Just months after the new YWCA Quad Cities opened its doors in part to help families address child care challenges, it is tackling the critical needs of homeless youth through creation of an Alan’s House shelter at its old Rock Island location.
The masterminds behind this new shelter to serve youth who lack a safe, stable place to live, include YWCA Quad Cities Executive Director Julie Larson and Nicole Sodawasser, the YWCA’s director for youth and outreach.
The YWCA already has raised three-quarters of the $430,000 leaders say will be needed to remodel their former building and outfit it to house 15 at-risk youth. It also has created a plan and laid the groundwork for state licensing.
The YWCA’s ambitious goal is to open the new shelter’s doors at its old 229 16th St., Rock Island, location later this fall. The YWCA Quad Cities cut the ribbon on its new home at 513 17th St., Rock Island, on June 3. The move into the new facility left the old location empty.
To get the shelter ready to move in the YWCA also is asking for help in raising the final $75,000 needed to outfit the building after renovations. Quad Citians are urged to make donations and attend the organization’s Pumps, Purses and PIZZAZZ event on Thursday, Sept. 12, at the Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf.
Alan’s House will be the first youth shelter in the Quad Cities since the closing of the region’s only one. It was operated by the John Lewis Community Services agency until 2008.
Honoring Egly’s legacy
Leading the effort to create a new shelter to replace the John Lewis one back then was Alan Egly, the Doris & Victor Day Foundation’s longest-serving executive director.
The new youth center and its name are also tributes to the philanthropic legacy of the late Mr. Egly, the founding executive director of that Foundation and a tireless advocate for Quad Cities causes and youth.
“Alan was a tremendous advocate for the YWCA and other nonprofits in our community. He was instrumental in opening ThePlace2B, and wanted it to be a 24/7 program where youths would have a safe place to stay,” Ms. Larson said.
“Unfortunately, at that time, the YWCA didn’t have the funds or the capacity to take on a youth shelter, but opened a drop-in center. Since this was Alan’s vision, it’s only fitting that it’s named after him.”
For Tyla Sherwin-Cole, the Day Foundation’s current executive director, “Alan Egly was more than just a person. He was a force of nature with a magnetic personality that could tell a story, convey its essence, and inspire you to act.”
She added “His job was to find gaps and develop programs to ease the pain and suffering. The first distinctly unique emergency assistance program in the Quad Cities was initially brought into being because Alan Egly called together several health and human service organizations to assess the needs of our community jointly.”
The result was the Supplemental Emergency Assistance Program (SEAP), which Ms. Sherwin-Cole said “stood out for its innovative and practical approach.”
She added “This is the type of man he was. His name will be able to convey a story of significance in our community, a story that we admire and strive to continue.”
Place2Be is born
Ms. Larson and Ms. Sodawasser were members of the group that Mr. Egly organized to respond to the loss of the John Lewis youth shelter. After local leaders reluctantly determined a full-scale shelter wasn’t feasible, they created the YWCA’s still thriving Place2Be drop-in program to serve at-risk kids.
Since those meetings, Ms. Sodawasser has continued her career of helping at-risk kids while occasionally assisting the YWCA when it needed the help of a master’s level social worker. In that role, which includes embedding with local police, Ms. Sodawasser has seen firsthand the circumstances for young people in challenging situations worsen.
When the John Lewis youth shelter closed in 2008, she said the belief was that kids could be serviced with outreach services alone.
But the need for a full-service shelter has grown especially during the past five years, driven in part by the loss of COVID-19 assistance and the reinstatement of post-pandemic evictions. Demand also has been fueled by the social and educational challenges created by COVID-19. Especially notable is a significant drop in the number of foster placements. Foster parents who left in droves during the pandemic never came back, she added.
Remote schooling also not only impacted what kids learned, it prevented youngsters from learning to socialize at critical ages. What do you learn in a grade school classroom? Ms. Sodawasser asked. “You learn how to be a friend. You learn how to be socially appropriate.” For pandemic grade school kids, that structure was gone.
Then there are students who lost out on their seventh and eighth grade years. “Where you learn to interact with others is at school,” she said. That loss has often made the transition for many kids from junior high to high school – where so much more is expected of them – “disastrous.”
How many are homeless?
It’s also clear that the pandemic impacted families. How many kids are homeless as a result? It’s difficult to gauge, Ms. Sodawasser said.
The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. That can include children and youth who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason, the act said.
