for residents States with high costs of living, like California, New York, and Maryland, are more likely to have rent-burdened populations. However, other states long thought to have comparably affordable housing markets also had high percentages of cost-burdened renters in 2023. California's housing crisis began spilling into neighboring Nevada as Golden State dwellers started flocking to Silver State communities in the mid-2000s.
Home prices in Nevada skyrocketed due to increased demand, just like California incomes, which were about 93% higher than those of Nevada residents moving within the state, according to a 2024 paper by Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The cost of rent in the state also went up, increasing by 34% between 2019 and 2023, according to a 2024 report from Zillow . Coupled with wage growth that didn't keep up with rental increases from 2019 to 2023, renters have been left feeling squeezed and disillusioned about the prospects of owning a home.
The unsustainable demand for housing hasn't only made homeownership out of reach—it's also kept rental costs much higher than low-income renters can reasonably afford. Florida, California, and Hawai'i also had above-average-sized populations of rent-burdened residents in 2023. Black renters shoulder highest burdens Not all renters experience the same pressure on household budgets.
Renters of white and Asian descent are less likely to be rent-burdened. Households led by Black, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native individuals experience the highest rates. As more of the overall renting population has grown rent-burdened since 2000, the disparities experienced by Black and Hispanic or Latino renters in comparison to white renters have held, according to historical Census data.
Rent burden is more likely to impact households earning less than middle income, a demographic that has long been disproportionately made up of Black and Hispanic people. Organizations like the NLIHC have championed solutions to the rental housing affordability crisis that would increase the supply of affordable rental housing and establish new rental assistance programs. However, the latest portrait of pinched renter households painted by Census data comes at the same time as historic levels of assistance for renters offered during the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
By the end of 2023, more than 90% of states had closed their programs , which provided $46.5 billion in collective aid to keep people housed during the public health crisis. Story editing by Carren Jao.
Additional editing by Elisa Huang. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn. This story originally appeared on Netspend and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
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