Connections for the Homeless
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  • WHO WE ARE
    • Our History
    • Our Core Values
    • Our Team
    • Our Board
    • Agency Reports
    • Employment Opportunities
    • Contact Us
  • WHAT WE DO
    • Prevention
    • Outreach & Re-Housing
    • Supportive Housing
    • Supportive Services
    • Strategic Goals
  • HOW TO GIVE
    • Individual Giving
    • Matching Gifts
    • 365 CLUB & Leadership Circle
    • Signature Events
    • In-Kind Donations
  • HOW TO VOLUNTEER
    • Family-Friendly (Open to All Ages)
    • Weekly & Long-Term
  • ADVOCACY
  • DONATE NOW

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Good News Story

2/8/2017

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By Lisa Todd: Community Outreach Manager
Given the shortage of good news in the papers these days, We thought you'd appreciate hearing about a recent success for one of our participants. 
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I have worked at Connections for the Homeless for a little over 6-1/2 years and have known "Adam" for that entire time. He has been a long-time user of our Drop-In program, quietly (very quietly) coming in to do laundry and take a shower and grabbing a lunch. He rarely would talk to anyone and, being a bigger guy, when he kept to himself, most people took his cue and left him alone. Every once in awhile, the staff would try to get him to talk, but he was very reserved.
 
I always wondered why he kept to himself and didn't ask for much of anything. Maybe he had stopped hoping. Maybe he assumed that his past record would shut him out of future opportunities. Maybe he was just too tired from surviving outside that he gave up on reaching out to people. This fall, our Supportive Housing staff met with the participants in Drop-In because Connections had received some additional funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and "Adam" attended. If you remember, HUD stopped funding Hilda's Place Shelter and other transitional shelters and switched their funding priorities to increase the number of Supportive Housing units throughout the country. "Adam" was told about the program, and he decided to apply.

Whatever the past reasons were, when the funding was available and the staff approached him, "Adam" was willing to try and hope. He has been coming to Drop-In most Monday and Wednesday afternoons since that meeting in October, and he's had many phone conversations where he's been told to keep hoping - that we had the money and just needed to find a landlord to work with us. This past week, he got the call saying that we had an apartment for him, and he was actually able to move in to his new home. For the first time in 6-½ years, I was able to see "Adam" smile. 
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“Doesn’t” or “Don’t”- What’s the Difference?

10/11/2016

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BY: SUE LOELLBACH, DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
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“Love Don’t Pay the Rent” signs in their yards and local retailers to hang them in their windows. Some people love the signs, and others pretty vehemently dislike them. Mostly, people have been asking what the signs mean. And some have objected to the grammar. Connections is thrilled, because all of these opinions are leading to much needed discussion about housing, poverty, and our society’s ambivalence regarding the poor.

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Love Don't Pay the Rent

8/24/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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​This last weekend, Connections started distributing signs throughout our community. The signs have photographs on them of people who represent the types of people who come to Connections for the Homeless for help. Many of them have children. Many look a lot like you or me or our next door neighbors. The signs all say, in bold letters, “Love Don’t Pay the Rent”.

WHY “LOVE DON’T PAY THE RENT”?

One thing we are hoping to do with our Love Don’t Pay the Rent campaign is to highlight the need for housing—which is the single most critical thing that Connections provides for those who are homeless.


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$2.00 a Day: The Book and the Reality at Connections

7/28/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

​In 2011, when Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer started their work together, “As far as [they] could tell, no one had ever looked to see whether any slice of the American poor fell below the … threshold of $2.00 a day for even part of a year.”[1] $2.00 per person, per day, in cash income is one of the metrics that the World Bank uses to measure extreme poverty throughout the world. Edin, a professor of Sociology and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, was a field researcher who had interviewed countless families over the last several decades. She hypothesized that, in the U.S., more families than ever were surviving with virtually no income, but her sample wasn’t large enough to be conclusive.

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Questions from Our Readers

7/13/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

​Over the past couple weeks, a few of our readers have asked questions or made comments that we felt required a response that should be shared with all our readers. Thank you!

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Housing People When We Can, Helping Them When We Can't

6/21/2016

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​BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

​Connections has always worked to incorporate evidence-based practices for addressing homelessness into our work and into our decisions on how to best employ the resources with which we have been entrusted. Sometimes, though, we are faced with making tough choices. Most recently, last July, we had to choose which of our programs we would keep running when it became clear that funding from the State of Illinois would not be available. 

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Barriers to Housing First & the Role of Hilda's Place

6/15/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

​While the advantages of Housing First as an approach to helping those who are homeless are well supported by research, many communities cannot fully implement such an approach. That is the case in most of Illinois, particularly on the north side of Chicago and throughout north suburban Cook County. There are several reasons for this difficulty:

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Housing First & Why It's the Ideal Solution

6/9/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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Research shows that the best way to help someone who is homeless is to provide housing – as immediately as possible. The longer someone is homeless, the more that person loses. They lose connection with their families, friends and community, they lose their physical and mental health, and they lose all or nearly all of their worldly possessions. The longer someone is homeless, the more difficult it is for that person to regain long-term stability.

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Understanding Connections' Services

6/3/2016

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BY: BETTY A. BOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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As I’ve met and talked with donors and volunteers at all levels, I’ve noticed that they often don’t have a complete understanding of all the services that Connections provides. Before I share our long-term vision for Connections, I think it is important to clearly explain how we are currently serving individuals and families facing homelessness. In a nutshell, we do the following:

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​CONTACT US

Main Office
2121 Dewey Ave
Evanston, IL 60201-3057
p: 847.475.7070
​e: info@connect2home.org

OUR MISSION

WE SERVE AND CATALYZE OUR COMMUNITY TO END HOMELESSNESS, ONE PERSON AT A TIME.

STAY CONNECTED

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