Anyone who’s been to Evanston knows that you can walk around downtown and shake your head at the same clinking cup three or four times on any given day. “Sorry, I don’t carry any cash,” is a common excuse and, in today’s credit-driven world, it’s almost believable. You never give the guy outside CVS any money because he’s too pushy, rude and honestly, he doesn’t even look homeless. Still, he keeps asking.You feel a twinge of guilt for not sparing a few loose coins since you have a $5 latte in one hand, a $50 textbook in the other. You quickly take out your phone, furrow your brow and pretend to be making a call or reading an urgent text message. Or maybe you dig some change and lint out of your pocket or purchase the latest issue of StreetWise. Still, as a privileged member of the Northwestern community, odds are you have no idea what it feels like to be on the empty end of that cup.The homeless in Evanston are an interesting group. Many campus publications and bleeding-heart Medill reporters have taken to the streets in an effort to tell the sad tale of this bum or that one. There’s the wheelchair-bound man who sells gumballs for a quarter, and the odd couple always sitting together on the bench next to the park at Clark and Sherman. There’s Tony, always smiling and trying – or claiming – to raise money for various children’s organizations. The man selling Obama buttons on Sherman. The guy who, always perched on his brown plastic milk crate and outfitted with an oversized black T-shirt and gray sweatpants, sits outside of CVS smoking stubs of cigarettes thrown to the ground by people rushing into the convenience store. The man with the wild cackle that haunts the entrance to Starbucks. I didn’t have a noble cause or any Good Samaritan drive, but last week, I set out to meet them.By now, everyone who’s been to town knows Dennis. He’s the slightly overweight homeless man who, whether standing outside of the Century Theatres, hovering over the newspaper dispensers outside of Starbucks or warming a stone bench at the corner of Church and Maple, is always sporting a Rastafarian hat, long dreadlocks and a wide smile. Even the freshmen are aware of him (“Is he the one with the foot fetish?”) but no one really discusses it. People are so used to his presence around Evanston they forget about him a minute after he passes. “God bless,” he always says, whether you toss a nickel into his cup or not. In many ways, he is the face of Evanston’s homeless population.The City of Evanston, despite its heavy promotion of a whole stable of programs and resources designed to prevent and reduce homelessness, is failing. A lot of the available literature is outdated, the employees are overworked at best and unhelpful at worst, and the resources don’t stretch far enough; the numbers (see sidebar) prove that the situation is worse than you think. That’s why you weren’t meant to see them.If you’re a typical Northwestern student, you’ve wondered why Evanston has so many homeless people. But chances are you were referring to this same handful of characters rather than the entire community. Maybe you see five, 10, 20 homeless people over and over again around various parts of the city. In downtown Evanston, the storefronts sparkle and the condos rise high. It isn’t a place you would expect to find a sizeable number of Evanston’s most disadvantaged. And, on the Northwestern campus, you almost never run into a homeless person. A call to University Police to determine procedure for escorting unwelcome visitors off campus bounced around the office and ultimately went unreturned.According to a leaked document from the Strategic Plan for the Evanston Alliance on Homelessness that was distributed to members before a meeting in mid-June, the group estimates that between 3,200 and 4,550 people in Evanston are in the “homelessness funnel.” The funnel is divided into five categories based on the severity of an individual’s living condition, with between 700 and 1,050 people listed as “actually homeless” and an additional 2,500 to 3,500 “at imminent risk.”A 2006 survey conducted by the Census Bureau shows that the population of Evanston is 68,315. More than one in 10 live below the poverty line, which is based on what it would take to maintain an adequate standard of living for a year. In 2006, it was set at $9,800. That classifies more than 7,600 people in Evanston as living in poverty, but doesn’t recognize 3,050 who are living meagerly. But the funnel isn’t a great place to be either: 1,500 people in it aren’t getting any help.The irony is that a lot of homeless people are here because they heard the programs were better than in Chicago; they’re plentiful and easier to access, all within walking distance. The city has done a remarkable job in presenting itself