This is Part Two of the Chicago Defender’s series Black and Unhoused: How Segregation Fueled a Homegrown Crisis, which is part of the “Healing Illinois” initiative. 

This was originally published in the Chicago Defender on April 22, 2024.

Demetrius France, 55, is just 15 credits shy of earning his Associate’s degree. 

“I started college in the early 1990s and studied electrical engineering and aviation at Florida Memorial University.” 

When his heart led him to Chicago, he hoped to finish college, too. But life and a few challenges: marriage and separation, unemployment, and children delayed those goals. And now homelessness pushes that goal even further away. 

Today, France is a resident of Inner Voice’s Systemizing Options and Services (SOS) – Joint Transitional-Rapid Rehousing Program on Chicago’s West Side.