Fall Newsletter Released!

ICH has just released our 2008 Fall Newsletter, Keeping Faith. Please be sure to check it out! If you'd like to be added to our mailing list and receive this and other updates, be sign up at www.ichchicago.org and enter your email address and additional information as requested!

Read the Newsletter Here

Flu Shots at Sanctuary Place

This Saturday, Nov. 15, the Healthy Heart Project for Women, a program of Chicago Lights Center for Whole Health, is sponsoring  flu shots for residents and members of the community.  This is in partnership with the Rush University College of Nursing.

The Healthy Heart Project partners with ICH to provide heart health information to residents of Sanctuary Place. The project nurse, Sally Lemke, also provides general health services for ICH through a partnership with the Rush University College of Nursing.

We invite you to Sanctuary Place this saturday to see the beautiful campus and recieve your flu vaccine.

Sanctuary Place vs. Emergency Shelters

Much has been made about the state of homelessness in today's society. ICH is a different type of organization, one that is ending homelessness by providing real homes and the tools families need to rebuild their lives.

While the progress hoemless services have made is tremendous, it is important to understand the full spectrum of services, or the continuum of care, in Chicago which goes from emergency shelter to ICH's approach of permanent supportive housing.

The images you are about to review are from a tour of Emergency Shelters (now considered Interim Housing) in the Chicago area. The names of the locations have been withheld. The shelters we visted were located throughout the city, with one being in Uptown, and two on the far south side of the city. When reviewing these photos, 

please know that these are run of the mill shelters, between the best and the worst, but on neither spectrum.

Please know these images could be startling, but those providing these services are extremely compassionate and caring. These agencies are not offering these facilities out of laziness or disdain for their clients. They are simply offering the best services they can with the resource

s provided to them. 

This is a room that holds over 30 women, children and men. Buckets are placed to catch the water while office dividers and tarps are used to provide privacy.

These images are from a second shelter that was visited which places 30 women and children in a small room with wooden bunk beds and plastic mattress pads.

The images below are pictures of Sanctuary Place to vividly contrast the difference ICH is making.

Here is Sanctuary Place from the outside. Sanctuary Place is an apartment building providing permanent housing to 63 single women in studio apartments and 6 families in townhomes.

The front lobby of Sanctuary Place welcomes visitors with its warmth.

The three family rooms at Sanctuary Place allow women living in the studio apartments to have weekend and overnight visits with their children.

A view of the Sanctuary Place townhomes that house 6 families.

The upstairs of Sanctuary Place where the women reside in studio apartments.

Reuters: Family homelessness rising in the United States

By Ross Colvin - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to help middle-class U.S. homeowners facing foreclosure, but he has said little about how he will help low-income families made homeless by a worsening economy.

Obama has spoken broadly about boosting affordable housing and restoring public housing subsidies. But with economists forecasting a deep recession in 2009, he may find it hard to find the money to fulfill those promises soon.

At the same time, advocacy groups and the country's czar for combating homelessness say immediate action is needed to halt the foreclosures of tens of thousands of homes and rehouse thousands of families amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Read the full article here...

Welcome

Welcome to ICH's new blog "Real Homes to Rebuild Lives" where we will provide program updates, news, facts and other information about homelessness in Chicago and how we can all work together to solve the problem.