Combating homelessness | News | Illinois Times

There are signs of progress, as well as frustration, in the efforts to reduce homelessness in Springfield.

Advocates say more work is needed to expand housing options and street-level outreach to help people who cycle in and out of homelessness amid a 40% increase in rental costs in Illinois since 2020 and a lack of services for people with mental illnesses.

“The rental costs put more people in the situation where one crisis could cause you to need shelter services,” Josh Sabo, executive director of Heartland Housed, told Illinois Times. “The things that we can’t fix on our own are the dynamics – the systems that feed into homelessness.

“The gaps in mental health care are significant, particularly for folks with severe mental illness. Service delivery has got to be able to go where people are.”

At the halfway point in the Springfield and Sangamon County 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness, there have been positive developments. There also are big challenges to make headway.

First, advocates say more people who used to be homeless are in supportive housing – with rent paid or offset by government funds and visits from counselors and caseworkers.

In 2019, there were 94 people in these slots. By 2024, there were 308. The goal is to have more than 700 such slots by 2028 so the community can reach “functional zero,” or the point at which no clients in the network of homeless services remain in a shelter or on the street for more than 30 days.

Advocates add that the recently launched Heartland Housing Help Line, 217-803-5235, is designed to help households more easily connect to assistance for rent, utilities and other necessities.

Moreover, Heartland Housed, the lead nonprofit agency that coordinates services to reduce homelessness in Springfield and the rest of Sangamon County through the Heartland Continuum of Care, added a full-time staff member in 2024 to coordinate street-level outreach services for chronically homeless people.

Separately, the city of Springfield this year is adding two more staff members to its one-person Community Outreach Team, formerly known as the Homeless Outreach Team, at a cost of about $200,000, 17% of which is being covered by state grant funds. One person was hired and started in July; the other slot hasn’t been filled yet.

And after decades of community leaders searching for an acceptable location, a 22,000-square-foot, low-barrier shelter with day services, regular meals and health care services opened in January 2024.

Nonprofit Helping Hands of Springfield was able to move from smaller digs in downtown Springfield to a complex owned by Sangamon County government along South Dirksen Parkway. The space was renovated with $9 million in American Rescue Plan Act federal funding.

Park Avenue Residences, a 22-unit supportive housing complex at 3526 S. Park Avenue in unincorporated Woodside Township, opened in October 2023. And the 24-unit Mason Street Apartments complex where formerly homeless people will receive supportive housing services on the former site of Sportsman’s Lounge, is expected to open later this year.

On the other side of the ledger, however, are local challenges and worries about how President Donald Trump’s views on homelessness will affect Springfield.

There were 1,686 people who received homeless-related services from the Heartland Continuum of Care in 2024, a 35% increase compared with 2019, when 1,245 were served.

The federal government’s mandated one-day count of homeless people in Sangamon County totaled 374 in 2025, a slight decrease from the 388 in 2024. But the one-day count was 284 in 2019, so the one-day count has risen by 32% over the past five years.

Local advocates had hoped to see a change in the upward trajectory of homelessness by now. But the numbers of people receiving services may be deceiving; they include people who are in supportive housing and technically not homeless anymore, Sabo said.

The Continuum of Care can better gauge progress through its relatively new Built for Zero Community Dashboard, he said. But according to that dashboard, more people exited homelessness and obtained stable housing in only five of the 17 months between February 2024 and June 2025.

A three-month rolling average of “actively homeless” people on the dashboard shows an increase – from between 600 and 700 in early and mid-2024 to between 900 and 1,000 since then.

These totals don’t include individuals, couples and families with children who are “doubled-up” with friends and relatives in cramped quarters and in precarious or potentially dangerous arrangements that could put them back on the street at a moment’s notice, Sabo said. “We’ve got to help people exit homelessness faster,” he said.

An ongoing expansion in nonprofit infrastructure should help Springfield secure new grants and get closer to functional zero in the future, he said.

