The temperature is dropping on an already cold January morning. Still, Marcus, a client of The Night Ministry's Health Outreach Program, has removed his coat and sweatshirt and pulled his arm out of his shirt sleeve so Stephan Koruba, The Night Ministry's Senior Nurse Practitioner, can give him a COVID vaccination booster. Marcus had lost his vacci...

The Night Ministry's ongoing work to provide services to members of our community experiencing homeless as the COVID-19 pandemic continues is featured in a recent column by Neil Steinberg of The Chicago Sun-Times. ‘The need gets larger and larger’ - Chicago Sun-Times Overtaxed social service agencies struggle to cope with COVID-19 and help the city...

The Night Ministry's President & CEO, Paul Hamann, spoke with Hubbard Helps, a program of Hubbard Radio about homelessness in Chicago, our impact in the community, the challenges of COVID, and more. This interview was first broadcast on January 9, 2022. 

December 31, 2021Dear Friend,Call me a sentimental optimist, but I still believe in the promise inherent in a new year. When hanging up a new wall calendar and swiping into the next year on my phone, I am excited by the opportunities 12 fresh months and 365 brand new days can bring. That sense of excitement is palpable here at The Night Ministry as...

When The Night Ministry relocated its headquarters to Bucktown in summer 2020, the agency gained a generous neighbor in the Jonathan Burr Elementary School, whose students have made a habit of giving back. "Last year we were able to do a whole school food drive to help support The Night Ministry in the spring," said Middle School teacher Sarah Craw...

Who is identified as experiencing homelessness and who is not varies under federal definitions, and when interpretations of the term are strict, individuals and communities may be unable to access the resources they need. According to a recent report from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), the vast majority of those experiencing homeless...

The Night Ministry is restructuring aspects of its Youth Programs to offer more flexible long-term housing and deepen the impact of its services to young people experiencing homelessness. "We are making these changes in response to the evolving challenges faced by the population and to reflect demographic shifts among the youth we se...

The adversities brought by the COVID-19 pandemic have been met with persistence and matched by progress. That is the message underlying "Straight Outta Quarantine," a creative video presentation by members of Youth 4 Truth, The Night Ministry's leadership development program for young people who have experienced homelessness. The video premiered at...

Data indicate that Chicago's homeless population has fallen over the last several years. But that doesn't mean the challenge of homelessness is going away. In a new study, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) reports that 58,723 Chicagoans experienced homelessness in 2019, down 16% from the year prior. The decline is part of a trend seen du...

By Paul W. Hamann, MA, MNAPresident & CEO The Night Ministry was formed 45 years ago when a diverse coalition of Chicago-based congregations hired the Rev. Tom Behrens to reach out to individuals struggling with homelessness, isolation, and despair during the lonely overnight hours. Tom was a minister of the United Church of Christ. But as he t...

For the first fourteen years of the agency's history, The Night Ministry staff conducted outreach on their feet, supporting the community members they encountered while walking the nighttime streets of Chicago. Realizing that many of those individuals had unaddressed health challenges, in 1990 The Night Ministry added a mobile health care component...

By the close of the 1980s, Chicago's population of unsheltered young people had reached an estimated 10,000 individuals per year. State law prohibited nonprofits from operating group shelters for them, leaving youth experiencing homelessness with few, if any, options for a safe place to spend the night. "At the time, if you were a young person, you...