Pictured Mike Cook.
Do you think your life is rough? Well, try being homeless—and needing medical attention.
Fortunately for those people, there’s an agency like Interfaith House. Interfaith House is a 60-bed, nondenominational center on Chicago’s West Side that provides emergency housing and support to ill and injured homeless adults. The staff members include a substance abuse referrals counselor, a full kitchen staff, and a licensed clinical social worker. Windy City Times recently spoke with Mike Cook, the executive director of Interfaith House, about the agency’s past, present, and future.
Windy City Times: Tell me about your legal background.
Mike Cook: I practiced law for 23 years and then decided two years ago that I wanted to go into the public interest sector. I’m now working as the executive director of Interfaith House.
WCT: Why the switch?
MC: After 23 years of anything, it may be time to move on. Second, over the last 10 to 12 years, I developed an interest in public interest matters working with people who are marginalized. I was a trustee for [HIV and AIDS housing agency] Chicago House for nine years and was the president of the ACLU of Illinois for four years. I found that representing marginalized people was more to my liking than dealing with corporate clients. I think it’s important for the public interest sector to have people who have worked in the for-profit sector. There are differences in the philosophies.
WCT: Such as?
MC: I think that ‘non-profit’ is a tax status, not a management style. If you really believe in the mission of your agency, you should make sure that it’s run in an economical and efficient way. You want to make sure that you have enough funds to carry out your programs. I think many executive directors, while rightfully interested in their programs, are not that interested in raising money and managing their operations. I’m interested in all three.
WCT: Can you give me a quick synopsis of what Interfaith House is and does?
MC: Interfaith House provides housing and healthcare for homeless people who are released from area hospitals.
WCT: Are they cared for to a certain point where they’re released?
MC: Yes, but we don’t discharge people to the streets. People who come to us are still injured and who follow the rules of our program are then placed into stable housing or, if necessary, an appropriate treatment center. What we’re really doing is ending homelessness. Between 70 and 75 percent of the people who walk in our front door walk out recovered and into their own housing.
Interestingly, there is no other agency like ours in this region of the country. Also—interestingly and shamefully—we turn away more people than we take. For every person who’s admitted, a person and a half is turned away. [The rejected person] doesn’t go to another agency like ours because there is no other agency. You see these people on the street with broken legs or who are in wheelchairs—people who are in some stage of recovery. You see them in front of your Starbucks, in the Loop, and in places in the wintertime trying to get warm. It’s hard enough to be homeless, but to be homeless and in medical recovery … .
Also, 30 to 40 percent of the people we see have HIV. If you are homeless, having HIV can very well be a death sentence. You can’t maintain a drug regimen. It’s difficult enough to maintain that regimen if you’re middle- or upper-class. For people with HIV, we are literally saving their lives. So, you can see why I like it and why I think it is important.
WCT: There are various programs at Interfaith House. Could you describe the Assessment/Respite Program?
MC: The Assessment/Respite Program is basically what I’ve just described. In many ways, it’s an archaic way of describing housing and care. The Assessment/Respite Program is one part of that. Another piece is the Supportive Living Program for those who stay longer. For the entire population that is with us, we provide housing and care.
WCT: There’s a collaborative called the Chicago Housing and Health Partnership.
MC: The CHHP [pronounced ‘chip’] project is a consortium of agencies, hospitals, and governmental partners that is taking a different look at ending homelessness. Homeless people with chronic problems are identified at Cook County, Mount Sinai, or the VA [Health Care Systems]. The people, if they agree to participate in the CHHP program, are then sent to Interfaith House for a brief period of time. After their stay, they go with Chicago House (if they have HIV), Housing Opportunities for Women, the Christian Industrial League, or another one of the 12 or 13 housing providers. What we’re doing is taking people through the full continuum of services they need into housing. After getting housing, we’re going to track them for a year to see if this works.
