By Atmika Iyer
For Capitol News Illinois
and Medill Illinois News Bureau
[email protected]
CHICAGO – With homelessness increasing in Illinois, a coalition of shelter providers and advocates is calling for a $100 million increase in state funding to prevent homelessness and provide shelter to people without homes.
That would come on top of the $290 million the state is spending this year on homelessness services.
Advocates hope the new funding can build on lessons the state learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in opening new shelters and accommodations that better meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
The coalition known as the Illinois Shelter Alliance sent a letter to Gov. JB Pritzker in December, making the request ahead of the new General Assembly’s January inauguration. But finding new state money for any programs will be a tough sell in Springfield this year, with the state facing a $3.2 billion shortfall for the new fiscal year that begins in July.
“Over the course of every general assembly, we get a lot of letters from advocates. It’s their job, and it’s something that they feel passionately about, asking for more funding for virtually anything you can imagine,” Pritzker said when asked about the funding at a news conference in his office on Wednesday. “But in the context of a more challenging budget, it’s always difficult to meet everybody’s demands.”
Homelessness increasing
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Illinois more than doubled between 2023 and 2024, according to federal data released this month. Most of that increase was a result of migrants who came to Chicago—many of them on buses chartered by Texas state agencies. That influx of newcomers has since subsided.
But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development noted that the number of people experiencing homelessness also increased in most of the rest of the state, too. The federal report attributed that growth to a lack of affordable housing, increased shelter capacity, extreme cold that brought people into shelter when the count was conducted last January and a rising cost of living that came while federal pandemic aid ended.
Many shelter providers say lack of affordable housing in the state has kept people from moving from the streets to shelters and then into more permanent housing. Last month, Pritzker created a new position in his administration tasked with increasing the supply of affordable housing in the state. The governor also revived the SmartBuy program, which provides financial assistance for student loan relief and affordable mortgages for home buyers.
Pritzker also noted his administration has increased funding for Home Illinois, a collaboration between state agencies and service providers that aims to end homelessness. It received a $90 million increase in fiscal year 2024 compared to the previous year.
“Governor Pritzker strongly believes growing the state’s economy requires lower housing costs and increasing supply in every community. Home Illinois, the governor’s first-of-its-kind statewide endeavor, brings together state agencies, nonprofit organizations, advocates and people with lived experience to take an aggressive approach to preventing and ending homelessness,” his spokesperson, Alex Gough, said in a statement. “Through this partnership, we will work to find solutions so that every Illinoisan has access to essential housing and support.”
Pandemic-sparked changes
Before the pandemic, there weren’t many permanent homeless shelters in Illinois outside of Chicago, Rockford and Aurora, said Doug Kenshol, executive director of South Suburban Public Action to Deliver Shelter, or PADS. That left the job of providing pop-up shelter for sleeping through the night largely to churches and temples.
But the nature of the pandemic required less congregate and more isolated forms of shelter to mitigate the spread of the virus.
Organizations like PADS used federal funding from the 2021 pandemic relief law known as the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA—as well as other grant funding—to purchase properties themselves and create non-congregate housing across the state.
The new approach improved constituents’ mental and physical health, safety and ability to find resources to help them find employment, job training and more, Kenshol said.
When the federal pandemic money for shelters was about to run out two years ago, the Pritzker administration used state money to continue those services.
“The Pritzker administration stepped up and saved the day by providing an $85 million increase in homeless service funding two years ago,” Kenshol said. “So we didn’t fall off a cliff and lose all of that shelter capacity.”
Last month, though, the coalition of advocates and shelter providers asked Pritzker to include another $100 million in his upcoming budget proposal. They said the money would help address a statewide shortage of 4,236 emergency shelter beds and to prevent people from losing their homes.
“To eliminate this emergency shelter bed deficit will require consistent, annual, significant new state budget investments to support the ETH (emergency and transitional housing) Program for next fiscal year and many years to come,” the advocates from the Illinois Shelter Alliance wrote in their letter. “While $100 million is a substantial investment, it is not nearly as costly as the alternative.”
