It’s Saturday morning, and two dozen guests are sitting down to breakfast at Woodlawn’s Living Room Cafe. A bowl of fresh fruit salad is served as a starter, followed by heaping platters of pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs with cheese and vegetables. At various tables in the large storefront dining room–brightened by a colorful tile mosaic covering one of the walls–guests chat cheerfully with one another. But after breakfast is finished something strange happens: the diners volunteer to help clear and wash dishes.
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The Living Room Cafe, at 6422 S. Cottage Grove, is an unusual operation. Not only do the patrons chip in to clean up, but they’re all members of the cafe’s social-services program, designed to help people who are homeless or close to it stabilize their lives, find permanent housing, and develop job skills. The Living Room was founded in 1995 by Jennifer Kihm, a University of Chicago social-services grad student who patterned her establishment after Uptown’s Inspiration Cafe.
While larger nonprofits and corporate organizations like the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Kraft, and the U. of C. have regularly provided food, grants, and volunteers to support the Living Room’s operations, local small businesses have also been important to the organization’s ongoing success. Medici on 57th, for example, has donated a meal every week for the past seven years. “We try to support organizations in our neighborhood,” says Medici manager Kirsten Schley. “We send over a dinner every Wednesday night and rotate the menu–sometimes lasagna, other weeks a dozen pizzas.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Kevin Weinstein.
