The house that love built

The story behind Courage MKE's chosen family

“I call it the house that love built.”

Brad Schlaikowski knows it’s corny, but he can’t think of a more accurate way to describe Courage House — a group home on Milwaukee’s south side that opened in 2019 and is dedicated to homeless and displaced LGBTQ teenagers — and the C2 Apartments, which opened in 2024 to serve as transitional housing for 18-24-year-old LGBTQ young people as they age out of the foster care system.

Brad, who co-founded Courage Initiative Ltd. along with his husband, Nick, in 2015, describes the houses that way because — from their first surprisingly successful fundraiser to years of work sharing their mission — the bulk of the nonprofit’s donations have come directly from members of the community.

“Our main mission has always been to wake the community up to the problem right in our backyard, of queer kids sleeping on the streets or being housed in places that aren’t accepting,” Brad said. “From the beginning, people were literally throwing money at us, so we made enough money in two years from those donations of $5, $10, $20, maybe $50, to pay cash for a house that we opened in March of 2019.

“It was the community that built those houses.”

‘Courage was born’

Brad often tells the origin story of Courage — how he and Nick were sitting in their living room in August 2015, talking about the LGBTQ teenagers they had fostered, how “crummy it is for these kids,” and how “the LGBTQ community needs to do better for queer homeless youth.”

Brad told me about the light bulb moment he had when the idea of starting a group home for LGBTQ youth came to him.

“I must have had some kind of look on my face because I looked at Nick, and he might as well have said ‘Oh, God,’” Brad said, laughing.

Nick asked Brad to “pump the brakes” for a minute before they jumped headlong into opening a group home. He suggested that maybe they could start smaller.