Getting People in the Same Room

How Collaboration is Making Lasting Change in Elgin, Illinois.

December 21st, 2023 | Rebekah Teuscher

Bobby Jackson and his family have lived in Elgin, Illinois for over 10 years - and in 2019, he joined One Collective as a Catalyst for Elgin. With a passion to do more than simply manage long-standing problems, Bobby resonated with the idea of bringing locals together to determine long-term solutions for existing problems. Four years later, he continues to see the result of bringing people together.

“Our team is made up of collaborators - we focus on bringing people together to solve problems. There are a lot of great organizations in Elgin, but for a long time, they didn’t talk to each other, which resulted in many resource ‘gaps’. I’ve found that different groups don’t instinctively put their resources together in ways that would be mutually beneficial. As a result, much of what I do is simply creating spaces where people can have conversations that build trust and establish relationships to solve problems.”

One long-standing problem in Elgin is chronic homelessness. To address this issue, the team in Elgin has hosted countless initiatives bringing together existing nonprofits and agencies, churches, and local governmental officials.

Bobby Jackson

Elgin, Illinois

Through these facilitated spaces, a collaborative case management team across local organizations has been established, multiple city- and county-wide summits have been held on the topic of housing, homelessness, and affordable housing, and previously unknown streams of funding have been found.  Perhaps most importantly, it has led to a shared community-wide plan to not just manage, but end homelessness.

“I’ve seen the power of people simply being in a room together. It has resulted in 16 organizations meeting every two weeks to talk through each unsheltered individual that needs assistance along the continuum of care. It has resulted in us hosting a housing and homelessness summit for over 40 agencies, churches, etc - and the county officials who attended finding it so useful that they took it over and now hold it semi-annually. And these types of meetings recently resulted in four attendees developing a relationship and applying for a grant together and winning it - receiving over 2 million dollars in funding from the state for food and housing for asylum seekers in Elgin.”

While the team in Elgin focuses on long-term solutions, they have also found a new way to meet a need that was falling through the cracks: a winter shelter for people who live on the streets.

“The winter shelter is our newest initiative, and while it’s not the long-term solution, it is born out of meeting a tangible need and our community relationships. There is a local church that was previously hosting a winter shelter for the past few years, and it had to take a step down from doing so because it was too much for their church to sustain alone. Our team recognized that, since we’re collaborators and have relationships with many churches in the area, we could figure out a way to do this in a sustainable fashion.”

“Winters here are brutal, and the reality is that unsheltered and houseless people will freeze to death if they don’t have a warm place to stay. Our vision is to have the shelter open every night and be able to coordinate volunteers and funding from over 10 churches in the area.

Alex, our housing and homelessness coordinator, has been the main person overseeing and coordinating volunteers, and running the shelter himself. He grew up in this area, and now he’s giving back and serving the community. He’s pouring his life into others. On top of this, we are contracting a woman who is currently living on the streets to help run the winter shelter - creating more of a sense of self-governance.

We are strong believers in self-governance and raising people to be their own agents of rescue - raising people from the demographic we serve to serve their peers. At other shelters, this woman would typically just be a client of the shelter, but instead she’s staying up and helping with registration, check in, check out, clean up, etc. Alex first identified her, and is now focused on equipping her to succeed.”

Alex Madrid

Elgin, Illinois

Alex shares: “In running the shelter, we wanted to establish a culture of respect right away. In other shelter setups, people’s bags are often searched, or they go through a metal detector, etc. With this shelter, we’re not doing that - we’re choosing to trust people and promote dignity.

We don’t want to violate their space simply because they need a warm place to sleep.

What we do instead is ask for mutual respect - and it’s been encouraging so far to see people give that mutual respect - both volunteers and people who are coming to sleep at the shelter.

The goal of this shelter is not simply to complete a task, but to build and create space for relationships. I’ve had multiple people come up to me and start sharing their hearts and stories with me, just because I’ve made an effort to learn their names and ask how they’re doing. It’s been so encouraging to see that level of relationship and trust being built come out of meeting a very practical need. And I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

“Looking to the future beyond the winter shelter,” Bobby notes, “I’m most excited about getting closer to zero people homeless. The winter shelter is an important  immediate focus because it brings the city closer to zero people out in the cold on their own, and also offers us more relational currency and trust from others that we practice what we preach.”

“One of the things our team prioritizes differently from everyone else though is our metric of success. Every other organization works to serve more people impacted by the problem. We work to solve the problem at its core.

Our goal is not to serve 50 people this week and 60 next week - our goal is to serve 40 people next week because we found long-term housing solutions for 10 people. That’s a very different approach than other organizations who are trying to grow their reach in terms of people served. If your model is only based on the number of individuals served, then you are not incentivized to find housing for them. I love that part of what we do - we’re not here to simply serve more people, we’re here to solve problems collaboratively, and make the overall lives of people better.

Ultimately, my vision is to get to the point where in Elgin, we’re known for something like economic development instead of homelessness - because we’ve solved homelessness and no longer need to focus on it.”

The ongoing developments surrounding homelessness in Elgin is one example of deep, long-term, transformative impact that sends ripples across a community. Your support is part of what empowers this work to continue happening - in Elgin and throughout the world. Thank you!

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