With temperatures this weekend expected to dip into the negative digits, area homeless shelters and villages are readying space to ensure no one is forced to sleep outside in the potentially lethal weather.

Weather in the Chicago area is expected to drop to between 7 and -8 degrees Saturday and lows will continue to be in the single digits until Wednesday.

“When it’s this frigid, we don’t turn people away,” said Carol Simler, executive director of Public Action to Deliver Shelter, an organization committed to ending homelessness in DuPage County.

PADS has a 140-bed capacity during the winter, and operates three shelters nightly rotating between Downers Grove, Naperville, Clarendon Hills, Lombard, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Roselle, Itasca, Wood Dale, Bensonville, Villa Park and West Chicago.

Monday night at St. Mary of Gostyn in Downers Grove the shelter filled to its 50 person capacity and had to transfer seven people to other shelters, said Charmaine Schieler, volunteer coordinator. Some who have to be transferred will opt to sleep in cars or at the train station, Schieler said.

The plummeting temperatures could also activate Downers Grove’s cold weather emergency plan, which opens public space to people seeking a place to sleep and offers transportation to get there if the outdoor weather drops bellow 20 degrees and inside temperatures are less than 50 degrees. A cold weather emergency plan was last declared by the village in December when a power outage left some homes without heat in severely cold weather, said Downers Grove Communications Director Doug Kozlowski. 

“At any point in time if people experience those conditions, whether it’s been declared an emergency or not, and they’re in need of shelter they should dial 911 and they’ll be directed to the location of a shelter which in most cases will be Village Hall,” he said.

In addition to temporary shelters, PADS offers permanent housing for qualifying candidates. They have 33 leased apartments spread out in Westmont, Downers Grove and Naperville where residents pay 30 percent of their income toward rent, and they are hoping to open more in the summer.

Simler said the problem of homelessness is largely overlooked in DuPage County because of its reputation for affluence.

“Many people don’t realize it even exists in DuPage county. The distinction (of being a wealthy county) masks the hardships and struggle of those in the lower class,” she said.