Overnight warming center is DeKalb church’s newest contribution to the community

DeKALB – For the past two winters, volunteers with a DeKalb church have been giving those without anywhere to go another option to stay warm during cold nights.

Marreen Buntaine, the director of the community empowerment campaign with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of DeKalb, and Dan Kenney, the founder of Rooted for Good and a fellow church member, gained permission for church leaders to host an overnight warming center in January 2024.

Their efforts are continuing this winter.

The overnight warming center, which is inside the Locust Street entrance of Unitarian Universalist Congregation of DeKalb, 158 N. Fourth St., opens at 6 p.m. every night for a free meal and shelter.

Kenney said they currently average about 12 overnight guests and, in total, have provided 152 nights of comfort to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been.

Buntaine said she believes their efforts are having profound effects.

“I’m sure that we’re saving lives,” Buntaine said. “We’re also giving them the opportunity to hang out with other people instead of staying in isolation.”

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Ash Rootes, director of the overnight warming center at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of DeKalb, talks Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, at the church, about the main eating and sleeping area at the facility. The warming center, which is open nightly during the winter months, offers free hot meals to all and a warm, safe place for community members. (Mark Busch)

Kenney said that aside from the lifesaving benefits of a warming center, he thinks providing a place to socialize is something people without homes need.

“They’re more cut off from community, more cut off from other people, many of them are cut off from their families,” Kenney said. “I think that just by providing this spot for them to gather has helped with that sense of community.”

As many as 18 people stayed in the overnight warming shelter on one night in 2024. So far in 2025, that total has topped out at 17.

In 2024, Buntaine often was staying at the warming center six nights a week, but this year she’s slowed down to a more pragmatic pace thanks to Ash Rootes, who has taken over as the director of the overnight warming center.

“It’s definitely making it a more sustainable system, and that means we can repeat it every year,” Buntaine said. “We were pretty much winging it last year.”

Rootes has been organizing a group of about 100 volunteers who make sure the overnight warming center has a free meal and resources for anyone using the service. This year, volunteers have managed to get local musicians to play for their guests during some of the evening meals.

David Diaz, a longtime member of the congregation who years ago helped the church buy and maintain the building that’s currently used for the overnight warming center, decided to volunteer with the center this year.

“I have enjoyed it,” Diaz said. “It has brought me a lot of joy to be helpful. I was always that kind of a person, but I never really had the opportunity other than individual, one-on-one things.”

At the end of 2024, Rootes was in contact with the American Red Cross about organizing training opportunities for the warming center volunteers. So when the Hillcrest apartment fire displaced about 60 DeKalb residents Dec. 22, Rootes decided to ask the Red Cross how the warming center could help.

“They asked us to become a temporary shelter,” Rootes said. “They approved us for 30 people, but they ended up needing shelter for more than that.”

Many of the DeKalb residents displaced by the fire were given temporary shelter on Northern Illinois University’s campus, Rootes said. However, when the church opened its overnight warming center Jan. 6 and started offering free meals each night, volunteers found they were able to aid the Hillcrest fire victims.

“We offered those to the Hillcrest fire as well,” Rootes said. “We had several of them joining with us for quite a few nights.”

For Rootes, making sure those affected by the Hillcrest fire were given support and resources was personal.

In January 2024, Rootes, then a Rockford resident, was the victim of a residential fire.

“It was 3 in the morning and I woke up, and I didn’t know why I was standing up,” Rootes said. “I just was standing up next to my bed. So I tried to lay back down and something said, ‘No, get up.’ And I realized there was a glow coming from my living room.”

After getting back out of bed to investigate, Rootes realized her curtains, record player and bookshelf were on fire.

“I tried to throw water at it and it spat back at me, so I knew it was an electrical fire,” Rootes said. “I decided to get out of my apartment and wake up the neighbors because there was a baby across the hall from me.”

After alerting her neighbors and the appropriate authorities, Rootes said she spent the next four hours watching her apartment burn down.

She then spent almost two months in a hotel.

“That’s what brought me to DeKalb. I had been living in Rockford at the time. I ended up moving to DeKalb to get a fresh start, and it’s been wonderful. I’ve been able to make wonderful connections and really build a new life here.”

Rootes said her experience has reshaped how she looks at life, giving her the ability to appreciate the small things that often go unnoticed.

“Losing everything, literally everything except for the clothes on my back, taught me the value of life,” Rootes said. “And just how important it is to be grateful for what you have, and how to make the most out of nothing, because I have nothing.”