Our Mission
We are stronger together. We are better together.
Our Mission
We are calling on faith communities to house, support, and accompany the migrants who are currently living in police district stations across the city. The shelters are full, overcrowded, and ill-equipped for the demands placed on them. No matter your beliefs, there is an undeniable need in our city, and we are stepping up.
Using our tested working model, we are asking for communities to work together in groups of 2 or 3 and commit for one year to house, support, and accompany a family, couple, or group currently living in police districts across Chicago. The cost will vary depending on how many are in the group, but the financial commitment is between 600 and 800 a month if you can house them in your church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. What our Faith Communities Initiative will do is provide support with logistics, case management, and ongoing partnership.
It is our goal to house the more than 700 people living in police stations as soon as possible! We aren’t doing this because we think it will solve all the issues that got us here, nor do we see ourselves as saviors. We are doing it because every faith tradition calls us to two things - we are to treat others as we want to be treated, and we are to welcome the stranger and provide them shelter. There is no more tangible form of ministry than to open our “houses” of worship to those who are in need of sanctuary. In doing this, we will experience more abundance than ever before and it will spread throughout Chicago.
“What Chicago needs right now is to reject a scarcity mindset and to take on an abundance mentality.”
— Rev Dr Beth Brown
A Note on Equity
We want to acknowledge the harm that wealth theft and neglect has wreaked in some communities on the south and west sides of Chicago. The ripples of racist policies and systemic violence are clearly only growing wider as we watch the legacies of harm leach into the roots of our communities. We are living in a complicated city at a critical time. We have to invest in the neighborhoods that have received so little for long. That is an undeniable fact. In 2020 the city’s housing department estimated we are short 120,000 affordable units and that number has only grown in the years since. We need to invest in far more low income and affordable housing and in more permanent supportive housing. It is our duty as neighbors and people of faith to look out for our brothers and sisters and siblings experiencing homelessness, mental health crises, and addiction.
We firmly reject the idea that we have to choose between one of these or all of these versus housing and supporting migrants. That is a false choice.
Our community is full of people who want to give their time, energy, and resources to those in need, no matter if they are born and raised in Chicago or halfway around the world. What we need to work at is redistributing the abundance we see so clearly in places on the North Side to those who need it most. Faith Communities around this city know these truths intimately and acutely. Soup kitchens, shelters, community programming, and more are run out of places of worship every day throughout Chicago. Regardless of our faith traditions, our service connects us in a web of more than 11,000 Faith Communities across this city.
We know that when we work together, we can multiply what seems scarce into gifts that will only continue to grow. We welcome our new neighbors into our beautiful, diverse, complicated city and we hope you will, too.
Our Past
Thirty years ago, LPPC partnered with Wellington UCC to provide sanctuary to those in danger of being deported.
With the help of the Sanctuary Working Group and Wellington UCC, LPPC converted part of their church into an apartment for asylum seekers and in 2019 were called on to host a family who lived there for six months.
Wellington UCC and the SWG have been crucial in this partnership in their support through case management, financial contributions, and so much more. Help SWG by donating here!
Since 2019, we have worked together to house five different families seeking asylum, and are working on supporting more.
Our Future
We will conduct training sessions for those interested in housing migrants and for those who want to get to know how we work.
Our Program Manager and Case Manager will work together to find those who have been in police stations the longest and place them with the faith communities who can support them.
FCI will provide support to these communities as they accompany our new neighbors on their journeys, with case management, translation, and logistical help on standby.
We hope to create a large network of support across Chicago Faith Communities that will be ready in times of need.