Quad Cities schools do their best to keep track of that number. They estimate, for example, that there are 2,000 kids who meet the definition of homelessness. But getting to a true number is difficult since the count comes from kids and families self-reporting their circumstances, Ms. Sodawasser said.
If kids are not seen by anyone to receive services, they aren’t counted. And many parents and kids are too proud to tell anyone that they lack a fixed, stable and consistent nighttime residence.
Experience has convinced many who work with these kids, including Ms. Sodawasser, that the true homeless number is much higher and needs to be addressed locally. As pandemic-impacted construction crawled along at the new YWCA the past couple years, Ms. Sodawasser said she called Ms. Larson to ask what she planned to do with the old location once it was vacated.
The building needed updating and was unlikely to make much money if it were sold, Ms. Larson said. But what it had going for it is that it had already been licensed by the Department of Children and Family Services as a day care center and because it already had been DCFS licensed, it could be licensed again.
Ms. Larson told Ms. Sodawasser, “‘If I do it, you have to come run it’ and I said, ‘OK.”
DCFS backs project
“We reached out to DCFS in the fall of 2023, to discuss the need for a shelter in our community,” Ms. Larson said. “Our intention was to learn about the licensing requirements, funding opportunities and gauge their interest. By the time we got off of the phone call, they basically convinced us to proceed forward and open a shelter.”
The DCFS grant for half the cost followed. Then Doris & Victor Day added another quarter of the cost. “Our commitment to the community drives us to support this project, and it is terrific that they chose to honor Alan’s legacy,” Ms. Sherwin-Cole added of the shelter’s name.
Currently, the YWCA is awaiting formal DCFS licensing to create Alan’s House as a youth shelter. Then “once they’ve given the blessing” construction will start on a facility designed to serve 15 homeless youth, Ms. Sodawasser said. She had hoped to be open by Oct. 1. Now, she said, “November is the best I can hope for.”
Once work begins, renovations will include the addition of a lift and other Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades; upgrades to kitchen; new windows and more.
Challenges include adding a required bathroom and shower facility to the old building’s second floor. While there are ample toilets and locker rooms on the first level, there are none on the second floor, where the YWCA plans to have single bedrooms. They will be designed to serve youth with special circumstances such as those who need to be quarantined, teen parents with children and non-binary youth.
To make that plan work in the old building space, planners are including second-floor bathrooms above the old YWCA’s old pool. The pool will be filled in and left ready for another use.
Family-style living
Ms. Sodawasser’s wish list includes a conference room, workspace for case workers to meet with kids and a room where law enforcement can bring youth when they can’t locate their parents and are awaiting arrival of a crisis worker.
She’s hoping to designate the kitchen and dining room as the living room area. Kids will eat together family style, have chores and activities, Ms. Sodawasser said. Those who are in school will be taken there by one of the YWCA’s three vans. Others will do required activities such as completing a program to earn lost school credits.
“Ultimately, what we want is for their home lives to improve through working with us and I think a lot of them do,” Ms. Sodawasser said. “There are some (cases) where it won’t and we want them to have a safe place to go and a place that their parents can trust.”
Neither the youth nor their parents “want things to be the way they are. They want to do something different,” she said.
“The need is there,” Ms. Sodawasser added. And as successful as the Place2Be is – the program has 50 enrolled kids and averages 30 participants most nights – as well as its new dedicated space at the new YWCA, it’s not equipped to house the unsheltered.
Meanwhile, Ms. Sodawasser told the QCBJ, “it is an absolute mess out there” for homeless youth. “When you get them into a spot where they don’t have to hustle for everything they tend to breathe for a little bit.”
To help make that happen, planners are working to keep Alan’s House costs down. For example, bunk beds were purchased from the former Arrowhead Ranch’s auction but linens, bedding, towels and other items needed to turn a shelter into a living space will require additional support.
How Q-C can help
Those wishing to help can make plans to attend this year’s Purses, Pumps and PIZZAZZ event on Sept. 12 at Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center, 2021 State Street, Bettendorf
Cocktail hour begins at 5:30 p.m. and dinner is at 6:30 p.m.
For tickets visit: https://givebutter.com/PursesPumpsPizzazz.
Those who can’t make the event are urged to send their donations designated for Alan’s House to:
YWCA Quad Cities
Rock Island Center
513 17th St.
Rock Island, IL 61201
Please be sure to write Alan’s House on the memo line or on a post-it or the envelope.
Questions? Call (309) 788-3479.
