CHICAGO -- The North Side's only emergency homeless shelter is closing for the winter.
REST shelter lost its lease at Epworth United Methodist Church, 5253 N. Kenmore, in October but has been using the church's gym while searching for another site.
REST officials say the church won't be open to them in December. Subsequently their funding is going to shelters on the South and West sides until REST can find a new permanent place to call home.
Starting Dec. 1, homeless men needing shelter in Uptown will be offered a van ride from the neighborhood to these other shelters in other parts of town. REST has hosted an emergency shelter in the neighborhood for 29 years, and is currently the last such shelter on the North Side.
"I don't think they're going to go," said Kathleen Ahler, REST executive director. "The fact of the matter is these men are from the North Side. I'm most concerned that this time of the year in this kind of weather someone is going to die."
REST currently offers a van service for those who don't get one of its 65 emergency beds. On a typical night, only 30 percent of those turned away from REST take the ride, with the others choosing to roam the streets, sleep in a park or ride the Red Line till sunrise.
"It's nerve-wracking not knowing if you're going to have a place to sleep," said Patrick Durlin, 47, a plumber's assistant who was living in an Uptown men's hotel until a month ago.
He said winter is traditionally slow in his business, and the bad economy isn't helping. When his rent money dried up, he put his belongings in storage and decided to try to make it through the winter without permanent shelter.
He's lost the nightly lottery for beds several times since he's lost his home, heading to sleep near the Metra tracks or in the park next to Lake Shore Drive. One recent evening, he lost again and chose the van ride to Hope House, at 3551 W. Roosevelt Rd.
"I think this really sucks," he said.
Brady Harden, president of Inner Voice, a nonprofit who distributes the City of Chicago's homeless services funds to different shelters, agreed that the busing situation isn't ideal. When REST finds a permanent location, he'll restore the funding because the need for emergency shelter still exists in Uptown and Edgewater, he said.
"Like all locations, it must have community support," Harden said. "The community support wasn't sufficient for REST to come up with a bona fide place to host a shelter. Try as we may, if we can't locate [shelter beds] where we want to we have to locate them where we can."
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