Homeless Shelter Coming To Far Northwest Side: ‘This Is Overdue’ 27%
By Molly DeVore38%
7/15/2026, 12:44:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Availability Heuristic, and Optimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 25.8% saturation with 220 hits. Analysis detected 1,301 faulty-reasoning hits from 854 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 38.2% and a BS Rank of 27% (11,727 of 15,906 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 73.70% of the article peer group.
FAR NORTHWEST SIDE — After years of encampment clearings and relocations, a homeless shelter for single adults is coming to the Far Northwest Side.
Rep.
Lindsey LaPointe, Ald.
Ruth Cruz (30th) and other elected officials worked to secure $13 million in state funds to bring a shelter for older adults to Chicago’s 30th Ward, according to a recent news release.
“This is overdue,” LaPointe said in an interview.
“We urgently need more affordable housing across the city and the state, and we urgently need more quality, accessible shelter beds.”
A tent encampment grows along the Chicago River next to the North Branch Pumping Station and near Ronan Park in Lincoln Square, as seen on July 8, 2026.
Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
The shelter will be non-congregate, meaning resident will stay in double or single rooms, and there will be 40-70 beds.
The shelter will serve single adults and will give priority to people 60 and older.
LaPointe said her office has started to talk with potential shelter operators and plans on putting out a formal request for operators to be considered to manage the shelter.
Julia Mkrtychian, LaPointe’s chief of staff, said her team hopes to have a shelter operator chosen by late 2026 or early 2027.
LaPointe and Cruz’s teams have also begun considering potential locations.
Mkrtychian said they are looking at existing buildings that could be renovated and that a location will likely be selected by next spring or summer.
‘Huge Community Win’
LaPointe and her team have worked with homelessness outreach workers on the Far Northwest Side for years.
She said unhoused residents sometimes have to wait as long as six weeks to be placed into a shelter and that, even then, the shelter is often far from the neighborhoods they call home.
For single adults on the Far Northwest Side, the closest shelters are Cornerstone Community Outreach in Uptown or a men’s shelter that opened in Rogers Park in 2024 , LaPointe said.
The former Diplomat Hotel in Lincoln Square was also recently converted into a non-congregate shelter .
LaPointe said she was inspired to work with Cruz on establishing a shelter in the 30th Ward after she saw the St.
Bartholomew temporary migrant shelter open in Portage Park .
The shelter opened in spring 2024 to serve asylum seekers, but it has since closed .
“It showed us that we had a local alderman that saw the need just like we did,” LaPointe said.
In the news release announcing the Northwest Side shelter, Cruz called the state funding “a huge win for our community.”
“Reducing homelessness makes communities stronger and safer and directly improves lives,” Cruz said.
The encampment at Legion Park is cleared by city workers in West Ridge during frigid early morning temperatures on March 17, 2026.
Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Many unhoused residents have lived on the Far Northwest Side for years and are reluctant to leave the area because that’s where their family, jobs and doctors are, LaPointe said.
Over the past three years, the city has cleared at least three homeless encampments on the Far Northwest Side: two along the North Shore Channel and one in North Mayfair at Gompers Park .
After all three clearings, new encampments soon popped up because there wasn’t enough accessible shelter space or nearby affordable housing for the encampment residents to move to.
LaPointe said the city’s current shelter placement system is “broken.”
Unhoused residents are supposed to call 311 and then wait to be connected with a bed.
However, many residents don’t have consistent access to phones and end up losing contact before they get shelter, LaPointe said.
“What we see too often is people try to access shelter, they see how hard it is and they just give up,” she said.
LaPointe said the new shelter could help reduce wait times and ensure Northwest Siders don’t have to leave their home communities.
“We believe having a high-quality, non-congregate shelter in our region will incentivize people living in our parks to give it a shot,” LaPointe said.
Tents sit on in the Gompers Park encampment in Mayfair on Monday, April 20, 2026.
Credit: Jeremy Battle/Block Club Chicago
The new shelter will be the first in the city that specifically caters to older adults, LaPointe said.
It can be difficult for older unhoused residents to find shelters that accommodate people with physical disabilities and older adults are at high risk of death if they are forced to live outside during extreme weather, LaPointe said.
Federal data found that older people are the fastest growing age group experiencing homelessness .
In 2024, people over 55 made up about 20 percent of the country’s homeless population, up 6 percent from 2023.
LaPointe said the 30th Ward shelter will provide around-the-clock support services to residents and outreach workers will help connect them with medical care and affordable housing options.
LaPointe’s office will host community feedback sessions once a shelter operator has been selected.
Questions about the project can be sent to info@replapointe.com and ward30@cityofchicago.org with the subject line “shelter.”
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