Right To Recovery Coalition Challenges Mayor's Budget

The Right to Recovery Coalition would agree with Mayor Lori Lightfoot that $1.9 billion in federal COVID relief is “a once-in-a-generation amount of money for a once-in-ageneration crisis.”

Caitlin Brady of the Right to Recovery Coalition tells Mayor Lightfoot to use all $1.9 million in COVID relief money for an alternative, poverty relief plan during a public empowerment forum at Truman College.

Courtesy of Suzanne Hanney

Lightfoot wants to use up to half the American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds in her FY2022 budget to pay down debt (see pages 8 and 9), but 13 members of the 50-member Chicago City Council would use it all to alleviate poverty in the wake of the pandemic.

“The debt she says is due we don’t actually have to pay this year,” said Matthew Cason, treasurer and policy chair of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) regarding the Chicago Rescue Plan Fund 925 ordinance. Other supporters include United Working Families, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Chicago Teachers Union, SEIU Local 73 and SEIU Health Care of Illinois and Indiana.

“We’re using ARP funds to invest in our city and our people, whereas debt repayment is not an investment,” Cason said. “That’s what’s setting us up for the future.” He envisions some blend of the Chicago Rescue Plan and Lightfoot’s budget being passed by the Chicago City Council this month or next.

Childcare expansion, at $376 million, is the largest line item in the proposed Chicago Rescue Plan, because it is the No. 1 need they discovered, encompassing 7 percent of an average family’s income, Cason said. Their program would either fund people who earn more than the threshold for public reimbursement (roughly $2,874 monthly before taxes for a single mother of one) or be run as a universal program in 10 of Chicago’s 77 community areas, still to be determined. Water Debt Relief, $206 million, is the next biggest allocation.

“Who has water debt? Low-income Black and Brown families on the South and West Sides,” Cason said. Some of them owe just a couple hundred dollars, but others have bills in the thousands. Cason blamed faulty infrastructure: leaks inside homes or in pipes connecting to city water mains.

One in 6 Chicago residential water accounts was past due at the end of 2019: $341 million in unpaid bills, according to data the Chicago Water Management Department provided to Circle of Blue, a center for reporting on water issues. The problem has grown alongside the cost of water and sewer service since 2011.

WBEZ found that revenue from water and sewer rates increased 68 percent between 2011 and 2019. Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced a rate hike phased in over several years to fund infrastructure. A second increase in 2016, also phased in over several years, went to the municipal workers’ pension fund.

Lightfoot introduced Chicago Utility Building Relief (UBR), the nation’s first debt forgiveness program, in April 2020. UBR provides a 50 percent reduction in water, sewer, and water-sewer bills; no shut offs or debt collection on city utility billing, and debt forgiveness after a year of payments.

In January, Lightfoot announced that $8.9 million in debt forgiveness had been set aside for UBR. The city had already halved the bills for 8,539 participants.

Maxica Williams is a grassroots leader with Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), a mother of two daughters age 15 and 13 and a son, 12. Williams had Stage III cancer in 2015 and was homeless from 2016 until the beginning of this year. The Right to Recovery ordinance, by providing stable housing and homelessness assistance, would be investing in the community, she said.

Thanks to the federal McKinney-Vento Act, Williams’ children were able to receive transit cards and other supports to remain in the top Chicago Public Schools where they had been since Head Start, even though the family went from shelters and transitional housing on the southwest side to farther south in the 100s, then up north near Wrigley Field and finally back south to Chicago Housing Authority permanent housing. School remained the one, calm, constant in their lives. The result was that her eldest was salutatorian of her 8th grade class and her two younger children remained on the honor roll.

CCH gave laptops and the Chicago Connected program provided high speed internet to enable remote learning during the pandemic. Wraparound services included a psychologist on staff and budgeting classes, because when you’ve been doubled up with friends, sometimes you forget how, Williams said. They received Link cards, storage for their possessions and a rental truck when they moved, access to free furniture and even a sewing class, which took her mind off the cancer. She made a quilt and pillow shams.

Crisis response services and Reopening Mental Health clinics, funded at $100 million, go hand in hand, said Arturo Carrillo, PhD, LCSW. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians stopped by law enforcement, according to a 2015 study by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center. One in 4 fatal police encounters results in death for someone with severe mental illness.

The reason, Dr. Carrillo says, is that police are trained to give orders and subdue people by force, while mental health professionals deescalate the situation and stay calm. It’s the difference between restraining a drunken man’s knees to his back until he dies or offering him a sandwich and water until he is happy. Mental health professionals meet people where they are.

After a crisis with police and a mental health co-responder, a person could be taken immediately to a public mental health clinic, but Mayor Emanuel closed six of 12 community mental health centers and privatized another in 2012.

The Right to Recovery ordinance would reopen the seven clinics plus 12 more for a total of 24, Dr. Carrillo said. Although Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to spend $25 million to reopen them, she has not. Instead, she allocated $8 million to 32 nonprofit providers.

“Each has its own dysfunction. It’s just a hodge podge. We’ve called every one of those centers to find out what kind of services they provide.”

Lightfoot said at the public forum August 12 that erasing mental health stigma is now the barrier to treatment. Dr. Carrillo said their research proves otherwise, that availability remains the issue. “Not only do people say there is not enough mental health access, they say they don’t know the city operates them.” In a survey of 45 of Chicago’s 50 wards, 90 percent of respondents said they would seek out a public mental health center, but they didn’t know they existed.

“The problem is, if we don’t create preventative services and continuing care, people will continue to cycle through crisis situations. It’s putting a Band-Aid™ on the cancer,” Dr. Carrillo said. The city should be the provider because it can centralize management.

“No nonprofit can do that. We wouldn’t expect nonprofits to do the job of the Fire Department. With ARP we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that this mayor seems to want to waste. We could have a mental health center in every ward that would cost a small fraction of what is available in federal relief dollars; 5 percent of the $1.9 billion could establish the whole system both for crisis response and mental health access.”

Arturo Carrillo,PhD, LCSW, at an Oct. 20, 2020 demonstration outside City Hall in favor of the Treatment, Not Trauma ordinance, which would use mental health clinicians instead of police in some response situations.

Courtesy of Suzanne Hanney

Right to Recovery Key Provisions

Childcare Expansion: $376 million

Water Debt Relief: $206 million

Housing Assistance: $192 million

Violence Prevention: $117 million

Reopening Mental Health Clinics: $100 million

Vaccination Funding: $50 million

Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot: $50 million

Youth Employment: $45 million

Small Business Relief: $40 million

Arts & Cultural Support: $20 million