WCT: Have you ever had people refuse housing? For some people, being on the streets is all they know.
MC: Not many.
WCT: Is there a percentage?
MC: No, because the demographics of the homeless population are almost impossible to track accurately. They’re not in the system. We have anecdotal evidence but not solid statistical evidence. I will say that very few people, when released from the hospital, hesitate to take the housing. I think [not hesitating] has to do with lying in the hospital and knowing that something has happened to you and that you could end up back on the streets. We offer a bed, 24-hour staff, three meals a day, and an on-site medical clinic. We also have psychosocial services, treatment centers if necessary, and housing placement. It’s a pretty good deal.
WCT: Do you also have internships?
MC: We have interns from various places. We don’t pay our interns; they’re provided to us through groups. We currently have one from McCormick Theological Seminary. In a sense, it’s a learning center for folks.
One thing I’ve learned is that the problems of mental illness and substance abuse are becoming increasingly difficult for the homeless population. Access to services for them is difficult and access to take care of those problems is especially difficult. So, until we’re able to address those issues, we’re never going to be able to address the homeless issue [in general].
The other thing I’ve learned is that—and it sounds silly—in order to end homelessness, we need to have housing. There isn’t enough housing. People stay at Interfaith House an average of 30 days longer than they need to because we can’t find housing. So they’re medically ready.
WCT: So other people …
MC: Can’t get in … but it doesn’t make sense to turn someone back out onto the streets. Why get someone well only to have that person become sick again? So we’ve added a housing advocate to find housing.
WCT: Is there a job placement program?
MC: No. What we aim to do is to catch people at this vulnerable time of their lives and turn them around. A large percentage of the people who stay with us will eventually go to work but there is also a large percentage that will never work because of disability or other issues.
WCT: What are the most frustrating and rewarding aspects of your job?
MC: The most frustrating part is finding housing for residents. Our program works until the point where the residents are medically ready to leave. … The most rewarding is our entire staff of 40 really believes [it’s] making a difference. We see the success of our program. The [daily] cost for each resident is less than $90. For that amount, each person gets housing, food, clothing, medical care, psychosocial services, substance abuse counseling, and placement in stable housing. You can beat that.
Now we’re able to do this because of linkages with other agencies. Our medical clinic, for instance, is staffed by volunteer doctors from groups around the area. If we had to pay for those doctors, we couldn’t do it.
WCT: How can people help?
MC: The most important thing you can do is to give us money. That is the cold, hard truth that many executive directors hesitate to tell people. We need volunteers to help us with our residents but, at the end of the day, we have 40 professionals on our staff who need to be paid. We also have a building that we need to pay rent on. We need to buy beds. We need money to operate this facility so the most important thing we need is money, whether is a $10 gift, $100, or more.
[Regarding volunteering,] what many people find most rewarding are the educational opportunities where you might come to the house and have a session with a resident about something you know, like some aspect of journalism. We currently have someone who teaches an English As a Second Language class; it helps because many of our people are Spanish- or Polish-speaking.
WCT: People can also give items,?
MC: Yes. When people come to us they have no clothes, so clothing—including socks and new underwear—is important. Hygiene products, like soap and shampoo.
WCT: Where do you see Interfaith House five years from now?
MC: One of the issues that the homeless providers face is how do we fit into the 10-year plan to end homelessness that the Continuum of Care has adopted and that the mayor has endorsed. Right now, we are facilitating homelessness in many ways. Every morning in Chicago, there are about 7,000 men and women who are forced to leave homeless shelters because these facilities are not equipped to keep them during the day. … There will always be a need for an agency like ours. We hope to fit into this picture by doubling the number of beds we have. If we had 150 beds, it still wouldn’t be enough but it would go a long way.
Interfaith House, 3456 W. Franklin Blvd., Chicago, 60624, (773) 533-6013, e-mail m.clarke@interfaithhouse.org.
I’m at westelm406@yahoo.com.