Contact your state legislators today to demand they protect Illinois’ homeless and housing services. Through these programs, street outreach teams, case managers, and social workers support individuals experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness. They reduce rates of homelessness by providing immediate assistance, assessments, housing, and emergency support.  

Please join the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness (CCH), Supportive Housing Providers Association (SHPA), and Housing Action Illinois in asking your legislators to restore HOME Illinois funding to the FY25 level of $290 million.  

Emergency and Transitional Housing, Homeless Prevention, Permanent Supportive Housing, and Homeless Youth Programming are vital services that have shown positive results year after year, yet remain severely underfunded. These programs are even more necessary today as: 

• Rents, mortgage payments, groceries, and healthcare costs are rising across the state, and wages are not keeping pace. Most Illinoisians do not have a safety net to fall back on in an emergency, and an estimated third of Illinoisians are renters. 

• Statewide, Illinois currently has a shortage of 4,236 emergency shelter beds and 10,972 permanent supportive housing units. 

• The federal government is making huge cuts to crucial services like SNAP and Medicaid, and threatening drastic cuts to federally funded supportive housing, which would push thousands of formerly homeless Illinoisans with physical and/or mental disabilities back into homelessness. This will put enormous strain on emergency shelters and homeless prevention programs. 

• As shelter beds and programs are cut, street homelessness and encampments will increase in a state where at least 34 communities have enacted camping bans to fine or arrest people for seeking shelter in their car or on the street. 

• The Homeless Prevention Program not only saves people from the mental and physical toll of experiencing homelessness, but it also saves the State an average of more than $6,000 per household in emergency services.  

Now is not the time to cut funding, as additional threats from the federal government emerge every day. To truly end homelessness in Illinois, the state must build upon past investments in the HOME Illinois program. Take action now!