Austin’s Place News Our mission is to provide emergency overnight sleeping space that is safe, respectful, and restful for homeless women in our community as we work to make our community a better place.
Austin's Place remodel is done!
12 January 2021
It is with great joy that we bring you the news: THE REMODEL OF AUSTIN’S PLACE IS DONE!
We are so excited to have crossed this finish line, and want you to know that you all helped carry us there! YES we have showers. YES we have laundry available. YES we have beds!
The women will spend the night for the first time in the new space on Friday, January 15th. [Our employees] are all so excited for this new space. We had some amazing volunteer help to make the space look so warm and cozy. To protect our community, we are not doing an open house for the public until it is safe to do so.
The Austin’s Place entrance is off of Market Street and the new address is 504 N. Market Street. Unfortunately, the outside entrance concrete work was delayed due to a hiccup with the gas lines, so while the entrance is private, it will only get better once the outside concrete work is done (soon!).
And we have a new name — C-U at Austin’s Place.
Lastly, we have a beautiful memorial to Austin Cloyd in the new space. This memorial was done in collaboration with her mom, Renee Cloyd, and the stories she told about Austin and the warmth she has for AP were so uplifting in her memory.
We ALL worked so hard to get to this place, and we thank all of you for your support of Austin's Place for the past 14 years. We are thrilled that year-round shelter for women (and men) is now a reality in our area. Thank you for having a part in making that happen! We thank First United Methodist Church for their support of this mission for 13 years and we are happy to have C-U at Home at the helm moving forward.
We will miss our season with you all, but we will stay in touch!
Austin's Place is becoming year-round shelter!
12 June 2020
Dear Austin’s Place Volunteers:
We have some exciting news to share with all of you, our faithful volunteers! I don’t need to tell you that this has been an absolutely crazy time for Austin’s Place, from the moment we had to move into hotels to shelter our guests in mid-March, to where we are today…still in the hotel sheltering our guests.
Our original plan was to close our shelter on April 15th, spend the summer renovating and reorganizing for our merger with C-U at Home, and then opening together by November 1, 2020 for year-round shelter under one roof. No more winter-only shelter, no more church basement. Our shelter had outgrown itself, and we were excited to see it take off in this new direction of serving more women year-round.
But as they say about best-laid plans, they tend to go awry. Enter COVID-19, and all plans went out the window. We stayed open past April 15th, then past April 30th, then past May 15th…then we planned to stay open until June 15th … and now, here we are, with another new plan! Our partners at C-U at Home, who have been operating the men’s shelter alongside us the whole time, asked: what would it take to just stay open year-round starting today? Well, it takes a lot, but when you decide to just go “all in,” the pieces fall into place.
We currently are housing our women at a hotel, and by the end of the month, we will be moving into a new space and offering overnight shelter as we have done for the last 13 years. Because the daycare is open at FUMC, and for the safety of both the childcare and our guests, the shelter won’t be returning to FUMC. Instead, we needed to find an interim overnight space that can be used for just overnights with no other contact during the day (we are finalizing that now!).
In addition, we will be hiring more staff and not using volunteers for this interim space. All women will be welcome and can come in any time of night. Because of this, we determined they would be best served by experienced shelter staff.
We have been serving as many as 16 women with an average of around 12 since we moved to the hotel. We can serve at least 15 in the new space, but can accommodate even more as the building we are looking at can safely shelter a larger number at 6’ apart.
Lastly, our new shelter area at C-U at Home is still going to be renovated this summer and we plan to move in there by mid-September. The new Austin’s Place will offer a private area for our women guests, completely separate from the men, with their own entrance, staggered open/closing times, and safety features throughout. We have put a lot of thoughtfulness into the design of this space with our number one priority making sure our guests feel safe, secure and welcome. We can’t wait for the open house!
Until then, know that you all gave Austin’s Place the wings to grow, and we are taking flight this summer with year-round shelter…a dream we had no idea would become the blessing of COVID-19.
Thank you for all your support and words of encouragement. We appreciate you all!
Austin's Place Receives An Award At The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Countywide Celebration
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Countywide Celebration Friday, January 17, 2020 The Vineyard Church, 1500 N. Lincoln Ave., Urbana, IL
Four prestigious community awards were presented to individuals and organizations that uphold the principles and ideals of Dr. King during the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Countywide Celebration on January 17, 2020.
Austin’s Place is one of these award recipients – Winner of the James R. Burgess, Jr. - Susan Freiburg Humanitarian Award.