as one that makes a strong effort to prevent and reduce homelessness. The problem is, when Evanston promotes itself as a city that helps the homeless and at-risk, it attracts more. And once they get here, they stay.To write about them, I wanted to experience homelessness first-hand. Last week, I ditched my classes and left my wallet in my apartment and set out with nothing on me except a pen and a pad of paper to take notes on. When I got hungry, I panhandled outside of Panera Bread using a Taco Bell cup plucked from the trash, until I had enough money to get a sandwich. I followed the lead of the guy selling StreetWise on the opposite corner and stuffed my few belongings between two newspaper dispensers. When I was stopped by a member of Greenpeace who asked if I was an environmentalist, I replied, “Yes, but a poor one.” Don’t you see the cup?But the term homeless is relative. Even though I went out onto the streets several times, I was never able to go for more than six or eight hours. “That’s not homeless at all,” you might say. But I had every intention of spending the night like they would. Except I didn’t have many options. The city’s primary shelter, Hilda’s Place, is out of beds, completely booked. Still, my experience was more than extended walks. Internally reminding yourself that you are homeless is enough to change your entire perception of the streets: The outside becomes your inside, privacy is destroyed, people look at you differently and, with nothing else to do but get by, the passage of time is incredibly warped.When it was time to walk to the homeless shelter, I headed south to the corner of Lake and Chicago, to Hilda’s Place, in the basement of Lake St. Church. Following a cracked sidewalk around the side of the building, I found the door. Thick. Steel. It sits at the bottom of a narrow concrete staircase outfitted with a PVC pipe bracketed to the wall serving as a railing. I wondered if there was a handicapped entrance. Littering the sidewalk and stuffed into some of the Church’s shrubbery are brown paper bags. I dug through one, eliciting a few confused glances from people on the street (by now I was used to it) and found a 750ml plastic bottle of Wolfschmidt’s vodka.When I hit the phones later, I found out what I already knew: Hilda’s Place was filled to capacity and almost always is. There’s an interview process to get into the shelter. I learned my other options: Many local churches open their doors to serve as afternoon warming centers during the winter months and a handful also run soup kitchens for lunch or dinner. Robert, a volunteer at the First Presbyterian Church who also works as a custodian on the weekends, estimates that anywhere between 50 to 100 people show up as much as four hours early for his church’s weekly free lunch. Most churches didn’t pick up my calls, instead directing me to answering machines that sign off with “God bless you.” All of the churches are stocked with fliers and brochures advertising the city’s various resources. The phone number and e-mail address on the brochures, however, direct you to a City of Evanston employee who retired in April of this year. Other numbers direct you to more maxed out programs.After being rerouted four times when I called the Civic Center, I guessed at the extension and finally reached Evon
da Thomas, the Director of Health and Human Services. But when I called her point person for displaced residents, the office that helps Evanston residents who can’t make their mortgage and other monthly payments, she barked at me. She’s on vacation, away from the office and could I please not call again until tomorrow?The go-to guy at StreetWise can’t count the vendors operating out of Evanston; there are too many. The only place that seemed willing to help was the YWCA that serves the entire North Shore region. Too bad I’m not homeless and a female victim of domestic abuse. Gen Riyeta, the Operational Director for the YWCA, estimates that her organization provides services to 150 women from Evanston, including legal advocacy and transitional housing. Women can also stay in their shelter, which is at an undisclosed location for safety purposes, for up to three months.There’s still a whole lot of work to be done. And with the sluggish economy, organizations that rely on charitable donations are threatened. Because of the current crisis on Wall Street, people contacting  EntryPoint, the first step for Evanston residents in need of help, increased 50 percent in recent weeks.The EAH has a steering committee that plans to end chronic homelessness in Evanston by 2012. I don’t think they’re going to meet that goal, but at least setting one is a step in the right direction. I’m just glad I had an apartment to go home to when the homeless shelter turned me away.