August 19, 2002
Chicago Sun-Times: Homeless find a place to rest their heads
BY JULIE PATEL STAFF REPORTER
Peaches Shaver considers her 20s some of the best years of her life. While her peers were out partying, getting married and having kids, Shaver took care of her sick mother, who had a number of medical problems.
When her mother passed away in 1993, Shaver felt she had lost her purpose in life. She felt lonely and out of place. Still, she had no regrets.
"If I had to do it all over again I wouldn't have done anything different. That was my baby," she said as she woke up among the chirping birds she feeds in Margate Park, south of Lawrence on Marine.
Now 40, she has been homeless on and off since her mother died.
This summer, Shaver sleeps in the park with a homeless community of roughly 35 people. Their area is normally marked with about three or four tents erected every night, befuddling first-time passers by. She mostly sticks with three couples, including a cousin and a woman she met at a shelter.
When it rains, Shaver and her friends sleep under a viaduct on Lawrence. It's not bad, she said.
The only problem with sleeping in the park is that at about 11 p.m. the park closes and police scoot everyone out.
A couple of nights ago at about 10:30 p.m., Shaver used a grocery cart to load up her belongings. The couples she hung with threw in the tent they used on a rotating basis.
The group left the park and waited behind a drugstore for a few hours. When the coast looked clear, at about 2 a.m., the park dwellers returned, said a group prayer asking for peace and for God to open a door for them, and finally slept.
On this Thursday morning, two police officers drove over the grass and through the park to the spot where Shaver sat.
"The law says you will not erect a tent on park district property," an officer said loudly as two men sleeping in the tent stumbled sleepily out of it.
They began taking the tent down.
"They were nice about it," Shaver said as the officers drove away. "Everyone who's homeless is not a drunk or drug addict."