Some 23 Park Forest homeowners will meet at 10 a.m. this Thursday at Dining on the Green in the village’s downtown to talk about their homes.
Instead of complaining about taxes, moaning about property values or whining about village services, this gathering is a victory party, celebrating needed repairs and renovations.
And, by the way, it came with no cost to owners.
Each year, both a Chicago suburb and a Chicago neighborhood are selected for these services. This year, Chicago’s Englewood community and Park Forest got the nod.
To qualify, one needed to live in the Cook County section of Park Forest, own or live in a house and meet low-income guidelines. Shirley McCormick will be one of the homeowners attending the party.
Shirley McCormick (Penny Shnay/for Daily Southtown)
The work was done in a long day Saturday, April 27, by skilled workers through Cook County’s Rebuilding Together Metro Chicago, a program designed to meet the sometimes challenges of keeping older, disabled and low-income residents in their homes. The organization raises private funds for building materials and manages the planning of a volunteer effort for more than1,500 people.
This program is part of National Rebuilding Day, a nationwide program designed to work with communities, in which volunteers with expertise in various areas of home improvement are organized and trained to repair homes and improve neighborhoods.
This year, the program itself sponsored six homes in Park Forest for renovation, while Cook County covered the cost of repairs to two homes in need of the most serious repairs.
Teams of volunteers working to improve neighborhoods of residents with the other 15 site repairs were underwritten by churches, professional and civic organizations. The homes extend from Farragut Street near the village’s northern border of U.S. 30 to a home on Monee Road to the south
Shirley McCormick, 76, a retired hospital worker living on Neola Street for the last 24 years, qualified. Her “work captain,” Dan Williams, met with her earlier in April.
“He asked me what I needed,” she said, “and I told him.”
Shirley uses a wheeled walker to get around so a ramp at her front door was a priority. Then came her other needs, including a new back door, repairs to the living room floor at the front door, new paint in two rooms, new kitchen cabinetry, a laundry room floor and new fencing on two sides of her property after a tree toppled onto one fence during a thunderstorm.
She thought she was rattling off a large wish list and that anything they did would be good enough.
In an astonished voice she said, “they did what I asked them to do.”
The new cabinetry installed April 27, 2024, at Shirley McCormick’s home in Park Forest. (Penny Shnay/for Daily Southtown)
What was done was done in a day as a team of volunteers worked from 7 a.m.to nearly 6 p.m. at and on her house. Now, she says, she is looking forward to attending that Thursday celebration.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Park Forest Mayor Joe Woods were on hand for the workday to talk about the program.
While Preckwinkle focused on such things as new windows, kitchen “elements” and even landscaping and plantings, Woods said that “the desire to live in a warm, safe, and independent community is the very thing that binds us as a people and as a community. This is what community participation feels like.”
With a different city and suburban area chosen each year, the 23 homeowners in Park Forest and another 44 in Englewood who now enjoy the benefits of a better, sturdier, more comfortable home are like drops of water for the needs for the aging, income-limited needs of the parched areas of the city and suburbs.
Jerry Shnay, at jerryshnay@gmail.com, is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
