Inner
Voice Inc. community service organization hosted a special art installation
ceremony Saturday outside one of its West Side facilities.
Members
of the community, including elected officials, joined the homeless, housing and
supportive services organization in receiving a bronze sculpture depicting Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights work for better urban housing in Chicago
from 1965 to 1967.
The
sculpture, officially called Passage, was installed outside of Inner Voice's
T.A.B. West/Wolfson Building family shelter at 2678 W. Washington Boulevard and
embodies the spirit of the 27-year-organization, its interim director told the
Defender.
It
“personifies the Inner Voices mission and what it has stood for over the years
and the opportunities we tried to create, particularly for those people who are
in need of affordable housing in Chicago,” Abdullah Hassan, the interim CEO,
said.
The
sculpture was commissioned by the Academy of Art University in San Francisco
and created by students there under the guidance of instructor Erik Blome.
“It's a
beautiful, beautiful piece,” Hassan said. “It transcends time.”
And it
also marks a time in history when some poor Blacks and other minorities in
Chicago were faced with unsavory housing woes. Dr. King rented an apartment on
the West Side of Chicago during his time here and became entrenched in
Chicago's housing scene, pushing then-Mayor Richard J. Daley to offer fair and
affordable decent housing for the city's poor.
But as
things seemed to improve from that era, history would repeat itself - in a way,
Hassan pointed out.
“Again we
find it difficult for people to find affordable housing here in Chicago,” he
said. “So many years ago it was an issue and it remains an issue today,
particularly quality affordable housing. We do want our people to secure safe,
clean and affordable housing.”
Inner
Voices is in the process of further developing the site near where the
sculpture was placed to include more affordable housing. Hassan said the
organization is looking to develop 17 units at that location. The organization
maintains a total of nine facilities and offers other housing assistance and
benefits. It has 397 units of various types of affordable housing where the
agency is either providing housing directly or doing case management for
affordable housing residents, Hassan said.
He said
his organization serves some 7,000 homeless men and women annually.
“We
address homelessness from a wholistic perspective,” the interim CEO said. “We
want to help individuals not only find a home but empower them with the ability
and the skills so that that they can maintain housing over the long haul.”
Inspiration
for the sculpture came from interviews with, among others, clients and workers
of Inner Voices.
“You can
see the results of those visits and the conversations in the piece as well. You
could see how they really took the agency, as well as the civil rights movement
- the Chicago Freedom Movement - into consideration when they designed the
piece,” said Hassan.
The
agency has benefited from aldermanic support. Though one side of the housing
community on Washington is in Bob Fiorretti's 2nd Ward and the other side in
Walter Burnett Jr.'s 27th Ward, Hassan said the aldermen have been supportive.
Fiorretti attended Saturday's installation ceremony.
Nationally,
the Department of Housing and Urban Development indicates that at least 750,000
Americans are homeless or without housing. Locally, the city's housing
authority and other organizations don't offer an “authoritative count” of
Chicago's homeless but say the issue is a serious one.
Just as
the sculpture installed Saturday was created through a collaborative effort and
depicts a time when people had to come together to effect change, dealing with
today's housing issues - in the face of today's economic challenges - will
require a concerted effort too, organization leaders said.
“Community
created this sculpture and community is what it's going to take to end
homelessness in this city. It's a physical representation or manifestation of
the work that has to be done here in the city to end homelessness,” said
Bridget Elliot, the organization's communications manager.
Copyright
2011 Chicago Defender
