3 Glencoe churches plan to offer temporary housing for families

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The North Shore United Methodist Church may need alterations before it can fulfill its commitment to provide temporary housing for homeless families. |IRV LEAVITT-SUN-TIMES MEDIA

Updated: March 3, 2012 8:38AM

Three Glencoe churches have committed to provide temporary housing for homeless families, joining a national program that provides that shelter and helps get them back into permanent housing.

Just don’t call them “homeless shelters.”

The Family Promise model is for families only, its leaders say, and that makes it different from typical shelters that mainly assist single men.

Family Promise, founded in the 1980’s, makes it easier for churches and synagogues to fit homeless assistance into a suburban environment.

“The clients of the program are people who have dependent children, and there are a lot of folks who connect with that,” said the Rev. Jenny Weber, pastor of Glencoe’s North Shore United Methodist Church. “The families are screened and it is a narrow slice of the homeless population.

“For folks who might be scared of the mental illness or alcohol abuse sometimes associated with the homeless, that is not this population.

“Not that we don’t want to help those people, but this is a good first step for a congregation that hasn’t helped in this way before.”

Families only stay at Family Promise churches for a week at a time, and only at night. The organization picks up the families in the morning, takes members to school, work, or an Evanston headquarters, and returns them for dinner, homework and sleep in the late afternoon.

Family Promise Chicago North Shore, Inc., the name of the local organization in operation here since 2010, now has 14 churches and synagogues on board and receiving families — not including the Glencoe facilities. The organization concentrates on getting the families into permanent housing, and has succeeded in doing that 85 percent of the time, said Brek Peterson, the organization’s head of congregational relations.

Since March 2010, the local churches and synagogues have welcomed 17 families with 34 children. No more than four families and 14 people are housed at any one time, Peterson said.

More can soon be accommodated, however, as the organization grows.

“With so many people involved, and a lot of congregations, there’s not too much burden on any one,” he added.

Across the country, there are 173 Family Promise networks.

The three Glencoe churches that have now committed to the program are the Methodist church at 213 Hazel Ave., the Glencoe Union Church, 263 Park Ave., and St. Elisabeth’s Episcopal Church, 556 Vernon Ave.

“We’ve had a fabulous experience. It’s a joy,” said the Rev. Sarah Butter of the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmette, a current member of the local network.

“It’s an opportunity to be a community of hospitality and welcome neighbors in difficult situations, in a program that is managed extremely well.

“It’s approximately one week a quarter; very manageable in size and scale,” she said of her church’s hosting responsibilities. “It’s meant to be small scale and success-oriented, and minimizes a lot of stress that can accompany outreach ministries.”

Butter said her church’s Wilmette neighbors are fans of the program.

“As far as we know, there is no impact on our neighbors, no concerns from anybody in the neighborhood,” she said. “Even those who had questions at the start of the program have fallen in love with it.”

The faith institutions assign two volunteers to stay overnight with the families, and send more to the Evanston headquarters. Butter said Wilmette’s Congregation Sukkat Shalom has partnered with her group to provide volunteers.

Similarly, Glencoe’s Congregation Hakafa, which has its office in the North Shore United Methodist Church but has no permanent building of its own, has already signed on as a support institution, and its members have been volunteering for Family Promise for weeks.

Several other Glencoe faith institutions are also lining up volunteers.

“This is so much of an expression of how we think of ourselves as a community, of how we think of those in need,” the Rev. David Wood of the Glencoe Union Church said.

“Many of us have abundance, and we are interested in sharing with others however we can.”

Other local Family Promise network institutions: Am Yisrael, Lutheran Church of the Ascension and Temple Jeremiah, all of Northfield; First Presbyterian Church of Wilmette; Gloria Dei, Northbrook; Grace Lutheran Church and Northminster Presbyterian Church, of Evanston; Northfield Community Church; St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church and Winnetka Covenant Church, all of Wilmette; Winnetka Congregational Church and Winnetka Presbyterian Church.