Chicago's South Side · Open since March 2026
A safe home for every new beginning.
Southside Life House is a maternity home in Chicago. Our pilot apartment is open now, and we are renovating the building next door into a permanent home for fifteen mothers and their children.
The Life House — the 1875 building at the back of our campus, and the building we are renovating.
I need a place to stay
You are pregnant or newly a mother, and you need somewhere safe to live. No referral needed, and nothing to pay.
Start here →I want to help build it
The building is ours and debt-free, the drawings are done, and the work is priced. Here is what is left.
See the plan →What is happening right now
Our pilot opened in March 2026 in an apartment on our campus. A mother lives there today, supported by a program director who is a registered nurse and caseworker with more than thirty years of experience.
The pilot is small on purpose. It lets us learn how to run a maternity home well — with real mothers, real needs and real mistakes — before we open fifteen apartments. Viola's House in Dallas, which has done this work for years, trains our team.
What supporters have already built
We own our building outright. There is no mortgage on it, so every dollar given goes into the renovation itself, not into real estate.
About $350,000 of supporter money has already gone into pre-development. The design is finished. General contractors have walked the building and priced the work. What remains is construction.
A word about the neighborhood
Chicago City Life Center has served this stretch of the South Side since the early 1990s. We run a preschool across the street. We are not arriving to help; we are already here, and the Life House is the next building on a campus we have been restoring for thirty years.
Space is limited, and we review every inquiry.
If you need housing, reach out — we will tell you honestly what we can and cannot do.