Chicago area faith centers combine resources to provide housing to migrants

CHICAGO (WLS) -- They're mixing and matching their resources to prove you don't have to have it all in order to be of help.

One church gets the grocery bill, and the other, the housing bill. It's a creative collaboration with one mission: giving asylum-seeking families a healthier place to live.

"She had approached us and said, I really want to get involved, but I just don't think our church can host anybody," said Emily Wheeler.

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Wheeler with the Faith Community Initiative is helping people like Melissa Pillman at Missio Dei Chicago rethink their resources.

"Wow, you would've not of known when you looked at the church that there was this much space," Pillman said.

The church is now getting get ready to house two asylum-seeking families for a year, with a possibility of hosting up to five families.

"Instead of coming at things with a scarcity mindset, to refocus and think of it from a place of abundance," Wheeler said.

Her church is getting training from both the Faith Community Initiative and World Relief.

"We're going to be sowing some curtains. We have a sewing team," Pillman said.

But, since they have housing covered from showers to beds, the other organizations can focus on covering everything else.

"Transportation, CTA passes, cellphone bills," Wheeler said.

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Pillman says they are working with churches in Naperville and Wilmette to cover living expenses, and hopes this creative collaboration will be mimicked at churches across the city.

"You don't have to do the whole thing on your own. So, if we have space but no money, somebody has money, and someone has a mattress, and somebody said, 'I can give free haircuts,'" Pillman said. "The goal is not that they would be housed here forever."

They are teaching a man to fish instead, as more than 11,000 migrants have hit the Chicago streets.

"We have more than hundreds of family right now waiting to be put in our housing program," said Adrian Hendarta with World Relief Church.

Hendarta said the waiting list is about 32 families long.