{"id":50289,"date":"2017-03-03T06:15:49","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T12:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=50289"},"modified":"2017-02-28T21:45:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T03:45:29","slug":"lawndale-man-finds-hope-in-basement-of-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lawndale-man-finds-hope-in-basement-of-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawndale man finds hope in the basement of a church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Pat Nabong and Hammad Sarfraz<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although fewer people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2016 compared to the previous year, nearly six thousand still live on the streets and in shelters. Bernard Johnson is one of them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Lawndale man finds temporary home in basement of church\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/201923764?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The former stockbroker and Lawndale resident says he lost everything and everyone he cherished during a long battle with drugs. Eventually, Johnson found himself without a home and without a family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrugs all they do is seek, kill and destroy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Although Johnson, 58, mostly slept on people\u2019s couches and lived temporarily in shelters, there are many like him who have experienced long stretches of living on the streets<\/p>\n<p>In an annual count of Chicago\u2019s homeless, there were 5,889 homeless people in 2016, according to the city\u2019s point-in-time survey report. More than 4,000 of them lived in shelters. Twenty-eight percent of the more than 1,000 unsheltered individuals had a history of substance use, compared to 22 percent of the sheltered population.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson now lives temporarily in Lincoln Park Community Center Shelter, which is located in the basement of a church. After years of struggling with drug addiction and moving from shelter to shelter, he started being active in the church itself. He now heads bible study groups and attends AA meetings regularly. He has also found a community in the church\u2019s congregation.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson hopes to move out of the shelter in March.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re going to go through the struggles of life,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s what\u2019s in your heart. It\u2019s what\u2019s inside of you. I wasn\u2019t the only person that was struggling. It\u2019s \u2018how long did I want to struggle?\u2019 That\u2019s what it came down to.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: Bernard Johnson has breakfast with friends at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church. Jan. 21, 2017. (Pat Nabong\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Pat Nabong and Hammad Sarfraz Although fewer people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2016 compared to the previous year, nearly six thousand still live on the streets and in shelters. Bernard Johnson is one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":50300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[675,585],"tags":[728,694,3645],"class_list":["post-50289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-justice","category-winter-2016","tag-church","tag-homelessness","tag-shelter"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Lawndale man finds hope in the basement of a church - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lawndale-man-finds-hope-in-basement-of-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lawndale man finds hope in the basement of a church - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Pat Nabong and Hammad Sarfraz Although fewer people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2016 compared to the previous year, nearly six thousand still live on the streets and in shelters. 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