The Selfhelp Home

The Selfhelp Home is an active and engaging not-for-profit senior living community designed to accommodate the needs of elderly Jewish residents throughout the Chicago area.

The Selfhelp Home can be your home no matter what your individual needs. Residents are able to:

Live independently
Receive assisted living services in the comfort of their own apartment
Obtain comprehensive skilled nursing & rehabilitative care
Access a full continuum of state-of-the-art health care services onsite.

When you live at Selfhelp, you’ll find an inviting atmosphere, a vibrant lifestyle and friendly people with similar likes and interests. Most importantly, you will receive the care you need from staff members who are committed to ensuring your comfort and residents who help each other move through the various passages in life.

The Selfhelp Home has been in existence for 76 years. Our Nursing Home maintains the highest possible rating from the US Government. The Selfhelp Home of Chicago is among the Best Nursing Homes by U.S. News & World Report for 2014!

A Little History of Our Home:

1935 the SelfHelp Organization began in New York City by a group of German emigres who got together and discussed the need to help the many refugees who escaped the Nazi tyranny in Europe.

In 1938 this group came to the neighborhood known as Hyde Park, on Chicago’s South
Side, at the time it was the hub of Chicago’s German Jewish immigrant life. Their goal
was to help others like themselves start a new life. Many penniless in a strange country, Selfhelp was a social service agency helping people with jobs, housing, child care, language and a variety of other services .

In 1949 Selfhelp was incorporated as a not for profit organization and in 1950 they purchased an old Drexel Boulevard ‘Mansion’ that was converted into the Selfhelp House, a home for the aged to accommodate 19 residents.

The home represented a new place to call home in America that was comfortable and affordable, offering companionship and family life. Selfhelp has given refuge to more than 1,000 victims of Nazi persecutions from Central Europe, during its 76 years.

Today, SelfHelp carries many of the same warm traditions such as our Sunday classical music concerts and we serve the greater Jewish community. Selfhelp was once was a place that restored the dignity in those that had lost it during the war, and today Selfhelp still carries the same philosophy that provides a warm and caring environment.