At the beginning of this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration issued their five-year blueprint on homelessness.

The plan details how the Chicago government intends to provide housing and social services to those who are unhoused, aiming to make significant changes by 2031. Although there are already programs and services providing housing assistance, advocates say there is more work to be done to keep growing.

“There’s always gaps in services,” said Sandra Guillory, the interim chief executive officer at Depaul USA, an international nonprofit that provides services to people and students without stable housing.

She said mixed gender couples and people with pets would not be “well-served” by the current shelter and housing systems.

Most congregate shelters don’t allow pets and separate genders, preventing couples and families from staying together. Terri Rivera, the director of philanthropy at nonprofit BEDs Plus also mentioned the difficulty of providing services to people who can’t consistently make it to the shelter by the time doors lock for the night. 

Last year, the mayor’s office invested $40 million to modernize shelters by making them more accessible and creating more noncongregate settings. But Guillory said organizations still need money to provide services to people who use those shelters. 

“Government contracts are great,” Guillory said. “They offer stability. But you do have to fit into the very narrow box of what they want services to look like and who should be served.” 

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts to federal funding to address homelessness also threaten shelters’ ability to serve the unhoused community.

Things are very uncertain right now with the federal landscape, said Rivera, highlighting the importance of a diversified funding base.

In 2024, a coalition of Chicagoans who experienced homelessness introduced, with Johnson’s support, a draft referendum called Bring Chicago Home. It would have allocated $100 million to the homeless effort every year by raising real estate transfer taxes on high-end properties. Chicago voters ultimately rejected it, with some voters feeling the referendum didn’t provide a defined plan for solutions.

The mayor has said he might reintroduce the referendum to voters, but there was no mention as to when. Until then, Guillory said using other revenue sources is essential for creating new solutions.

“We wouldn’t be where we are without the support of nongovernmental sources. They are the ones who are able to help us create innovative programs,” Guillory said.

While still working to improve existing congregate facilities, where people stay together in the same space, the Chicago blueprint prioritizes repurposing buildings and starting construction on new ones for noncongregate shelters. The idea is to offer privacy and a more stable, home-like environment at city shelters that gives residents more agency.

Rivera said this model helps create an atmosphere of trust between case managers and their clients.

“They’re in a safe space. And once they have shelter, they can start thinking about how they are going to access those other things that they need,” she said. 

Some agencies and municipalities are redeveloping former motels, hotels and even convents for transitional and supportive housing. The Lexington Inn and Suites in Elgin and the Aloha Motel in the Southwest Side are both in the beginning stages of being fully repurposed as non-congregate homeless shelters. 

More than just providing transitional housing, both are set to have trauma-informed case managers assist in training for jobs, accessing healthcare and finding permanent and affordable residences.

This assistance often leads to people being off the streets for good, Rivera said.

“Almost 70% of the people that were in the shelter gained or maintained income,” she said of clients at her agency according to agency data collected for the 2025 fiscal year.

A former motel in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, now called the Haven on Lincoln, opened earlier this month and will begin accepting residents soon. Besides improving the standard of care by providing behavioral health services, those who designed the facility tried to create an innovative and welcoming design.

Rivera hopes BEDs Plus also can use trauma-informed design in their renovations of the Aloha, including “calming colors, minimal design, offering everything on site to literally try to eliminate every barrier.”

Amanda Occean, a recent graduate from the University of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City’s Bronx, realized a few months before graduation that she wouldn’t have anywhere to go once she moved out of the dorms. She felt she couldn’t return home to Boston because of the relationship with her family and wouldn’t be safe at a congregate shelter. So she applied for housing through Depaul USA’s Dax program. 

The program provides transitional housing for students who are homeless or don’t have stable or reliable places to live.

Before starting Dax, “it didn’t dawn on our radar that was a thing,” Guillory said, referring to homeless students at DePaul and elsewhere.

“So we heard about students who were sleeping in gyms, sleeping in basements, sleeping on the subway, and we knew we had to address it somehow,” she said.

“I’m very hopeful for my future,” said Occean. “Dax has literally taken a whole bunch of load off my shoulders, so I can really focus on how to get my future together financially and being stable.”

In February, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to cut federal housing aid. Rivera said organizations like hers also will continue to use donations and philanthropy to help fill the financial gaps.

“The need is greater than what we’re even offering. So we want to grow and want to help more,” Rivera said. “If we can just sustain what we’re doing, that would be a win.”

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