February 16, 2023 – In his annual budget, governor JB Pritzker has proposed a multi-year plan to fight homelessness in Illinois.
The “Home Illinois” initiative starts with a 50-million-dollar investment in preventing homelessness, crisis response, and establishing more housing units.
“This entire budget proposal rests on our shared goal: to give Illinois families the support and opportunities for the big building blocks of a good life: food access, housing, and healthcare. Certainly most people won’t need to rely on government for those things. But we will have failed everyone in Illinois if we don’t place a higher priority on tackling poverty — because fewer people living in financial distress means a better quality of life for everyone in our state” said Governor Pritzker during his address.
The governor says funding would also be used to help homeless adults get a job, offer short-term rental assistance, street outreach and help to cover basic necessities like transportation, electricity, and food.
“We also need to recognize that it does no good to provide a family with more money to purchase food if they have no local grocery store to shop at” Pritzker added.
“Government at the state and local level has tried hard to attract big retail food chains to neighborhoods that need them with tax incentives and flashy ribbon cutting ceremonies. But after the cameras leave, often so do the commercial chains — leaving poorer rural and urban communities high and dry. It’s time we return to a tried and true model — one where those communities are served by independent, local grocery stores that sell food grown by Illinois farmers.”
Pritzker’s budget also includes an investment of $20 million to launch the Illinois Grocery Initiative, assisting municipalities and independent grocers to open or expand grocery stores in underserved rural towns and urban neighborhoods — with an additional $2 million going towards purchasing healthy food from Illinois farmers.
