Local community activist Danielle Chynoweth spoke about the issue of homelessness at the Women’s Resource Center on Monday afternoon.
Chynoweth, a former Urbana city council member, has been an advocate for the homeless for years. She said she has taken in more than a dozen individuals to her home since 1995.
According to the 2011 Community Report from the United Way of Champaign County, there are 418 homeless individuals in Champaign County at any given time.
During her speech, Chynoweth said there are problems with filling in the gaps that local agencies cannot.
“We as a society rely on a patchwork (of social service agencies),” Chynoweth said. “You can get food over here … housing over there … it kind of looks like a fish net, and there’s a lot of holes in it.”
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Chynoweth also addressed the importance of getting to the structural, institutional factors related to homelessness.
“We tend to identify consequences as the problem,” she said. “I encourage you to think, ‘Is this a premise, or is this a consequence of another premise?’ The game to play is the 2-year-old or 3-year-old game, the ‘Why?’ game.”
Student attendees like Sydney Beck, freshman in LAS, found the presentation to be informative. Beck said she was surprised to learn about the current prevalence of homelessness.
“I had no idea that it was such an issue still today, and you know, (it’s the) 21st century,” she said. “I know people are in debt or their credit scores are bad. It’s really sad that it’s such a trend still now.”
Seema Dave, junior in LAS, valued the distinctive angle Chynoweth attacks the problem from.
“I thought she (Chynoweth) had a lot of unique ideas,” Dave said. “I was shocked to find out … that people are employed, and they’re homeless.”
The event was co-sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center and the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations and is part of the Lunchtime Discussion Series. Other cultural houses on campus also hold events weekly as part of the series, which resumes next semester.
Ilya can be reached at [email protected].
