DuPagePads, a Wheaton-based organization that helps homeless people, has received a $5 million grant from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos through their Bezos Day 1 Families Fund.
To say the folks at DuPagePads are overwhelmed is putting it mildly.
“We’re so excited about what we’re going to be able to do,” DuPagePads President and CEO April Redzic said Friday.
“This incredible grant will allow us to create new programming, specifically for families, to help them get out of shelter and into an apartment of their own faster,” she said.
The grant will also “give additional educational support for our kids who are staying with us at our housing center, just to help them be connected to school and extra-curricular activities so they grow and learn and have the same opportunities as their peers who have houses of their own right now,” Redzic said.
DuPagePads was invited to apply for the grant, she said.
Gven its mission, the nonprofit fits in with the Day 1 Families Fund, which“has a particular interest in helping families who are homeless,” she said.
“We got on their radar,” Redzic added.
As of Friday morning, there were 305 people — including 108 children — at DuPagePads’ Intermediate Housing Center, a former hotel, in Downers Grove, she said.
The site gives individuals and families privacy by having their own rooms.
“One of our goals is that no child should sleep in a car. That’s something we feel strongly about,” she said.
There are another 18 clients in an emergency winter shelter funded by a separate grant from DuPage County.
“That will be growing through the month of December,” she said.
The goal is to “utilize (the grant money) as quickly as possible to help our families,” she said.
One goal is to provide additional services for the street outreach program. “You immediately help families get off the street if it’s a family staying in a car,” she said.
Through the educational program, using other funding, DuPagePads during the COVID-19 pandemic was able to build a program for children “to make sure they’re enrolled in school, have the resources, school supplies, and also build out some additional activities that will allow them to grow and learn.”
That may include connecting to a local YMCA or other programs. The Bezos grant will help that too.
“We’ve been doing that since we acquired our interim housing center in 2022,” she said.
“We’re growing that program to have a transportation component so kids staying in our interim center will be able to attend after-school activities their peers in school can attend,” Redzic said.
“One thing that’s unique about DuPage County is we have 26 different school districts, so we wouldn’t be able to have one after-school bus.
“We haven’t had a way to get kids to and from after-school basketball, park district soccer, things like that, this (grant) is going to allow for that and really be game-changer for our kids,” she said.
Another goal is to establish a fund designed to help families pay their first and last month’s rent along with a security deposit often required by landlords.
“A year of homelessness can set a child back two years,” she said, adding that a tutoring program will be allowed to continue with the grant.
“The other thing is kids who are homeless are 10 times more likely to be homeless as adults so not only is this helping families now, we believe this will help prevent future homelessness,” she said.
The Bezos Day 1 Families Fund this year gave $102.5 million in grants to 32 organizations in 20 states, the District of Columbia and Guam.
Grants ranged from $1.25 million to $5 million. DuPagePads is the lone recipient in the state of Illinois.
“We’re so grateful for this and the myriad ways it will change our clients’ lives,” Redzic said.
In the coming weeks, housing navigators — people who search for and find landlords who rent to homeless persons — will be busy searching for apartments “so we can quickly find them places.”
“It’s so wonderful to get out of a car and into our interim housing center,” Redzic said, “but you’re in a one-bedroom hotel room with your family. Now, they’ll have their own apartment again.”
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
