Marie
Image by mckenziemedia
Marie, Rocky, and Marco were standing and talking on the southwest corner of Wells and Adams. They watch out for each other on the street. I didn’t have time to talk with Marco (plus, he was soft-spoken anyway so…) I did talk with Marie. Both her parents passed away, then she fell behind on her rent payments, and became homeless. She had her backpack stolen at the first shelter she went to, which had her ID and everything in it. "It’s tough when you don’t have an ID. They’ve changed some of the rules now and if you don’t have an ID, you can’t get in. I was turned away at 2am at a police station and turned away at a hospital." Last night she and her friends slept in a park. Then it started to rain and they had to find a place out of the rain. Marie is from Michigan and needs to get her birth certificate (so she can get an ID), but since she’s homeless in Chicago, it’s next to impossible to make that happen. An ID is the first step in getting off the street. She didn’t want her picture taken, but she allowed me to take a veiled picture of her, since it would help the homeless.