A couple with a four-year-old daughter who are recent migrants from Venezuela will be moving into the parsonage of Riverside Presbyterian Church later this month.
The goal is for the family to move into their new living quarters by Feb. 23. The parsonage, or manse, as Presbyterians call it, is part of the church building but has a separate entrance.
The family now lives at one of the shelters in Oak Park, which has taken steps to house groups of migrants who had been staying at or outside a police station in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago until they were brought to the village hall on Halloween.
The family will be supported by the Riverside Area Refugee Resettlement Team, a local group that was founded in 2021 and grew out of joint work of the Riverside Presbyterian Church and Ascension Lutheran Church in Riverside. It has helped settle and support refugees in the Chicago area for about a decade.
“The two churches have worked together now for a dozen years on refugee resettlement,” said Lynda Nadkarni, a leader of the Riverside Area Refugee Resettlement Team and the Coordinator of Children’s Ministries for Riverside Presbyterian Church. Some members of the Riverside Area Resettlement Team are not connected to either church.
The manse is part of the church building and is on two levels. Pastors of the church have not lived there for about 25 years after parsonages lost favor among Protestant ministers who preferred to own their homes to build up equity.
Doug Asbury, 74, a retired Methodist minister, has lived in one room of the parsonage since he retired from his position as the minister at Riverside United Methodist Church in 2014. Asbury will stay in his one room and will share the kitchen with the new family.
“We’ll figure out something about using the kitchen space,” said Asbury, who also is a member of the Riverside Area Refugee Resettlement team.
The family’s living space will consist of two, second-floor bedrooms and a dining room, as well as use of the kitchen on the first floor.
Upon arriving at Oak Park Village Hall on Halloween, migrants were briefly housed at Good Shepard Lutheran Church in Oak Park before moving on to the Carleton Hotel and the West Cook YMCA. But the migrants must leave those spaces by the end of the month. Good Shepard Rev. Kathy Nolte contacted Ascension minister Chris Honig about possibly housing a family. Ascension no longer has a parsonage, but passed on the information to Riverside Presbyterian.
In late January, Riverside Presbyterian’s governing board, called the Session, approved housing the family in the manse, although some members of the Session had reservations. But the majority of the Session supported the idea, and the decision to house the family was announced to the congregation at services Jan. 28.
“We have strangers here in need of shelter and we are welcoming them into our home,” said Session member Mary Beth Wynn.
Wynn said that providing a place to live for the family fits the church’s mission.
“This is part of our mission,” Wynn said. “We are a Matthew 25 church trying to follow Christ’s word that when you do things for the least of thee you do them for him.”
Because the church is located in an area zoned residential village officials had no problems with the arrangement.
Nadkarni said that the family will be allowed to live in the manse until the end of the 2024-25 school year so that the little girl can complete her kindergarten year next year in a stable residence.
The resettlement team will provide mentoring and financial support for the family as they adjust to life in the United States.
“We have collected donations in the form of gift cards for various stores and the mentors will be working with them to take them to Aldi and take them to Walgreens and the like,” Nadkarni said.
Nadkarni said that the cost of hosting the family should be minimal, mostly limited to a small increase in the utility bill.
Furniture has also been donated to furnish the living space. Much of the space in the manse has been used for storage over the past two decades.
The family was not made available for an interview with the Landmark and little personal information about the family so far has been released.
Nadkarni said that the family is applying to stay in the United States.
“This family is on a legal path to stay in the United States and we are going to support them in this journey,” Nadkarni said.
Volunteers will be busy the next few weeks clearing out and furnishing the rooms that are now used for storage.
“We’ve got a lot of cleaning to do,” Nadkarni said.