Sabo pointed out that the Continuum of Care’s current annual federal funding level – $602,000 – is the highest since 2012.

New $2.3 million for housing from the feds

This total doesn’t include $2.3 million in COVID-era federal funding recently approved by the Springfield City Council that will be split by Helping Hands and another nonprofit, Fifth Street Renaissance, to create a total of 60 new supportive housing units over the next two years.

The appropriation came after debate among council members frustrated with the persistence of the homeless problem about whether the city should look beyond these two agencies with deep experience in serving the homeless for answers. Sabo said he supported the council’s eventual decision and noted that local officials technically have until 2030 to spend the money.

Local nonprofits will work on ways of sustaining support for the new units after the money runs out, he said. And he said caseworkers, like they do with other forms of supportive housing, will help clients find ways to stay healthy and support themselves through primary and mental health care, employment and government programs such as Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, food stamps and other benefits.

“The dream is to help a person stabilize and thrive and to get to permanent housing in such a way as they’re as self-sufficient as they could possibly be,” he said.

But in the short term, one of the biggest challenges to reducing homelessness locally may come from the White House.

Advocates for the unhoused at the local and national level worry that a July 24 executive order from Trump, who has espoused a “law-and-order” approach to homelessness for years, will divert federal funding from housing-related solutions and toward an approach that prioritizes arresting people, outlawing encampments and committing homeless people with mental illness to institutions.

“We just don’t know how that’s going to play out right now, so we’re waiting,” Sabo said.

Ann Oliva, chief executive officer of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a July 28 blog post, “This order seeks to dismantle the foundations of homeless response in the United States and further dehumanize people experiencing homelessness. However, I want to be clear that there is a lot of legal and policy analysis to be done. We believe that this executive order – like many others released by the White House this year – will be subject to litigation, as it likely oversteps well-established legal boundaries and precedence.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to issue new funding guidelines in August or September that could drastically affect homeless-service agencies nationwide, including the Heartland Continuum of Care.

Federal money makes up about one-third of the continuum’s $1.6 million annual total, with the rest coming from the state’s Home Illinois program, funded with general revenue funds. The continuum distributes the $489,000 in federal funds to other local nonprofits for housing and other homeless-related services.

Trump’s executive order appears to support funding for temporary housing for people experiencing homeless, Sabo said. But that’s not a long-term solution, he said.

“What happens when you fill up transitional housing programs and there’s nowhere for folks to go because you’ve defunded programs for permanent housing?” Sabo asked.

Overall, the continuum would need an additional approximately $3.6 million per year to make up the community’s gaps in funding affordable housing and case management services to reach functional zero, Sabo said.

Those estimated costs work out to $15,000 to $30,000 per household, he said. That cost may sound high, but he said studies indicate such investments are cheaper for society in the long run than hospitalization, incarceration and lost productivity by people whose lives are stunted or shortened by the trauma of homelessness.

Heartland Housed is talking with potential donors in the community about a “dream” of establishing a “flexible housing pool” fund of up to $1 million per year to boost a variety of programs and build more capacity in the system.

Sangamon County government has contributed $50,000 in “seed money” to the effort, which eventually could receive ongoing funding from community foundations, churches, banks, hospitals and managed-care organizations, Sabo said.

He credited officials from the city of Springfield, Sangamon County and Capital Township for their annual financial support of Heartland Housed and the Continuum of Care. It’s unprecedented in Illinois outside the Chicago area, he said.

The city and the county contribute $250,000 apiece, and the township gives $125,000.

Trump moves away from “housing first” model

For years, the federal government’s focus has been on “housing-first” programs that emphasize getting homeless people into temporary and then permanent housing, often with counseling, financial support and other assistance, as soon as possible.

But the Republican president’s executive order, which could face legal challenges, appears to back away from that philosophy. The order said the federal government and states “have spent billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.”

Referring to the more than 274,224 homeless people counted on a single day during the last year of former Democratic president Joe Biden’s term, Trump’s order said, “Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.”

