Deborah's Place II is a project that co-locates permanent supportive housing with shelters for women who are homeless. The building, an adaptive reuse of a former church, goods store, and manufacturing facility, was rehabbed in 1994 and opened in 1995. Deborah's Place II provides emergency overnight shelter to 30 women, transitional shelter to 10 women, and permanent supportive housing to 39 women, all of whom are, or have been, homeless. The facility also offers community spaces and a Learning Center to all women living in the building. The Learning Center offers GED classes, tutoring, pre-employment training, computer skills, etc. Additionally, women from all parts of the building can share in weekly community night, prepared dinners in the dining room. The sharing of communal spaces and amenities by all women living in the building assisted in achieving affordability in this project.

This building co-locates permanent housing with shelters for women who are homeless to offer a means for smooth movement between programs and housing for women with changing needs. This program increases the odds that long-term residents of the shelter will be able to access permanent housing. At the time this building opened, in 1995, 1/4 of Deborah’s Place residents had lived in the shelter for 8 years or more. Co-location was seen as a way to offer these women permanent housing while allowing them to maintain the community they had come to depend upon. The program has served as a model that other organizations have been able to study in developing new models of affordable housing. For instance, in 1998, the Corporation for Supportive Housing published a case study "Under One Roof: Lessons Learned from Co-locating Overnight, Transitional and Permanent Housing at Deborah's Place!" This study describes the unique opportunities and challenges that co-location offers for use by other organizations that might be interested in creating co-located housing.

Deborah's Place relied heavily on donated materials and equipment for this project. Quilting guilds throughout the state of Illinois donated quilts that were hung on the wails to provide a sense of color and warmth to the building. People throughout the city donated linens through a series of showers. Crate & Barrel donated dishes. Appliances were donated by a trade show at McCormick Center. Deborah's Place initiated a capital campaign and raised $1.8 million to support the project. Many people who contributed financially to the project also found ways to donate more directly by volunteering to help with setting up the shelters and apartment units or by working on enlisting others in supporting the project.

Permit fees for the project were waived by the City of Chicago. In addition, Deborah's Place secured a property tax exemption that allowed other operating expenses, such as janitorial and maintenance activities, to be better funded.

The Architect charged below market fees. The Contractor donated services that equaled the value of the elevator that was installed in the building. The American Society of Interior Designers' Community Service Committee offered pro bono interior design services.

The City of Chicago Department of Housing and the Illinois Housing Development Authority offered no-interest loans for the rehabilitation of the property and Project-Based Section 8 subsidies were secured from HUD to ensure the affordability of the project to the women who would live in the permanent supportive housing units.

Contain construction and lifecycle costs:

The permanent supportive housing units are Single Room Occupancy Units (SRO) and per City of Chicago occupancy standards, are no larger than 250 square feet. Since these living units are smaller than typical efficiency apartments in Chicago the construction cost per unit was minimized.

Choosing durable construction materials and contract furnishings reduced lifecycle costs. All furnishings were chosen for both aesthetic and hardwearing qualities. Apartment unit furniture is solid wood and, should the need arise due to misuse, parts of the furniture can be repaired or replaced. For example, if a tenant were to carve their name into the wood and it were a shallow indentation, the wood could be sanded and sealed. If, on the other hand, the indentation were very deep, a new top or side of the piece of furniture could be ordered and switched with the damaged section. Additionally, whenever possible fabric or soft touch vinyl was used in lieu of vinyl. Whenever fabric was used on furniture the cushions were treated with a moisture barrier and the fabric was removable for each cleaning.

The construction cost was also minimized through the shared use of common spaces and facilities by both shelter participants and apartment tenants.

Adapt to household changes:

The building was developed to meet the changing needs of women requiring its services. Women can move into whichever housing and program fits her needs at the time; the building adapts to the women rather than the women needing to adapt to the building. For instance, women can move into the building by entering the overnight shelter, the transitional shelter or the permanent supportive housing units. Additionally, women can move from one shelter to the other, and from shelter to housing, and in extreme situations, from housing to shelter.

Be universally accessible:

The building is completely accessible to women with disabilities, both physical and mental. The shelters and the housing units are wheelchair accessible and adaptable for women with hearing and/or vision disabilities.

Meet high standard of aesthetic quality:

Every attempt was made to create a building that conveys a sense of graciousness and homelike atmosphere while still using more institutional and durable materials. The pro bono services of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) were critical to achieving this end. They assisted with color and furniture selection, drew up furniture layout plans, and assisted with hanging quilts throughout the building. The use of quilts, donated by quilting guilds throughout the state, provided a warm and "homey" decorative element to the building while also using a traditional women's art form in a building serving solely women.

Gallery 37, an employment program for youth in Chicago, also provided pro bono services to the project. Gallery 37 trains students from the Chicago Pubic School System in the arts and then pays them as interns to create art over the summer. Deborah's Place was proud to have the first public art project created by Gallery 37 students. They designed a sculpture that was then fabricated and installed on the side of the building, between the entrance to the shelter and the entrance to the apartments.

Students from the School of the Art Institute designed plaques that were installed in the building to designate rooms and areas where donors had contributed to the capital campaign to underwrite their cost. These beautiful plaques included basic information while allowing students the artistic freedom to design aesthetically pleasing, original signs for the various rooms.