Only a few blocks from the spires and gargoyles of the University of Chicago, but far removed from the neatly kept houses and clipped lawns of Hyde Park in every important sense, squats an odd-looking building without any identifying signs. Its windows are covered with crosshatched metal bars, and a 12-foot-high chain-link fence topped with shiny, spiraling razor wire encloses a concrete pad and a small yard. At 10 in the morning, two vehicles are parked within the fence; a couple of hours later, their places have been taken by women and small children, the latter pushing themselves about on tricycles or stumping along, piston-legged, while their mothers watch.
Sister Connie, a Missionary Sister of the Poor, does not match most people’s mental image of a nun. She is anything but reticent. The black patch over her left eye (she had a stroke some years ago) and the long brown cigarettes she occasionally puffs give her a faintly rakish air. The remaining bright blue eye gleams with intelligence, humor, and when she gets going, fire. Her voice is low and gravelly. At 56 her hair is gray, chopped in a short who-cares nun’s cut. She wears navy shorts and knee socks on a hot July day; a silver cross on a chain is the main sign of her vocation. Once a lawyer, she decided she didn’t care for the law a long time ago and gave it up. She has been a nun since 1982. She and Sister Therese, who’s small, graying, and quiet, are the adoptive parents of a frisky five-year-old with the imposing name of Mary Kathleen O’Sullivan-Driscoll, more commonly known as Molly. Molly’s natural parents, both schizophrenics, are institutionalized; she was considered at risk and “unadoptable.” The nuns, who arranged a private adoption, claimed her a little more than an hour after her birth. Today she seems happy and healthy.
Saint Martin de Porres, says Sister Connie, is one of only two completely private shelters–meaning they receive no government aid–for the homeless in the city of Chicago; the Pacific Garden Mission is the other. So fiercely protective are the nuns of their independence and their ethics that they do not even accept funds from the Roman Catholic Church, and they have been known to be selective about the foundations and private donors with whom they deal.
The average length of a stay at the shelter is 76 days, but, Sister Connie points out, that figure tells only part of the story. “That varies according to the time of the year it is, and the reasons for clients’ homelessness.” Sister Connie says there are basically three different “homeless” populations, and each has different needs.
“Right now, we’re seeing pretty young people. I’m discounting, now, the pregnant-teen house, because that’s a separate program–and many of them may not truly be homeless. They may be having problems with their own parents because of the pregnancy, and so they’re not truly a part of the homeless population, although they’re counted as part of it. But we’re seeing some pretty young folks–20, 21, 22, three small children, can’t quite cut it, have absolutely no idea about budget and money management. They get into a situation where they’ve rented an apartment and it’s $450 a month, and they’re only getting $350, and they think they can sell their food stamps and make it. At some point they’re going to fall behind, because they just can’t do it.”
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She stresses that she’s not talking about clients’ abuse of the welfare system, but about the basic weaknesses of the system itself. “When you’re living in deep, deep poverty, what constitutes abuse? I think what I’m really talking about is the fact that whenever you hand out a dole to someone, and don’t require a responding, positive action from them–other than to sign their name and cash the check–then, I think, we do a disservice to everyone. And when that money is then used irresponsibly, not because they intentionally do it but because they don’t know any other way, can we be surprised?”