The order said Trump’s administration will “prioritize available funding” for things that many advocates for the homeless support, including expanding drug courts and mental health courts “for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety.”

However, the order also said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will work to reverse federal and state court orders and terminate consent decrees that prevent civil commitments.

The order added that HUD will “take immediate steps” to give priority in funding to states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on “open illicit drug use,” “urban camping and loitering” and “urban squatting.”

The City Council never voted on an ordinance proposed a year ago by Mayor Misty Buscher and Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase to outlaw “public camping” and make violators eligible for fines of $75 to $750 and up to two years in jail. Officials said there are no plans to resurrect the ordinance, which was drafted for potential emergency passage in response to a fatal drug overdose and traffic hazards associated with a homeless encampment at North Fifth Street and North Grand Avenue.

One-time grants totaling $75,000 and intensive casework assisted many unhoused people at the encampment to get off the street and into hotels, shelters and more stable housing, Ethan Posey, director of the city’s Office of Community Relations, said. Some have ended up back on the street.

It’s unclear so far how the executive order will affect the Continuum of Care’s funding or policies and procedures in Springfield, Sabo said. Posey said city officials are committed to “housing-first” programs and studying the order’s potential effects.

Over the past 10 years, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Springfield began a major shift to housing first and away from an emphasis on shelter services. That shift, Sabo said, is backed by research that shows the emotional and physical trauma of being homeless can shorten people’s lives by decades and lead to more interaction with the criminal-justice system, more hopelessness and more homelessness.

“We’re dealing with inadequate resources to address a community crisis,” Sabo said. “Looking at a community like ours and saying ‘housing first’ has failed this community is like giving a person one dose of an antibiotic and wondering why they didn’t get better.”

Buscher and the rest of the City Council supported the expansion of the Community Outreach Team’s staff, which reports to Posey, to assist the homeless in getting and remaining stable in decent, affordable housing. It’s somewhat of a departure from the traditional focus of municipalities on crime, fire protection and bricks and mortar projects, but Buscher said, “It is needed 100%.

“At the state and federal level, we need partners,” she said, “because it is a crisis across the whole country. … Not everybody who is unhoused is unhoused because they’re down on their luck. Some people are, but some people are unhoused because they have a mental health condition, a drug addiction or an alcohol addiction. And if someone isn’t checking on them, those things can spiral out of control.”

A new encampment

There’s no longer an encampment on North Grand Avenue, but another one has cropped up less than a mile southeast, on the west side of the 800 block of North Ninth Street. There, set back from the road on vacant lots shaded by huge trees are several makeshift tents.

Posey said half a dozen or fewer people are living there regularly. The encampment currently sits on a publicly owned lot. “Therefore, we do not have the authority to remove the individuals at this time,” Posey said.

He declined when asked to elaborate on the city’s lack of legal authority. He would only say, “There are currently no plans to remove individuals from this location.”

There have been no violent incidents associated with the encampment, he said.

Posey said his office hasn’t received complaints from neighbors about the encampment.. But he said neighbors have complained to the neighborhood’s zone manager — an employee of the city’s public works office — encouraging city officials to make the encampment’s occupants leave.

“We are trying to work with the unhoused to find the best solution,” Posey said. “We are committed to working alongside the Heartland Continuum of Care to assist these individuals in obtaining the resources they need.”

David Small, 64, a retired carpenter who lives in the 800 block of North Eighth Street, said he and other neighbors have complained about noise from the encampment and the mess created when homeless people rummage through their garbage bins.

Small said there have been several fires set by homeless people in vacant homes in the neighborhood in recent years when the homeless try to keep warm.

Small said clearing out an encampment isn’t a solution to the problem, but he would like to see better coordination between government officials and local nonprofits, rather than increased funding, to address the issue.

“I don’t necessarily have an answer,” he said. “I don’t think change is going to happen without something drastic happening. The homeless situation hasn’t gotten better. It’s gotten worse.”

