Ignatia House

About Ignatia House

Ignatia House, Chicago, Illinois, is the sober living operator behind a women's recovery residence in Cook County.

The Idea the Organization Is Built On

The organization built its identity around the phrase Women Helping Women In Recovery. Peer relationships between women, rather than a service handed to residents, are what the operator names first when it describes what it does. That ordering tells a referring counselor what the organization believes does the work: the other residents.

How the Program Runs

Ignatia House is organized as a small group living arrangement, which the operator describes as a healing and supportive space where each resident can begin her recovery journey. Members of the house attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings hosted at Ignatia House and meetings elsewhere in the community, so the operator's reach extends past the one address it runs. Hosting meetings on site and sending residents out to others gives a woman two settings rather than one, and it keeps the household tied into the wider recovery community across Chicago.

Access Regardless of Ability to Pay

Ignatia House is committed to never turning a potential resident away based solely on her inability to pay. Among recovery housing providers, a published position of that kind is something a family can hold the organization to. It also changes who reaches the door, because a woman leaving treatment without savings, and the social worker arranging her discharge, can approach this operator without settling the money question first.

Governance and Funding

The Ignatia Foundation is run by a volunteer board of directors and exists solely to fund Ignatia House. The operator's finances and its housing are one undertaking, overseen by a board that serves without pay. A foundation with a single purpose has nothing else competing for what it raises, and that is the arrangement that makes the position on cost workable.

Serving Women Across Chicago

Chicago is the seat of Cook County, and this operator works from the city's north side. Women searching for Ignatia House sober homes there, or comparing recovery housing providers across Cook County, are looking at an operator organized around women's peer support and an open door on cost.