EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — After five decades of service, a Metro East nonprofit called Call For Help is closing for good at the end of September.
“I was shocked,” Larita Rice-Barnes said.
As a former employee, Rice-Barnes said she can’t believe the nonprofit is closing its doors.
“The services that they have provided over the decades ... that they have existed ... have been very important to residents of the Metro East,” Rice-Barnes, executive director of Metro East Organizing Coalition, said.
Acting Interim Executive Director Mike Colligan posted a statement on the Call For Help website and announced the organization would cease services by the end of September following the resolution of legal and financial obligations.
“There’s such a great need ... so for us to lose a partner who has championed the cause with us to end homelessness to be able to provide a better life to the individuals of this community,” Hugh Rogers of Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation said. “To not have that, now our workload is greater.”
“People are one paycheck away from being in trouble,” Patricia Hograbe, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Outreach Center, said.
Organizations such as Catholic Urban Programs are stepping up to help support those in need.
“We welcome the clients that will come through Call For Help to come here and get rental assistance and first months rent and security deposit and utilities paid,” Toni Muhammad said. “We need to figure out the 24 months of supportive services that those families were getting.”
The reopening of the St. Vincent de Paul of Belleville shelter could help ease the burden in the short term.
“We can serve up to 100 people per night,” Hograbe said. “It just means that we’re busier. We have to do more. Resources are very stretched.”
“It’s difficult,” Rice-Barnes said. “East St. Louis by itself already suffers from underresourced development and lack of implementation of programs.”