Housing Forward celebrated the opening of a new 40-bed emergency overnight shelter in Oak Park with a ribbon cutting last week.
Expected to begin housing clients next month, the new shelter at 112 S. Humphrey Ave. will open as the only of its kind in the western Cook County suburbs, said Lynda Schueler, Housing Forward’s CEO.
“We do not shun or criminalize the poor and the vulnerable or outcast,” Schueler said. “We are not that community, we will never be that community, and that is why we are here today.”
The new emergency shelter project has been supported by significant public investment. Housing Forward received a $250,000 grant from Cook County for the shelter and Oak Park pledged $366,000 to support the project.
“Housing is a fundamental human right,” said Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman. “Oak Park has long recognized that homelessness requires collaboration across all levels of government, including local investment.”
“I embrace the opening of this shelter not only as a building, but as a beacon of hope and humanity,” she said.
Housing Forward served more than 2,500 individuals and families experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness last year across 26 suburban communities including Oak Park, Maywood, Forest Park, Brookfield, Berwyn and Cicero. Housing Forward opened its first permanent supportive housing development last year with the 16-unit Broadview Legacy Apartments complex.
Since 2023, the agency has run a 20-bed emergency shelter out of St. Catherine-St. Lucy‘s former rectory building — a few blocks south of the new shelter.
The new shelter is complete with a small commercial kitchen where volunteers can work preparing meals for Housing Forward clients. The new shelter will also allow clients to stay later into the morning than its predecessor at St. Catherine -St. Lucy, where clients had to leave by 6:30 a.m.
The shelter is named after Pat Anderson, a long-time volunteer who helped found the organization in 1992 when it was known as Tri-Village P.A.D.S. She recalled an interaction with a man living on the street in Forest Park now more than 30 years ago that inspired her to get to work supporting people experiencing homelessness.
The man had asked her if he could earn money by working at her house, but at the time she lived in a small room “hardly bigger than a closet” at Rush Oak Park Hospital. Instead, she said she gave the man a sandwich and then she felt a calling.
“It wasn’t an audible voice, but it was very close saying ‘Pat, I want you to build a shelter for the homeless,” she said. “All in all, let’s just praise God because He took over.”
The shelter’s opening comes as Housing Forward is impacted by new financial uncertainty after the Trump Administration proposed a $27 billion cut to federal funding for housing assistance programs. Schueler told Wednesday Journal earlier this year that as much as 25% of the organization’s operating budget is at risk as a result of the cuts.
In uncertain times, local governments need to work together to fill gaps for vulnerable residents, said Tara Stamps, Cook County commissioner whose district covers the West Side of Chicago, Oak Park and Proviso Township.
“At this particular time in American history we are so fortunate to be Illinoisans, to live in Cook County, where our leadership still believes in democracy and encourages us to be defenders of said democracy,” Stamps said. “For those at Cook County government, Housing Forward, local organizations, our state partners, amazing volunteers and everybody in between — I say thank you and congratulations for this amazing edifice. This space is not just a place, it’s a new beginning, it’s a moment to take a break, it’s an opportunity to pause, it’s knowing where I’m going to eat.”
“If we don’t get housing right, none of the other stuff really matters.”