Township officials celebrate $2 million for Respite Center upgrades that may include overnight service

The Niles Township Respite Center in Skokie will soon undergo renovations and may eventually relocate to become the area’s first overnight homeless shelter after state and federal representatives allocated more than $2 million to the agency.

The funding includes $1.25 million from Congress’ community project program to update the central air, plumbing, asbestos-laden locker rooms and general accessibility of the center located in the St. Paul Lutheran Community Center, 5201 Galitz St. in Skokie. 

A $850,000 grant from the state will go toward the potential purchase of a new property in Niles Township that would be renovated to become an overnight homeless shelter. The respite center currently serves unhoused individuals from 7 a.m.-3 p.m. every weekday. 

Representatives for the township gathered in the respite center on Feb. 20 to thank U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-9th) and State Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-8th), who requested the respective funding packages.  

“It is a privilege to be able to bring some help to this community and all of you who are working with the community are doing a great job, and I’m just proud to be part of it with you,” said Schakowsky, who is stepping down next year after 27 years in office, on Friday.

The respite center opened in Skokie around 2023 and provides a place to eat, sleep, shower, pick up toiletries and do laundry for the 40 to 45 people who visit from all over Chicagoland every day. For some clients, the center offers the crucial support they need to get back on their feet. 

The Townships’s Ruth Orme-Johnson, however, said the center can be like a “sauna in the summer and miserable in the winter,” and the building lacks accessible amenities. 

Township Supervisor Bonnie Kahn Ognisanti said asbestos needs to be removed from the locker rooms, which could also use more lockers and more laundry machines. 

Next, the organization, supported by the $1.25 million in federal funding, is in search of an architect to provide quotes for the renovations. 

“We want to be able to provide the space that matches the dignity and the promise that we give the people in this space,” Ognisanti said. “They are worth having something that makes them feel their humanity, and we’re really excited about that.”

Andrew Goczkowski, the mayor of Des Plaines and Schakowsky’s chief of staff, said Schakowsky requested funding for the Niles Township Respite Center in 2024, but the item was at that time left off of the final budget agreement negotiated in Congress.

Schakowsky’s office reapplied for the grant funding again last year with the respite center at the top of its list for community projects and secured the package, Goczkowski said. 

The request from a Transportation Housing & Urban Development Subcommittee states that the funds will go toward updating bathrooms, improving accessibility through means like a chairlift, and improving common use spaces, like the center’s kitchen. 

Villivalam said the $850,000 he requested and secured for a new respite center came from a $25.4 billion Rebuild Illinois Capital Program the state legislature passed in 2019. The state allocated the $850,000 for the center in May 2025. 

Orme-Johnson said the township will now begin searching for potential new sites — ideally ones in Skokie — and continue to apply for grant funding that would help staff and maintain an overnight homeless shelter. 

“It shows investment from the federal and also the state government in this space and shows that there’s a high need here for these kinds of services for the community,” Orme-Johnson said of the grant funding. 

“(It shows) that there is a homeless community, an unhoused community that is part of the township and we’re investing in them. … We respect and care about them and we want to make sure they have what they need to be able to be successful and be part of this community.”

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