Author: andrew

At Cornerstone Community Outreach, our mission is to do more than provide shelter—we strive to restore dignity, agency, and a sense of belonging to every person who walks through our doors. That’s why we’re exploring a new framework to deepen our impact: the Civic Identity Hub.

Civic identity is more than paperwork or a mailing address. It’s the ability to be seen, counted, and heard in society. It’s how someone knows they belong—not just to a system, but to a community. For people experiencing homelessness, this identity is often lost or stripped away, leading to a cycle of invisibility and disconnection from public life.

The Civic Identity Hub is a vision born out of our frontline experience at Cornerstone and our commitment to innovation in care. It is a space—physical, relational, and digital—where individuals can begin to recover what has been taken from them:

-Healthcare integration (linkages to Medicaid, primary care, and behavioral health)
-Legal identification (state IDs, birth certificates, benefits enrollment)
-Access to civic life (voter registration, census participation, mail services)
-Restored agency (support to reclaim voice, purpose, and social participation)

While our Medically Integrated Shelter model addresses physical and mental health, the Civic Identity Hub expands that care to include social and civic health—the foundational structures of belonging and participation.

This is not a new building; it’s a new way of seeing people. A way of helping each person become known again—to themselves, their community, and the systems that shape their lives.

As we develop this vision, we invite civic leaders, policymakers, and neighbors to imagine with us:
What would it look like if housing, healthcare, and civic identity were restored in the same space?
What kind of city might we become?

Let’s build it—together.

We are excited to share with you the preview of the Cornerstone Community Outreach History Wall, being unveiled at our upcoming celebration. We are thankful for all the supporters that have made history, and continue to create the future! Send a donation today to keep the vision moving forward!

Cornerstone Community Outreach History Wall 2025 by Ellen Raedeke
(PDF Version)

Below please find the Letter of Intent for the Washington Square Health Foundation.

Community Survey Link

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, ideas around what care in shelters should be provided began to change to. The theory is for there to be a Medically Integrated Shelter Model. This isn’t a new idea for Cornerstone, but the pandemic gave the opportunity for more discussion to be had due to the increased and emergency medical needs.

Below is an excerpt from that document, that was written specifically for adaptation at Cornerstone.

Cornerstone Community Outreach
Medically Integrated Shelter

The majority of people who are experiencing homelessness have underlying medical vulnerabilities and or behavioral health issues. Our experiences show that there are not enough resources activated in the shelter system to meet these needs. And in many ways these issues can be barriers to accessing permanent housing and are part of the cause of their current situation. This isn’t new information to those working with people experiencing homelessness, but this current pandemic has highlighted it. And as so many entities and individuals are joining together in this moment to care for this population, the clarity across the whole sector is so powerful, and the “what if’s” being asked are great.

The “what if” that we’ve been asking for a long time, prior to COVID, is what if the shelter model in Chicago had fully integrated medical and behavioral health care alongside the normal shelter services? How much more fully could we serve and provide for the individuals and families in Chicago that come to us all for support and care? And applicable to this current pandemic, how would this new model reduce the isolation response needed, like what has to be done using the respite spaces at A Safe Haven, the Y’s, and the boutique hotels downtown?

So as this idea is resonating with more people now, we have been putting real-world thought to what this would look like for the system, or at least at Cornerstone. Any of the ideas we have are in “draft” mode, perceived from our perspective, and we do want them looked at from others perspectives. We have been working with an architect for general drawings and costs too. For simplicity I’ve put them in bullet point format, and they are just an example of how we could address the idea of a Medically Integrated Shelter Model.

Background

Three of our shelters are congregate and one is semi-private with shared bathrooms, and all had different positivity rates. Rates include residents and staff.

Sylvia Interim, shelter for families in semi-private rooms, had zero cases of COVID-19 Naomi, congregate shelter for women had 53% positivity rate
Epworth, congregate shelter for men, had a 11% positivity rage
Hannah Interim, congregate for families, had a 14% positivity rate

Isolation onsite for people who tested positive was tried but not optimal and probably increased the spread of COVID-19, as in all programs there are shared bathrooms, shared eating spaces, and no clear way to keep individuals apart. It was also detrimental not having medical staff to keep and eye on them as their symptoms worsened.
WIth the decompression of the shelters, our capacity dropped by half, though we are willing to provide for more.

How to upgrade to a Medically Integrated Shelter Model

The overarching idea is to combine the resources and abilities of an existing shelter provider with medical and behavioural health providers, and have the shelter facilities built out to meet a continuum of needs. There is the model of respite coming out of hospital, but not a model providing the support for people coming “off the streets” into shelter, and that’s where we see ourselves doing what we do best.