Out of 53 total summer residents at the Gold Coast Shelter, 41 were connected to housing by the time the hotel closed.
Out of 53 total summer residents at the Gold Coast Shelter, 41 were connected to housing by the time the hotel closed.
The Gold Coast Homeless Shelter at Tremont Hotel, located one block east of the Water Tower Campus at 100 E Chestnut St., officially shut its doors Sept. 15 after opening last fall to house people from 11 encampments around the city and help them find permanent residences.
The shelter was set to close in May, but remained open throughout the summer to house residents during the Democratic National Convention, according to Gwen McElhattan, the head social worker at Chicago Help Initiative.
The Chicago Help Initiative works to provide resources, meals, employment and social services to people in Chicago without housing, according to their website. They also educate local businesses and residents on how to help unhoused individuals in their community.
McElhattan, who had clients residing at the shelter, said residents attended weekly meetings with Gold Coast Homeless Shelter case managers and social workers to help place them in permanent housing.
The homeless shelter staff’s goal was to place residents in apartments, but they were also willing to help find shelters if housing didn’t work out or wasn’t what the resident wanted, according to McElhattan.
The shelter was overseen by the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services.
“DFSS and its outreach partners provide trauma-informed engagement and outreach to connect unhoused residents at encampments with shelter, housing and other supportive services,” DFSS spokesperson Brian Berg wrote in an email to The Phoenix.
The shelter planned to close Aug. 31, but extended the date to Sept. 15 to accommodate resident needs, Berg said.
“Some residents, they wait for leases, or they wait for keys, or their paperwork is getting completed,” Berg said, “So instead of putting them elsewhere, that’s why it was extended.”
Although the goal of the program was to connect residents to permanent housing, not every resident was in a position to take the housing opportunities offered to them, McElhattan said.
“A few of the folks that I was working with were offered apartments in Pullman and Calumet City,” McElhattan said, “A lot of those places aren’t accessible with the Red Line, so a lot of my folks didn’t say yes to that.”
On top of access to the Red Line, McElhattan said access to meals plays a large role in a person’s decision to take a housing offer or not. Many residents formed friendships and grew accustomed to their community in the River North area, which stopped them from taking the opportunity to move to permanent housing farther south in the city.
“Putting them miles outside of the center of the city, they just don’t want to do that because then they’re worried about maintaining a community, maintaining where they get food,” McElhatten said.
Out of 53 total summer residents at the Gold Coast Shelter, 41 were connected to housing by the time the hotel closed, according to the Department of Family and Support Services. Berg said the 12 other residents went to other shelters.
“The whole idea of the initiative is to connect people that were living in encampment sites and build relationships with them so that they also get the support services, whether it’s mental or physical healthcare,” Berg said. “Then we do outreach to get them some of the items that they need.”
The DFSS uses a housing-first method, which prioritizes connecting people without housing to their own permanent homes.
“Whether it goes from an encampment site to housing, from an encampment site to shelter to housing, the long run goal is connect those unsheltered, unhoused residents into housing and in a position that improves their well being and a more sustainable livelihood,” Berg said.
The DFSS is set to release a “Request For Proposal” for a year-round permanent hotel shelter, Berg said. The hope is for operations to begin in early 2025, but the location of the shelter isn’t yet known.
Staffers of the shelter couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
Julia Pentasuglio contributed reporting to this article.
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