Chamise Rich, 41, a resident of the encampment who was interviewed June 25 as he sat in the shade on a humid day with temperatures in the high 90s, said he was homeless because of depression and estrangement from family members.

Rich, who said he was raised in the former Hay Homes, was unemployed and previously worked for fast-food restaurants and at Walmart. He said he considered the encampment safe.

“We’re all buddies here,” he said, adding that he appreciated social-service agencies bringing food and water to residents of the encampment.

But he said it’s dangerous to be homeless, and he wants a change but didn’t know where to go to get help.

“All I need is housing,” he said, “and a place of my own. Everything would be perfect.”

The last time he had stable housing was five years ago, he said.

Rich said he sometimes sleeps inside the hallways and stairwells of buildings in the downtown area.

Dwayne Chappell sat nearby. Chappell, 44, said a Heartland Housed caseworker was working to help him get into stable housing, though he said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m more comfortable out here.”

Chappell said he has been homeless in Springfield off and on for 25 years and hasn’t had stable housing for two years.

He said he was unemployed but would like to operate his own car-detailing business and also repair cars and bicycles. If he had a home of his own, he said, “I could be more productive.”

Both Rich and Chappell said they prefer the encampment to a shelter, at least when the weather is warm.

New Helping Hands director optimistic

Robert Gillespie, who began as Helping Hands’ new executive director in January, said he is excited his agency will have $1.1 million in new federal funds to establish 30 more supportive housing units.

The money will boost the number of supportive housing units managed by Helping Hands from 60 to 90, and it will allow for the hiring of two more case managers, he said.

Gillespie, 51, a former social worker who was born and raised in Alabama, previously was a top executive at nonprofit Hemophilia of Georgia. He said he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of public and media attention to homelessness in the Springfield area.

Illinois Times reported in January that clients were complaining that they were being forced to leave the building every day for an hour and sometimes two each afternoon, bundled up and shivering in the cold, while workers cleaned the shelter and then checked clients back in again.

Gillespie said he changed the shelter’s process to alleviate the situation after his arrival.

“We want to treat everyone with respect,” he said.

The shelter, which provides medical services and assistance in finding housing, has a maximum capacity of 182. The headcount lately has been about 120 per day; a maximum of 30 women can be accommodated each night.

Robert Doyle, the shelter director, said the 46-member staff at the agency, which operates with a $3.5 million annual budget mostly supported by federal grants, tries to focus on kindness in dealing with clients who have been through all sorts of financial and emotional trauma.

“Everything that happens in the shelter begins with relationships,” he said.

Gillespie said the staff tries to make life as comfortable as possible, stressing clean and safe surroundings. There are lockers available for clients to keep their belongings, he said.

Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams Jr. has voiced concerns that homeless people from the shelter are loitering in and around nearby businesses on South Dirksen Parkway and homes. Gillespie said he tries to talk with clients and those affected to smooth tensions. The shelter offers shuttle service and bus tokens for clients who want to go downtown for services and doctor’s appointments, but the clients have free will to come and go, Gillespie said.

“We want to work with the community,” he said. “Our goal is to be good neighbors.”

A success story

William Britton, 49, who formerly stayed at the Helping Hands shelter when it was in downtown Springfield, still gets services from the agency. He praised the staff for helping him get his own one-bedroom apartment in Springfield and managing his finances.

“I’m happier,” he said. “I can lay down my head, and no one bothers me.”

Britton said he was born and raised in Danville and formerly worked as a certified machine operator. He said he supports himself with Social Security Disability payments related to schizophrenia, which has prevented him from being able to work since he was 25.

He said his mental illness and his previous neglect in taking medicine regularly resulted in him coming into contact with the criminal justice system and being declared unfit for trial.

Britton said counseling and other services through mental health court in Sangamon County helped him get on track with his medicine and his attitude.

“I’m not lonely,” he said. “I prefer to be by myself. … I’m not homeless anymore. I will never be homeless again.”