Editor’s note: This story has been corrected after Vanessa Matheny’s name was misspelled, and to add clarification on the professional backgrounds of the ECHO staffers and explain in detail how the donations will be managed and used. Wednesday Journal regrets the errors.
Oak Park’s village government has taken a position to try and reduce panhandling.
The village has launched a public service announcement campaign discouraging residents from giving money to people asking for it on the street, instead encouraging Oak Parkers to donate to initiatives supporting unhoused people in the community. The campaign will spread posters with QR codes around the community that will link to a landing page where people can donate.
Those donations will go into a fund managed by the Oak Park-River Forest Chamber of Commerce, which will be used by the village to pay for food and hotel vouchers for clients of Housing Forward. The village could also use money from the fund to support people seeking food or shelter at Village Hall.
The posters will carry the slogan, “Make Real Change, Not Spare Change,” as the village look to discourage panhandling in Oak Park and raise money for its partners in providing housing to people in need.
The village hosted an information session for local business owners at Village Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 26 about the new campaign.
“Panhandling” is the practice in which people ask strangers for money in public. Vanessa Matheny, Oak Park’s community services manager, said that the vast majority of panhandlers in Oak Park are not unhoused people, and do not live in Oak Park.
“We do know that the individuals panhandling primarily in Downtown Oak Park or in the Arts District, they are not unhoused,” she said. “They come here, they stay for the day and then they get in their cars and leave and go somewhere else. We think it’s important that we share that feedback with our community members.
“They come because Oak Park residents give, and we’re trying to redirect that conversation.”
Matheny said the program has buy-in from village leaders, the local business community and from the village’s partners on the Oak Park Homelessness Coalition.
“This is something we were going to have launched through the coalition initially, but we decided that it may be something that’s better received as a Village of Oak Park initiative,” she said. “It’s been a long conversation to get to this point of how do we support everyone, but also how do we reduce panhandling and soliciting in our community.”
Oak Park has no power to ban panhandling, as the practice is protected by state law. Oak Park does have a ban on soliciting, which is when people look to earn money on the street by selling goods like candy, or bottled water without a permit.
Matheny also hopes to raise awareness of the village’s new ECHO program, an alternative police response designed to be a resource for non-emergency calls for service that residents may consider calling if they encounter someone who needs help. The program has two full-time staffers doing outreach work, one who is a licensed social worker and the other who is a mental health professional, Matheny said.
“We have ECHO here that can support them,” she said. “So I think that people should feel more comfortable with communicating with us so that we can help them help the community as a whole.”
