Organizational Sign-On Letter to Governor Pritzker
in Support of Increased State Funding to
Strengthen Emergency Shelter System
for People Experiencing Homelessness
New Deadline to Sign: January 13, 2023
Governor JB Pritzker will be introducing his proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 on February 15, 2023 and we have developed an organizational sign-on letter to demonstrate widespread support for a $51 million increase in General Revenue Funds (GRF) for the Emergency and Transitional Housing (ETH) Program in the governor's fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, increasing funding to $61.38 million.
The ETH Program has long been underfunded, resulting in emergency shelter providers turning away thousands of people—families with children, as well as individuals, disproportionately people of color—each year due to their sites being at full capacity. The severe shortage of emergency beds for people in crisis has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and current economic conditions.
There are federal resources available from the American Rescue Plan to help create a new and improved emergency shelter system, focused on developing non-congregate shelters. In non-congregate shelters individuals and families have the privacy and stability lacking in traditional shelters, facilitating people being able move out of the shelter and into permanent housing as quickly as possible.
The current availability of these resources provides an opportunity to develop non-congregate shelter that is time limited. These resources are not likely to come again. To fully make use of these federal resources, additional state funding to cover operating and services costs is desperately needed.
In addition to new non-congregate shelter, funding is needed to assist providers with employee recruitment and retention efforts, to provide services to divert people from shelter when better options are available, to maintain shelter and hotel voucher capacity currently being funded with federal pandemic relief resources that will soon be fully expended and to increase the overall number of emergency shelter beds available.
On December 21 we sent the letter to Governor Pritzker with 243 organizational signers, including religious congregations and elected officials. The letter received press coverage from Capitol News Illinois an elsewhere. Thank you to all the signers!
Click here to read the full letter and see the initial list of signers.
We are still accepting signatures. Any organization or elected official that supports more community-based resources to serve people in need of shelter is encouraged to sign the letter.
The final deadline to sign the letter is 11:59 p.m. on Friday, January 13, 2023. We will send the updated list of singers to Governor Pritzker.
Complete the from below and click on the submit button to sign the letter.
Comments or questions? Contact bob@housingactionil.org.
