ROGERS PARK — A brand new males’s shelter has opened in Rogers Park, offering 70 much-needed beds for males experiencing homelessness, officers stated Monday.
North Facet Housing and Supportive Companies, which has operated a males’s shelter on the North Facet since 1984, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday to unveil its new shelter at 7464 N. Clark St. in Rogers Park.
The ten,000-square-foot constructing, which was once a medical workplace, has 35 rooms, every with two beds, to deal with 70 males, North Facet Housing Board President Peter Marchese stated. The power additionally has a industrial kitchen to serve residents three meals a day plus area for 24-hour wrap-around companies, showers, laundry and extra, Marchese stated.
The constructing provides critically wanted beds to town’s shelter system as leaders proceed to handle a homelessness disaster exacerbated by the pandemic, officers have stated.
North Facet Housing and Help Companies operated one in every of solely two males’s shelters on the North Facet till 2021, when the group’s earlier operation closed because it labored to construct the present facility.
The Rogers Park shelter has already helped town’s housing efforts, as a few of its first residents had been beforehand dwelling in a tent encampment at Humboldt Park that was cleared final week. There have been 25 males dwelling within the new shelter as of Friday, Marchese and different officers stated.
With nearly all of homeless Chicagoans being males — particularly Black males — this latest shelter fills an pressing want, Division of Household and Help Companies Commissioner Brandie Knazze stated.
These shelter tasks “are redefining what folks contemplate shelter and what shelter seems like,” the commissioner stated. “It helps us elevate the bar. It helps us restore dignity and guarantee that the folks that we serve know that they’ve a house and that we’re working tirelessly for them.”
The shelter is designed with heat tones and calm colours to convey a way of ease and luxury to its residents, Marchese stated. It’s additionally embellished with furnishings, linens and decor donated from IKEA and loo {hardware} like sinks and showers donated from Kohler, he stated.
“A part of what we need to do is change the notion of males’s shelters,” Marchese stated. “They don’t convey hazard they usually’re not unattractive locations. We’ve been working shelters for 40 years, so we wished to indicate that town can construct a wonderful shelter with us.”
The $7 million undertaking was largely funded by way of a $6.7 million grant from town that enabled North Facet Housing to purchase the Clark Road constructing and hold the shelter’s future secure, stated Dick Simpson, a North Facet Housing board member and former professor and metropolis alderman.
“After I started with North Facet Housing 40 years in the past now, we had been volunteers; we ready meals, we stayed in a single day with our friends in church basements and slept on pallets within the flooring,” Simpson stated. “You’ll see that at present’s facility is sort of totally different from that.”
The shelter’s ribbon slicing Monday morning was additionally attended by Mayor Brandon Johnson, Ald. Maria Hadden (forty ninth), Division of Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda, Chief Homelessness Officer Sendy Soto, Illinois state Sen. Mike Simmons and others.
The mayor praised the brand new shelter as a primary instance of non-congregate housing, which implies residents have their very own or a shared area with one or two others, versus a big open area with many beds, based on a flyer from North Facet Housing.
Johnson additionally stated that he’s “dedicated to creating these transformative and supportive companies all through our metropolis.”
“Housing is a human proper,” Johnson stated throughout Monday’s ribbon-cutting. “We’re dedicated to working by way of any challenges and obstacles to uphold the fitting and make sure that the folks and the households of Chicago have someplace secure, inexpensive and secure to reside, to thrive in our nice metropolis.”
This shelter can also be totally different from others as a result of it doesn’t have limits for a way lengthy folks can reside there and it’s open 24 hours a day, that means residents don’t have to go away in the course of the day and are available again within the night, Castañeda and North Facet Housing officers stated.
The undertaking has been years within the making for North Facet Housing and the forty ninth Ward Workplace, together with a sturdy neighborhood involvement that noticed contentious debated amongst neighbors.
Plans for the Rogers Park shelter had been made public in June 2022, and Hadden stated she supported the undertaking a number of months later, after some adjustments had been made. The shelter was initially going to have a drop-in middle, however that was scrapped resulting from neighbor opposition.
Hadden beforehand stated that regardless of a “massive disinformation marketing campaign” in opposition to the shelter, the proposal was supported by 70 % of Rogers Park neighbors who responded to a survey concerning the shelter. These against the undertaking stated their issues had been round Rogers Park already having a excessive focus of social companies, Block Membership beforehand reported.
“It took a number of work to get right here, and it’s going to take a number of work to maintain it, to guarantee that this area stays right here, and to guarantee that we will proceed to work to meet the unmet wants,” Hadden stated. “As a result of whereas we’re offering 70 spots that may serve over 250 males over the course of a 12 months, that’s nonetheless only a fraction of the individuals who we have to serve right here within the metropolis of Chicago.”
Although the shelter doesn’t have a restrict on how lengthy folks can keep, the group expects folks will be capable to transfer out of the shelter into one in every of the 196 residences that North Facet Housing provides earlier than ultimately discovering their very own everlasting housing, Simpson stated.
North Facet Housing first operated a males’s shelter in a church in Lakeview earlier than transferring to the Preston Bradley Heart in Uptown in 2011. The middle was situated in a landmarked constructing that was deteriorating quickly, so the group needed to discover a new dwelling.
It then moved its shelter to the Tremendous 8 motel at 7300 N. Sheridan Highway, however closed the operation resulting from funding. The motel was then used as an emergency migrant shelter till it closed final month.
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