With the help of key partners, Project NOW this past winter served 302 unhoused people in a temporary shelter in Moline, and found year-round housing for 86 of them, a success rate quadruple that of another 12-week shelter it ran last year.
Project NOW CEO Rev. Dwight Ford celebrated the results with some of those partners and noted challenges remaining at a press conference at the community action agency’s headquarters in downtown Rock Island Tuesday, April 28.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said of the urgent need for not only a winter overflow shelter, but a permanent homeless shelter for the region. “The need is ongoing. This work does not end when winter does.”
The shelter in a downtown Moline city-owned building had a capacity of 60, and Project NOW also provided shelter in local hotels serving about 25 a day, and this year was open Jan. 21 to April 15, 2026, seven days a week, served by a staff of 12, plus volunteers.
Last year, Project NOW operated a temporary shelter at its former Rock Island building, also over 12 weeks, when it housed 180 unduplicated individuals, and found secure housing for 14 of them.
“Shelter also helps individuals secure a future, meaning that they can actually move beyond the shelter reality into a place of stabilized housing and to move themselves and families forward in their own goals and commitments of moving up the economic ladder, securing the employment or places of abode that they choose,” Ford said Tuesday.
“As you know, this is a collaborative effort. It takes a whole lot of people and organizations to do what has been done over the 12 weeks,” he said, crediting partners MetroLINK (for free bus passes), the city of Molline, Robert Young Mental Health Center, Salvation Army, Christian Care, and the Third Place drop-in center in downtown Rock Island.
The Moline shelter was called “Lift NOW” because “we believe that our best work is lifting individuals. It's hard to live life when you have been pushed to the ground,” Ford said. “Sometimes people can feel lower than a footprint. Our goal is to lift them to the best of our work that is human-centered, to encourage them in the steps that they must take to stand with them. When they make bold and courageous decisions and step out on something that sometimes doesn't materialize until they step, it's a regional effort.”
Project NOW plans to continue offering the winter shelter next season (in an as-yet-to-be determined site) from Dec. 1, 2026 to April 15, 2027, while working toward a year-round facility.
“Housing is the anchor to all other opportunities. It's hard to talk to a person about education or employment when they're trying to figure out where they're going to sleep,” Ford noted.
“When their children are in tow with them and they are sleeping in a car in a Walmart parking lot, trying to not be identified as they fear their children will be taken from them. And sometimes the only thing that keeps that mother or father's heartbeat still pounding in their chest is the fact that they have those little ones looking toward them and they keep fighting for a better day.”
No less than 7,000 additional affordable rental units are needed in the Quad Cities, and a main driver of homelessness is cost (not mental illness or substance abuse), Project NOW’s chief said. Of the 302 people served this year (a total of 4,182 shelter nights), 150 were white, 120 were Black; the youngest was two months old and oldest was 81. Forty-two percent of clients had mental health disorders, and 36% were survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and/or human trafficking.
“With a lack of affordable rental properties here in the area, we need much more infill and the prospects and possibilities of having places people can afford to live in, which is a major contributor to people not being housed when people just can't afford to stay,” Ford said. “We have to solve it as a region and we have to be prepared to have hard, tough, long, lengthy dialogues and conversation. We don't run from the challenge; we should run to it. And that's why we're marathoners around here. We're long-distance runners. Nothing gets solved overnight.”
Success through strengthened partnerships
Ford and Project NOW chief operating officer Ron Lund said partnerships and more supportive services this year led to much improved results.
“Partnerships matter. The biggest change that we did this year versus last year when we were in Rock Island, we really were in the hub of service providers,” Lund said of the larger Moline space, which required consistent bus service and MetroLINK provided everyone a free 30-day unlimited ride pass for each month.
Catered meals every weekend and case management services on site from Robert Young were essential, Ford said.
“What gave us the best chance is competent, capable staff members that individuals learn to trust when they were with us,” he said. “They’re not going to be made to feel as if they're worthless and have no value to our shared humanity. But they form relationships who played cards and laughed because they're still fully human. They just happen to be unhoused. And folks were able to move forward, get employed.
“Sometimes we forget that there are people that sleep with us during the shelter season and go to work every day,” Ford said. “Sometimes they will only open up to you when they feel safer and that they believe that you're working toward their best interest.”
Project NOW and Salvation Army could find four times the number of housing units compared to last year also because of work with flexible landlords. Salvation Army placed 11 families (31 people total) in hotels in Davenport and Moline they use as subsidized shelters (from federal, state and grant funds).
“There are property owners that we build relationships with and they make decisions differently than what they did the year prior based upon them now knowing the need,” Ford said. “There are subsidies that we can provide and support those property owners so that the check is being cut from us. And that allows the person to be able to get on their feet and sustain themselves and gives them a fresh start and a lift from the place that they were in.”
“A misnomer is that the majority of the folks that are experiencing homelessness have mental illness or they're addicted. That's just not true. The number of people that far majority of individuals becoming unstable is that they can't afford where they're staying,” he said. “And if you fall one month behind, you're probably going to fall two months behind. Then you look up, you don't get your deposit, you get evicted, then you got first, last and a deposit to pay. Then you have to try to navigate.”
Cathy Jordan, Project NOW’s director of housing stability and homeless prevention, said those relationships with landlords and realtors are vital to success.
“We had many landlords say, you know what, I'll lower the rent or I'll throw the utilities together,” she said. “As soon as they get a unit available, they call us first. So it's through a networking effect of seeing the work that the team does but standing behind the commitment that we're going to pay the rent on time.
