Having been homeless himself, Allan Barsema can relate to those currently experiencing rough situations.

Homelessness has become a greater concern with the downturn in the economy, and Barsema, the senior research associate for the Center for Governmental Studies at NIU, presented homelessness facts and figures during a presentation Monday night at Swen Parson Hall that featured two other panelists, Sue Guio, the community services planner for the city of DeKalb, and Wendy Vaughn, the supervising attorney for the Zeke Giorgi legal clinic.

Vaughn, a public interest lawyer, addressed the law aspect of homelessness and poverty and what law students can do to utilize what they have learned to help the homeless.

Some of these methods she described were to educate the homeless of their rights, help them individually with the paperwork and bureaucratic process and to root out the causes of homelessness.

“Hunger in America is increasing, homelessness is increasing and poverty is increasing, and I think that is because maybe folks have given up and have sort of said ‘It’s not my problem’ when it’s really all of our problems, so I think we have to address it not as a choice but as a mandate,” Vaughn said.

Barsema is co-founder of a homeless outreach program in Rockford called the Carpenter’s Place, where the homeless are helped individually. As co-founder of the program, he has seen first-hand the economy’s effects on homelessness.

“We’re seeing a significant increase in the numbers at Carpenter’s Place,” Barsema said. “We used to average 80 to 85 people a day and recently it’s been over 100, just last week one day it was 141 people.”

Guio covered the local scene of homelessness in DeKalb and laid out the types of shelters that are available, like emergency and domestic abuse shelters.

“We don’t just give them a place to stay and food to eat,” Guio said. “We look at each of their circumstances and try to find ways to pull them out of it.”

In DeKalb, as of Jan. 2007, there have been about 120 people recorded as homeless, 95 of which who are sheltered and 25 who are unsheltered, according to Guio.

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