Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (LSSI) collaborates with the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), Habitat for Humanity and other not-for-profit organizations to enable prison inmates to create housing components for homes for low-income families. The project also provides participants with information about housing, employment and other services prior to release, and works with other agencies to help parolees find needed resources and services.

Since 1995, more than 6,000 inmates at 23 federal, state and county correctional centers in Illinois have learned valuable trade skills as they have built components for more than 500 homes. This program offers incarcerated juveniles and adults the opportunity to give back to communities and helps to provide a sense of self-worth that can help inmates to live productive, law-abiding lives after their release from prison.

Fast Facts

• In 2000, Building Homes: Rebuilding Lives received the 2000 Community Partnership Award from the Mutual of America Foundation. This national award recognizes LSSI’s community partnership with Habitat for Humanity International and the Illinois Department of Corrections.
• In 2001, the walls for the Cairo Women’s Shelter were constructed at the Hardin County Work Camp and the Illinois Youth Center at Harrisburg.
• In 2002, inmates at the Hanna City Work Camp built an entire house. Called Partnership House, it was transported to a site in Sterling, where it currently is home for two adults in Intermittent CILA (Community Integrated Living Arrangement) program.
• In 2002 and 2003, inmates at Hardin Count Work Camp constructed six sets of wall sections for an affordable housing development built by East Side Heart and Home in East St. Louis.
• In 2004, inmates at Taylorville Correctional Center constructed interior and exterior walls for a duplex at the Midwest Mission Distribution Center in Chatham. The duplex houses volunteers for the center, which distributes supplies to disaster victims.
• Also in 2004, the construction class at Hardin County Work Camp constructed wall sections for an affordable home financed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program.
• In 2005, inmates at the Taylorville Correction Center fabricated walls for the first three houses of a project to build homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina in Shreveport, La. In addition, inmates from four correctional facilities and work camps built the exterior walls for eight of the homes erected in the Millard and Linda Fuller Blitz Build in Shreveport in 2006.
• In 2007, Building Homes: Rebuilding Lives received the Lutheran Services of America Award of Excellence.

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