On the second day of extreme heat in Chicago, the suffering could be felt among those living on the streets on Lower Wacker Drive.
“It’s bad,” says Jeffery Holiday, 60, from outside a tent in a rare sunny section of Lower Wacker, near Van Buren. “I try to stay hydrated, which is hard to do.”
Last night was so hot, he slept outside of his tent, he said Thursday morning. The day before he “didn’t get up at all” because of the heat. Chicago saw its first 100-degree day since 2012 on Thursday, breaking a record for Aug. 24, according to the National Weather Service.
Holiday was one of several unhoused people visited Thursday morning by the Night Ministry, a Chicago-based social services organization.
The Night Ministry, in a van with a nurse practitioner and three staff members, made the rounds on one of the hottest days of the year. They made sure the people who live on the streets had the essentials: water, turkey and cheese sandwiches, socks, medicine.
“You need some water?” case worker Sylvia Hibbard asked a man walking on Lower Wacker.
Hibbard, a case worker at the Night Ministry for six years, knows most of them by name. “It’s not a good thing,” she said. Some of them have lived here for a decade, she said.
She and her colleagues try to make their visits on Lower Wacker every week at the same time and day. Thursday mornings are best, she said, because it’s when Streets and Sanitation crews make the rounds to trash abandoned tents.
“That’s how we catch the most amount of people,” Hibbard said.
The focus on Thursday was to provide water and check that folks were hydrated.
No one required medical attention Thursday, said nurse practitioner Hyunsoo Kim, who has been volunteering with the Night Ministry for almost a year. She was looking out for signs of heat stroke: headaches, nausea and vomiting.
“Hydration is important,” Kim said. The heat’s effect can be worsened when combined with drug use or high blood pressure, she said.
Not everyone living on Lower Wacker was disturbed by the heat wave. Some parts of the lower drive were relatively cool compared with conditions above ground.
“It’s no big deal,” said Dan Rusick, 48, who lives outside nearby.
Rusick no longer lives on Lower Wacker — he moved out of a tent last month because the car fumes — but met the Night Ministry team on Lower Wacker after they called him.
He received bottled water and an application to receive his birth certificate. He plans to get a Social Security card.
Rusick has been unhoused on and off for 13 years after losing his home to foreclosure, he said. He had a roommate a few years ago, but after they died during the COVID lockdown, he was evicted and went back to the streets.
After briefly holding down a job at a hotel in the suburbs, he got pneumonia in May and was hospitalized for five weeks, he said.
“And now I’m here,” he said.
Of all the heat waves that John Mauna’s lived through, he says, “This is one of the worst.”
Mauna, 51, sat in a chair on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Lake Street, taking care of his 8-week-old kitten, “Minnie Mouse.”
He’s been pouring water on himself and his kitten to keep them cool. He also has a portable fan.
“I’m wetting her,” he says as he lifts the kitten to kiss her.
He’s been unhoused for five years. “I lost everything,” he said of his children, his wife and his home. But then, he said, “I got a cat and wanted to live again.”
