‘His Heart is as Big as His Whole Body’: Homeless-shelter client turned employee celebrated as key to program’s success

Robert Gaiter didn’t have a home when he first walked into the Niles Township Respite Center. Today, he helps run the place.

After his marriage dissolved in 2020, Gaiter spent half a year living out of his car, sometimes contemplating suicide as he drove the interstate at night, he told The Record. When he later lost his job and his vehicle was repossessed, he rode the train for months, never sure where he was going to sleep or eat.

It was during that time that another homeless man riding the Chicago Red Line asked Gaiter if he had ever been to the respite center in Skokie. Gaiter followed him there and, after finding it a safe place to rest, returned again and again, he recalled.

Gaiter is now a peer liaison at the shelter, where he helps people facing many of the same hardships he experienced feel comfortable and understood and get connected to the resources they need to get back on their feet.

Charlie Biggins, the respite center’s manager, described Gaiter as one of the center’s most valuable employees and so dedicated to supporting others that he travels at least four hours by bus and train every day from south Chicago to serve their clients. 

“It’s been a long journey but I think that this is where I’m supposed to be at,” Gaiter said. “Until God call me, this is where I’m going to be at, bro. It don’t matter if it takes three hours to get here or five hours to get here, I’m always here. Rain, sleet or snow — I’m going to be here.”

‘I’m here to help’

The Niles Township Respite Center is located in the basement of the St. Paul Lutheran Community Center, 5201 Galitz St., and is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every weekday.

The township created the center after observing that individuals experiencing homelessness typically have no place to go during the day.

The center provides a place to eat, sleep, shower, pick up toiletries and do laundry for the 40-45 people who travel to it from all over Chicagoland every day, Biggins said.

Gaiter said the center “saved my life.” 

During the months he rode the train, traveling from the Chicago Red Line’s 95th/Dan Ryan stop to the Howard station and back again, over and over and over, he struggled to stay awake, afraid he may be hurt or robbed, which he had seen happen others on the Red Line.

Then, it happened to him. Someone robbed Gaiter of his ID, social security card and birth certificate. 

Gaiter occasionally slept in churches and received chicken from a kind employee at a Jewel-Osco near the Howard stop, but wondered: “Why me?” He said he knew he wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t believe he deserved to be without food, without money — without anything. 

So after a man asked Gaiter one night if he had a cigarette, and shared that he was going to the respite center, the two rode the rails until morning light and took a bus together to Skokie.

“The first day I got here, Charlie opened up with open arms, said ‘Whatever you need, I’m here to help.’” Gaiter said of arriving at the respite center a couple of years ago. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

“During that time that I was homeless, no one ever said that to me, that ‘I’m here to help.’ And he proved that to me, too, because he didn’t treat me like I was homeless, he treated me like I was a man.”

‘That first step’

Gaiter came to look forward to returning to the center, he said, and volunteered to do custodial work in the building. The center helped him secure new copies of his personal documents, and he took advantage of a program to secure housing in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. 

Biggins, a social worker with more than 20 years of experience, said he originally worked in schools before he decided he wanted to do more front-line work. Shortly after Niles Township’s Supervisor Bonnie Kahn Ognisanti created the respite center around 2023, he got involved. 

The center gives people a safe place to rest, but it also facilitates mental health and substance abuse treatment. A visiting nurse gives weekly checkups, and Biggins often conducts one-on-one counseling sessions in the church’s locker rooms. 

“I say we provide comfort and it’s a win-win for the community because the community doesn’t want homeless people sitting around fast food restaurants, coffee shops, bus stops, you know, book stores,” Biggins said. “So if they’re here, they’re able to start to be able to take that first step.”

Biggins noticed how driven Gaiter was to do everything he could to be successful. When there was a chance to expand the center’s small team of two full-time staff members in 2024, he hired Gaiter to become a peer liaison. 

Biggins’ goal was to implement a model that leveraged both his academic social work training and Gaiter’s real world experience to help the center’s clients, he said.

The result so far: Biggins is “bursting with pride with how much good we’re doing,” and Gaiter is responsible for leading the way via his peer-to-peer counseling and crisis intervention, he said.

Gaiter does not have experience struggling with substance abuse or severe mental health, so he can’t help everyone; but clients talk to him because they know he’s gone through what they have, and he’s “not going to sugar coat” anything, he said.

“What I’m doing is important (because) I can show them that, if I can do it, they can do it. That’s the thing I most value. It’s not just a job,” Gaiter said. “A lot of them out here feel like they done gave up on themselves. So if they can see I made it, they can strive to make it.”

‘He’s here and fighting the battle’

Biggins said Niles Township doesn’t just talk about helping the homeless, the government body commits to the work necessary to actually make substantive difference in people’s lives. Moving forward, he’d like to see the respite center expand.

Likewise, Gaiter said he’d like to see the community give homeless individuals “a chance” through shelters and programs like those offered by the respite center, because every person has their own story, and they are only ever looking for a place to lay their head, a place to get help. 

“You cannot turn your back on a person because he don’t have nowhere to stay,” Gaiter said. “If you keep telling this person ‘No, we don’t got no shelter here,’ or, ‘No, we’re not going to help you,’ it makes his situation even worse.”

“Then he’s thinking ‘Well, they’re not going to help me so (…) I’m going to be homeless for the rest of my life.’,’ Gaiter continued. “And a lot of them give up and that’s why a lot of them have been homeless for so long.”

But Gaiter’s life changed the moment he walked through the respite center’s door, he said; he no longer feels weak or sad — every day since then has been greater than the last and he said he always walks around with a smile. 

“It’s easy to be professional when it’s easy, when it fits you,” Biggens said. “Robert is here when there’s a snowstorm, when it’s 100 degrees, he’s here and fighting the battle with us. A I just think the world of the guy and I think his heart is as big as his whole body.

“The only thing wrong with him is that he’s a Cubs fan.”

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