Hesed House

A not-for-profit coalition of religious ministries serving the very poor in the Fox Valley area. A center for ministries providing services to poor and homeless persons.

PADS Emergency Shelter
Public Action To Deliver Shelter
The PADS Overnight Emergency Shelter is the second largest shelter in the State of Illinois. Each night, an average of 175 men, women and children line up outside the doors of Hesed House seeking a place to sleep, shower, do laundry, eat a meal, find medical and legal assistance and other life sustaining services.
The PADS program at Hesed House serves as a model for other similar agencies in the Western Suburbs and across the nation. The PADS Overnight Emergency Shelter operates from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., every night of the year. Over 70 faith based communities with teams of volunteers provide food and serve meals, and oversee the shelter dining room, store, laundry facilities, lockers and four sleeping areas. Volunteers also make sack lunches and breakfasts to serve guests as they depart for work or other destinations in the morning.
The men's sleeping area accommodates 88 sleeping mats. After 9:30 pm, additional mats are placed in our double duty dining room. Several other smaller sleeping areas provide mats and volunteer oversight for single women, women with children, single fathers and families with special needs. The PADS Overnight Emergency Shelter will typically house 5 to 10 children per night.
While in the PADS shelter, guests may sign up for Case Management services, assistance in finding housing, identification, employment training, medical and legal assistance as well as obtaining veterans benefits.
PADS Overnight Emergency Shelter does not turn anyone away (other than people listed as sex offenders involved with children) for a night. Longer stays are generally limited to those with ties to our service area.
Our basic rules are simple: while a guest is in PADS, he/she may not possess drugs, alcohol or weapons. Violence, threats and profanity are not tolerated.

Transitional Living Community
TLC is a temporary dormitory style home to 52 individuals and families who are between homelessness and returning to an independent life and aggressively working toward self improvement and independence (by developing skills to manage a household and maintain employment, learning sound money management and savings practices, honing parenting skills and much more). Our recent grant award from B of A Community (Bank of America) will help us reach this goal by providing shelter, food and the services needed for those that stay at our Transitional Living Community. Last year, 110 residents stayed in TLC. Of those that completed the program, 87% returned to independent living. We'd like to thank Bank of America for their continued support of our mission.

Hesed House is the second largest shelter in the State of Illinois, and the largest shelter outside of the city of Chicago. With the help of professional staff, alliances with outside agencies and 6,000 volunteers from 70 area churches, almost one thousand individuals (including 188 children) are served each year through Hesed Houses shelter and three housing programs. Hesed House sees 16 newly homeless individuals each week thats one new homeless individual every 8 1/2 hours. Hesed House strives to get 16 or 17 individuals out of homelessness each week. Between 155 and 207 individuals are given shelter and meals each night.
The Harbor Permanent Supportive Housing

The Harbor provides permanent supportive housing for up to sixteen chronically homeless individuals with a disabling condition (i.e. substance abuse, mental illness, physical disabilities, etc.) This project provides housing for our communitys most vulnerable population. The Harbor targets those that are the greatest utilizers of community resources, including police and ambulance services, as well as those who are frequent hospital emergency room patients often for non-emergency reasons.

Each individual has their own dorm-room style housing unit with 24/7 on-site staff to assist with life skills (cooking, etc.) as well as access to all of the services in our Comprehensive Homeless Resource Center (e.g. mental health counseling, primary health/medical care, substance abuse counseling, etc.) There is a shared kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms for the residents along with a computer lab and community room.