fbpx

Our Stories

News and insights from The Night Ministry community.

3 minutes reading time (632 words)

Celebrating 45 Years: West Town Facility Enhances and Expands Services for Homeless Youth

west-town-min Program Specialist Henry Merrill (right) speaks to a resident of the Interim Housing Program at the Open Door Shelter—West Town facility.

On August 3, 2006, the residents of The Night Ministry's Open Door Shelter–Lakeview packed up their belongings and made the journey, along with the shelter's staff, to a newly rehabbed facility in Chicago's West Town neighborhood.

The move came nearly 14 years after the Interim Housing Program, providing up to four months of supportive shelter to young people experiencing homelessness, had first opened in Lakeview. But things were tight at the facility on North Clark Street, where there were only two bedrooms for the program's 16 beds.

"There was just not one inch of unused space," said Carole Mills, The Night Ministry's former Senior Director of Youth Programs, who was the shelter director at the time. "It was difficult to establish a sense of privacy."

At the larger facility on North Noble Street, each resident would share a room with only one other young person, among many enhancements. But the additional space in the building also allowed The Night Ministry to expand its capacity to serve homeless youth. The top floor at West Town became home to the new STEPS Transitional Living Program.

"We knew there was a need to provide two years of additional support to focus on self-sufficiency," Allison McCann-Stevenson, The Night Ministry's Assistant Director of Long-Term Residential Services, said of the STEPS Program, which offers a more independent living situation for up to eight young adults.

The Interim Program's relocation also freed up the Lakeview building for a new 8-bed shelter program—The Night Ministry's Response-Ability Pregnant & Parenting Program, dedicated to serving pregnant and parenting young mothers and their children.

Today, West Town continues to provide safe shelter to hundreds of adolescents and young adults a year as well as the supportive services they need to build lives of greater stability.

"There's been so much transformation and growth that has happened here," said Nieal Marie Ross, Manager of Youth Supportive Services. "If the walls of West Town could talk, I think they would say they are proud of our young people and proud of our agency, too."

This article is one in a series celebrating milestones in The Night Ministry's 45-year history. Explore the links below to read other stories.

...

Celebrating 45 Years: The Night Ministry Pioneers Mobile Health Care on Chicago's Streets - EasyBlog

For the first fourteen years of the agency's history, The Night Ministry staff conducted outreach on their feet, supporting the community members they encountered while walking the nighttime streets of Chicago. Realizing that many of those individual
...

Celebrating 45 Years: The Night Ministry Opens Its First Youth Shelter in a Time of Dire Need - EasyBlog

By the close of the 1980s, Chicago's population of unsheltered young people had reached an estimated 10,000 individuals per year. State law prohibited nonprofits from operating group shelters for them, leaving youth experiencing homelessness with few
...

Celebrating 45 Years: The Crib Turns Homeless Advocates' Vision into Reality - EasyBlog

The Crib, The Night Ministry's overnight shelter for young adults experiencing homelessness, owes much to a group of young change makers called Homeless Experts Living Life's Obstacles (H.E.L.L.O.). For years, H.E.L.L.O. members would meet weekly to
...

Celebrating 45 Years: The Night Ministry Launches Chicago's First Street Medicine Program - EasyBlog

By 2015, The Night Ministry's Health Outreach Bus had been on the road for 25 years, providing free health care to Chicagoans experiencing poverty or homelessness, but the agency sensed it could be making a wider impact on the streets. There was thi
Celebrating 45 Years: The Night Ministry Opens Its...
Celebrating 45 Years: The Crib Turns Homeless Advo...

1735 North Ashland Avenue, Suite 2000, Chicago, IL 60622 | 773-784-9000
The Night Ministry is a 501(c)3 charitable organization. Our Federal Tax ID (EIN) is 36-3145764.