Joliet rehab housing plan advances – a change of pace

The latest plan to create rehabilitative housing in Joliet moved ahead this week, but not without some tense moments.

Stepping Stones, a treatment center for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse, wants to build housing that would accommodate seven mothers who would be able to stay with their young children while continuing treatment.

Advocates say such housing is rare but needed for mothers who otherwise face a choice between continuing treatment or keeping their children.

“There isn’t another recovery facility for women with kids in the area,” Stepping Stones Executive Director Paul Lauridsen told the city Plan Commission on Thursday. “If people want that, they have to go to southern Illinois or into the city (of Chicago).”

According to Stepping Stones and city staff, the facility wold be the first of its kind in Will County and only the fourth in Illinois.

The commission voted 6-2 to approve plans for the housing, which are scheduled to go to the City Council for a vote at its March 21 meeting.

Commissioner Robert Wunderlich, also running for City Council in the April 4 election, unsuccessfully attempted to table the vote but eventually voted to support the plan.

“I got a few phone calls about this,” Wunderlich told Lauridsen, asking questions about security in case ex-spouses or boyfriends showed up. Wunderlich said the project “is special because of who your clients are.”

Other commission members also raised questions about security and whether the city of Crest Hill, which is on three sides of the site, had been consulted. No one showed up to oppose the plan, and Crest Hill City Treasurer Glen Conklin, also a member of the Stepping Stones board, said city officials were aware of the plan and had not raised objections.

“It’s good,” Lauridsen said after the meeting, acknowledging he was concerned the project would face the kind of opposition that killed three previous plans to provide housing for people with drug problems and facing homelessness.

One of those plans aimed to serve the same need as the Stepping Stones project.

Volunteers of America Illinois in January 2022, dropped its plan to build housing for women recovering from drug addictions on the former Silver Cross Hospital campus as City Manager James Capparelli openly criticized the organization and its project.

MorningStar Mission abandoned two projects for homeless housing amid opposition from city hall.

One would have converted a Larkin Avenue hotel into homeless housing, which was abandoned in March 2021.

MorningStar Mission last year abandoned a plan to build housing for the homeless at the former Briggs Street YMCA after facing opposition by the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals. MorningStar did get approval for its plan to convert the former YMCA building into new youth services.

City hall in recent years has become leery of rehabilitative housing plans, contending that Joliet is too often the location for such housing and questioning why proponents don’t consider neighboring Will County communities.

Advocates for the project have said Joliet, the third largest city in Illinois, is the Will County community with the greatest need.

That concern was not raised with the Stepping Stones plan.

However, Stepping Stones appeared to be prepared for the possibility.

Lauridsen said in his presentation that up to half the clients served at Stepping Stones are from Joliet.

Lauridsen also said the organization has been operating on the site near Plainfield Road and Theodore Street, where the housing would be built, since the early 1990s with a residential facility already in place during presentations to the both the Plan Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals.

The zoning board voted 6-0 for the variance Stepping Stones needs for the project, which also goes to the City Council for final approval.

Zoning board members after the meeting noted the unusual way in which Stepping Stones made its presentation.

Lauridsen did not make an open presentation to the two boards. Instead, he commented directly in response to questions posed by Stepping Stones attorney Ken Carlson in what at times appeared to be the kind of exchange seen in court trials.

Lauridsen later said he was satisfied the way it all turned out.

“They’re going to recommend it,” he said. “It’s good.”