Since 1931, generations of men migrating from small towns and farms to work in Chicago spent their first nights or weeks at the Lawson YMCA Hotel at Chicago Avenue and Dearborn Street.
Newcomers to the big city were assured by the four capital letters-YMCA-atop the graceful, 25-story Art Deco tower, that the rooms would be safe, decent, clean, quiet and, importantly, cheap.
As implied by the name behind the acronym-Young Men’s Christian Association-the Y in those days catered to young males committed to their religious beliefs, individuals with big plans for their lives and avenues open to accomplish those plans. A stay at the Lawson was usually a brief interlude on the way to more prosperous times.
Tuesday, with Mayor Richard Daley and other dignitaries looking on, YMCA officials announced a $14.6 million renovation of the Lawson, now known as the Lawson House YMCA. More has changed than just its name.
When it is completed in 1997, the 583-room hotel will be catering to a population that will include both women and men. And while some might be young, they more likely will be middle-aged or pensioners, many formerly homeless street people.
And in a move befitting today’s social conditions, the first five floors of the hotel are being made over as a social service center for residents. Programs will include such things as substance-abuse counseling, medical and psychiatric treatment, vocational training and job placement.
The effort to combine on-site social services with housing is the first for the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, the city’s largest landlord of so-called single-room occupancy or SRO housing. But it reflects a recent trend among developers who serve this long-neglected, low-end spectrum of the housing market.
The concept is called “supportive housing” and is designed to not only shelter the homeless, but to confront the problems that made them homeless.
Tino Mantella, president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, said Tuesday that the Lawson project will be a model for similar conversions at the Y’s other residential hotels, which account for 20 percent of the city’s 13,544 SRO apartments.
Several other agencies in the city already are providing housing and on-site social services to the homeless. Lakefront SRO, a non-profit real estate development corporation, since 1989 has opened six “supportive housing” buildings in the city, providing apartments and social services to 615 formerly homeless and very low income adults.
The Lawson model, however, will differ somewhat from other such programs, which YMCA officials said cater almost exclusively to the homeless.
“Of the 583 rooms we will have,” said William MacAfee, executive director at the Lawson, “we will set aside 300 for what we call the working poor. These are stable individuals we hope will be role models-low-income workers and retired folks on small fixed incomes.”
Of the rest, 183 rooms will be rented to people with special needs, people struggling with substance abuse or other disabilities. Another 100 rooms have been set aside expressly for homeless street people whose rent is being subsidized by a federal housing program.