Many providers said the goal of the $100 million increase is to direct a substantial amount of funding toward emergency and transitional housing while also funding prevention resources and street outreach to address homelessness in its various stages.
“One of the reasons why we have this significant request for not just one activity, it’s four activities: street outreach, emergency shelter, keeping people in their homes, prevention resources so they’re not falling into the street,” said Lynda Schueler, CEO of Housing Forward, a faith organization providing shelter in suburban Cook County.
High cost of homelessness
The alliance pointed to a July report from the Illinois Department of Public Health that laid out the high costs of homelessness.
The agency found a 10- to 20-year reduction in lifespan in people experiencing homelessness, a 36% increase in deaths of people experiencing homelessness since the start of the pandemic and almost three times the number of people experiencing homelessness murdered in comparison to the general population. It also found the cost in medical care of people experiencing homelessness was more than $16 billion from 2017-2022.
“On the back end, we’re paying this outrageous amount for their medical care,” Kenshol said. “How could we reverse this and provide more prevention? Invest that money in housing and shelter so that when we don’t have to spend $16 billion in medical care, we can prevent the flu, we can prevent pneumonia, we can prevent someone from getting frostbite and having their fingers and toes amputated.”
The alliance’s request includes $40 million for emergency and transitional housing.
According to Home Illinois’ most recent report in October, “On any given night in Illinois, an estimated 25,806 people are experiencing literal homelessness—that is, living in shelters and transitional housing programs, in parks and abandoned buildings, in cars and in barns. In addition to Illinois residents who are experiencing literal homelessness, tens of thousands of Illinois families live temporarily and unstably with family and friends.”
April Redzic, president and CEO of DuPage PADS, said her organization doubled the number of beds it could provide at the onset of the pandemic by buying property for non-congregate shelters. Doing so proved more effective for serving women and children escaping domestic violence, getting unsheltered children connected with schools and keeping families together.
“We discovered that that model was super effective, not only for mental health and physical health outcomes being better, but also we were able to get kids into school, and we were able to make sure families were safe and more stable. And that was really incredible,” Redzic said.
While DuPage PADS increased capacity for non-congregate shelter, the number of people requiring shelter has also increased, Redzic said.
“Last year we had about 20 people on our waitlist going into the winter, and we have 87 right now, so more than a quadruple increase,” Redzic said. “A couple things have happened since 2020. Rents have gone up about at least 40% in the state of Illinois … As that’s gone up, they have spent more and more of their income on housing. And then they get evicted.”
Schueler blamed the higher number of people experiencing homelessness on a lack of affordable housing. She said that when people can’t exit shelters to affordable housing, they get stuck in the shelter system. This also keeps shelters at capacity and prevents others experiencing homelessness from entering shelters. These gridlocks have imposed a long stay time for shelter residents, sometimes as long as 276 days, Schueler said.
“There are more people out on the street because they can’t get into the emergency shelter, because the emergency shelter is full. Interim housing is full because we don’t have enough housing resources to move people more quickly through the system, and they’re getting stuck,” Schueler said.
‘Prolonged, regular public investment’
Bob Palmer, the policy director for Housing Action Illinois, a group that advocates for more housing for low- and moderate-income Illinois residents, credited the governor for swiftly addressing homelessness during the pandemic. In particular, he noted that Pritzker issued an eviction moratorium during the pandemic that was “stronger than the federal moratoriums that existed.”
Still, he said, the state’s investment into ending homelessness requires more than a few years of extra funding.
“It’s going to take more than just two years of this significant new investment from the state to change the situation in terms of how many people are experiencing homelessness or how many people have housing insecurity,” Palmer said. “We need prolonged, regular public investments in affordable housing and ending homelessness.”
Atmika Iyer is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a Fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
