Our friends at “New Life for Old Bags” are at it again, supporting Cornerstone Community Outreach (CCO — our homeless shelter) with one of the most brilliant “repurposing” projects we’ve even seen. They take old plastic shopping bags and weave them into beautiful — yes, really — floor mats. [...]

Our holiday season opens with a homeless man appearing in our lobby who looks like Santa Claus. He disappears before we can figure out how to help him. Is even Santa Claus falling on hard times? The weather outside is frightful. It is erratic and severe, causing CCO to go [...]

THE VIADUCTS – Where Chicago’s Homeless Hide in Plain Sight by Sandra Ramsey, Director of Cornerstone Community Outreach Shelters The following entry was journaled two years ago by CCO’s Sandy Ramsey; the questions it raises are if anything more pertinent now than they were then. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – Aug [...]

  Who are the homeless? If you are a movie star in California and the wild fires burn down one of your 3 or 4 homes, as a human being you still suffer an awful loss, you have lost your possessions and you grieve. In Iowa, as we speak, people [...]

ANOTHER CHANCE by Sandra Ramsey Many stories of faith happen at the shelter. Sometimes the stories happen at our desks, sometimes in our large dining room, and many times right out on the street. I personally like to take a folding chair and a bag of chocolate candy and sit [...]

Years ago we opened the doors of our overnight shelter to 60 homeless women who would come to sleep every night on our large dining room floor. I remembered thinking on opening night, “There is something unnatural about 60 females having no place to go when it gets dark.” To [...]

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” Cornerstone Community Outreach is located on Clifton Avenue. Years ago, there was so [...]

It was another hot day and I had just pulled in the alley to park the car by the shelter. A young man stood on the sidewalk patiently waiting to get my attention. I didn’t recognize him but assumed he was one of the newer men in the program. Without [...]

It was a hot summer day.  Dee and I had been sitting in the office with a woman who had relapsed back into drugs.  She wanted to get treatment and was quietly crying at Dee’s desk as Dee looked up programs she could get into.  It was stuffy in the [...]

Fred is a quiet mystery at age 70. Back and forth, back and forth he walks the 6 blocks every morning and evening in the cold, standing in line to receive his bed at the gym. He follows the crowd of men like a sheep and there is no complaint [...]