“It was a huge improvement over before. People were very skeptical last year, at least from my perspective,” Jordan added. “And we needed another year of traction and of data to tell that we do good work in the team and the collaborative partners are amazing people. So the community is behind us. We just had to find the right landlords.”
One set of landlords also had personal family experience of homelessness, she noted, and pooled money from family estates, to help lower rents for this year’s shelter residents.
Providing salvation for the season
Kelle Larned, program & operations director for the local Salvation Army, said this year “was no different in terms of need, but it was powerful in terms of what we were able to do together.”
The 11 families she helped find permanent shelter at hotels “faced a very real possibility of returning to the streets, losing not just shelter, but stability, safety and hope,” she said.
“Instead, because of the partnership, through the 31 individuals, those 11 families were able to transition directly into our shelter program at the Salvation Army. They didn't fall through the cracks. They didn't become invisible.
“They now have a bed support and a path forward. This is what we hope you take with you,” Larned said. “This is not just a winter story. This is a story about commitment, about what happens when a community shows up, not just in moments of crisis, but in what comes after. Behind these numbers are parents working to protect their children, families rebuilding after hardship, people taking meaningful steps towards stability, connecting with services, addressing barriers, and moving toward permanent housing. This is what partnership looks like.
“Project NOW provided critical lifesaving support during the coldest months,” she added. “And we are honored to continue that care as these families move forward. But the need is ongoing. And stories like this matter because they remind us that this work doesn't end when winter does. We ask you to share not just the numbers, but the people behind them, because when our community understands the impact, they become part of the solution.”
Jordan of Project NOW related three of those stories. One shelter resident was an 80-year-old man whose Social Security was hacked, he lost his money and was no longer able to stay with friends.
“He sought shelter with us at the Lift NOW center and from that we were able to coordinate and pull him from the Coordinated Entry list,” which the Northwest Illinois Continuum of Care has to help people find affordable housing.
“When we were able to meet with him, we secured the funds for first month's rent and deposit and he is living securely now,” Jordan said, noting he wants to repay Project NOW. Another person helped was a single mother of two who escaped domestic violence.
"The reality is when parents don't have a safe place to call home, their children are targets. What we found with her was she had no place to have a schedule to take care of her children,” she said. “We were able to get her secured in subsidized housing and while she is working on building her income, she is working with a local housing authority in an apartment. So we are extremely thankful for that.”
Another single parent going through divorce also was broke, ended up in the Salvation Army shelter, and was terrified, Jordan said.
“We have an amazing team of caseworkers in my department that were able to help her quickly sign up for benefits through the state to stabilize her household,” she said, noting she got into an opening at Spring Valley Village through Moline Housing Authority.
“What we find is they are very grateful to a community that cared to provide a shelter; for the caseworkers that were resourceful for what they needed,” Jordan added. “But we restored something greater than anything could. It was their faith in humanity that people do care in our community. And we're going to work hard to make sure that everyone has a place to call home.”
Coordinating needed care
Amanda Erwin, the Northwest Illinois Continuum of Care coordinator, serves a 15-county area, helping secure funding, review applications and offer training.
Unhoused people can get assessed every 60 days, and are notified when there is housing open. Of the 302 people served in the Moline shelter, 162 are on the Coordinated Entry waiting list.
“But agencies like Salvation Army and Project NOW are working every day to make sure that those people who are waiting are comfortable, have the lifesaving items that they need like food and water and clothes through street outreach that they can come in and get utility assistance if they need it,” Erwin said.
“We're especially proud of things like coordination with behavioral health providers. Robert Young was on site to assist folks who could benefit from behavioral health assistance.”
“The folks who stayed in shelter and the folks who sleep on the street -- if they did not enter homelessness with a mental health condition, the anxiety and fear, frustration and devastation of homelessness, anxiety and depression come part and parcel to the experience of homelessness,” she said.
Kris Downey, Project NOW’s shelter director, credited the state of Illinois for work on homeless prevention, and funding needed programs for the homeless. They’re supporting House Bill 1429 (currently in committee) that would prohibit the state or a unit of local government from creating or enforcing policies or ordinances imposing fines or criminal penalties against people experiencing unsheltered homelessness for occupying or engaging in life-sustaining activities on public property.
“And you are seeing an explosion of ordinances across the state to essentially make homelessness illegal in the state. So there are some challenges,” Downey said.
Of the Moline shelter, “It was such a successful season and we're sad to see the shelter closed but we hope to have another success next year,” she said.
Continue working in tandem
Ford emphasized this work is never done.
“There's still so much more to be accomplished. But the idea is that we are in dialogue and building those deep needed relationships so that we can have a strong foundation,” he said.
“Whether we're talking about real estate property owners or talking about valued partners that have additional sets of programming, it's all based on the idea that we're not a solo and a silo operation, that we are working in tandem with others.”
“Our goal is to be able to do another year of the winter overflow, low-barrier shelter. When I say another year because it's going to take a long-term commitment to be able to go from the season that starts December 1st to a year-round,” Ford said. “Our goal has always been to operate a year-round shelter…The region deserves it, it needs it. The people are depending on something that doesn't have to end. Most of our shelter networks are already at capacity. They already have long waiting lists.”
He estimates the QC region has about 1,200 unhoused people on the streets every day.
“We’re still fighting today and the tendency of humanity is to go back to what we've always done, rather than thinking about what we can do regardless of the budget that we have,” Ford said. “We never envision a future starting with what our budget will cover. We envision the future, then go build the budget to match what we envision.
“If not, we will always be narrow and confined,” he said, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We’re wasting and degrading human life, clinging on to old ways of thinking. Nothing about poverty cannot be solved in our lifetime.”
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