Community Leadership in Action: JD Miller on CLTV

A decade before I ever ran a foundation, I was just a guy washing dishes in the kitchen at 530 West Fullerton. I told Paul Lisnek on CLTV's Politics Tonight that I stuck around because I kept meeting people who didn't fit the story I'd been telling myself about who ends up homeless in Chicago. Only about 26% of our guests deal with mental illness — most are people who had jobs and hit a stretch where rent, food, and a medical bill all came due at once, which lines up with a CNN Money stat from that same year: 76% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.

By the time of the interview, that foundation — now Care for Friends — was serving about 18,000 hot meals a year and running a foot care clinic that Paul and I agreed was more radical than it sounds: a dry pair of socks is often a homeless guest's first entry point into real medical care. Chicago saw a 10% jump in homelessness that year while emergency food funding dropped 8%, and I made the point on air that a case of canned goods doesn't close that gap nearly as well as a check does — cash lets an organization buy exactly what it needs, when it needs it, not just around Thanksgiving.

The mom-and-pop grocers, like the Big Apple Store in Lincoln Park, were doing more for us than any big chain ever could, simply because they had the flexibility to hand over fresh produce instead of the canned goods most food programs default to. It's a reminder that dignity and consistency — 365 days a year, not just during the holiday news cycle — usually come from the small, local, and unglamorous places, not the big institutional ones.