RETRIEVING DOCUMENT
Mrs. Adaeze Mbeki has ten days of city relocation assistance left.
I know this because I called her this morning. She answered on the second ring. Her daughter slept in late, which she said was good because the gymnasium gets loud early. She is still counting. The city is not.
Ten days.
Here is what I have added to the record since my last dispatch.
The Chicago Housing Transition Office
I called the City of Chicago 311 line on June 15th and asked for the Chicago Housing Transition Office. The operator put me on hold for four minutes and came back to tell me she had never heard of it. I asked her to run a search for any city office with "housing" and "transition" in the name. She found four: the Chicago Housing Authority's Office of Tenant Transition Assistance, the Department of Housing Transition Services, the Housing Court Advocacy Project, and a dormant working group from 2019. I called all four.
None of them sent a man to the Kedzie Avenue Emergency Shelter on June 11th. None of them have a form that matches what Mrs. Mbeki described: a single page, no letterhead, asking for a signature acknowledging "voluntary withdrawal of pending claims against city, state, or federal authorities."
I went back to Mrs. Mbeki and asked her to describe the man again. Black, she said, maybe fifty, medium build, gray sport coat, blue lanyard with a laminated badge she did not get close enough to read. He stayed about seven minutes. He left a plain white business card with a phone number written in blue ballpoint. No name. No title. No address. She did not sign. He said he would come back.
He has not come back.
Rental Applications
Mrs. Mbeki has now applied to twelve rental units. She has been declined or received no response from all twelve.
On June 17th she received a formal decline from a property management company on South Halsted. The letter said she did not meet the "income stability requirements." She showed me her last three pay stubs from the dry cleaner on East 47th, where she returned to work on June 9th.
She meets the income requirements.
The Phone Number
The UIAP number — the one I called forty-one times before it went briefly active two weeks ago — is dead again. I dialed it six more times this week. Nothing.
I ran a reverse lookup on the number. It was provisioned through a VoIP service headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The VoIP service lists its clients as confidential. Reston is where the GDA maintains three documented administrative offices. That is a fact. I am not calling it an accusation. I am noting the proximity.
Darius
My sound guy flew to Milwaukee on June 18th. His sister lives there. He gave me his external hard drive before he left — the raw audio from May 27th, the uncorrupted version that was not on my laptop when I woke up Wednesday of that first week. He said he would come back if I needed him for something that required a boom mic.
I do not think he was joking.
What Ten Days Means
On day forty-four, Mrs. Mbeki and her daughter lose access to the Kedzie Avenue Emergency Shelter unless the city extends her assistance period. I asked the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services whether extensions were available. They said assistance periods are set by ordinance and that extensions require a formal application reviewed by a committee that meets on the third Thursday of the month.
The third Thursday of July is the 16th.
Her assistance ends on the 11th.
The committee meets five days after she loses her bed.
I am a journalist. I am not a housing lawyer. I am not a nonprofit. I am not a hero. I am writing this down because someone has to.