“Hey, man, what’s up?.” The men look up and greet Jack Graham as he walks along Lower Wacker Drive. Dressed in a dark suit with pinstripes, a pale shirt, and a tie with tiny embroidered eagles, Graham doesn’t quite fit in.
Even in his wrinkle-free duds and tortoiseshell glasses, Graham seems at home with these men. That’s because Graham knows what it’s like to live on the streets.
As a nascent nonprofit organization, HOME has only just recently been able to pay Graham a salary. The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless gave HOME its start by letting the organization share its office space. Besides Graham, HOME’s only staff are the volunteers who show up.
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“I really don’t like this,” Graham says after the reporters and the men leave. “If we get some media attention, that’s fine. But if it becomes more important than what were supposed to be doing, that’s when there’s a problem.
During the summers Graham works with storefront churches and shelters to register the homeless to vote. They have registered some 800 people in the past three years. He concentrates on registering people who live on the west and near south sides.
And each week Graham returns to the shelter that first housed him to inform the homeless on legislation and get ideas and feedback. “I understand people on the streets. The shelter network is designed to keep you from dying, not get you back into real living. Most people who leave poverty do just that, leave.
