The recent economic recession and resulting layoffs compounded by a severe lack of affordable housing, lack of living wage jobs, and an increase in foreclosures, has caused increasing hardship for families in Illinois, including homelessness. This December 2001 study of seventeen agencies that serve homeless families in fifteen counties throughout Illinois and the eight warming centers (emergency shelters) in Chicago gathered information regarding family homelessness in Illinois. The agencies surveyed indicate an increase in family homelessness over the past year and specifically over the past two months. These results, and other recent research regarding the acute shortage of affordable housing in Illinois points towards the increasing need for Illinois to invest in homelessness prevention initiatives and the development of affordable housing for the benefit of thousands of families and children. Complete listing and access info »

This report demonstrates the extent to which homeless youths are underserved in Illinois. Though the statistics show that homeless youth programs are successful in helping youths achieve their potential, far too many youths never have the opportunity to access needed services. Complete listing and access info »

A serious affordable housing crisis, which has plagued the City of Chicago for more than a decade, has deepened drastically during the last two years due to the rise in foreclosures and unemployment. Meanwhile, through its 158 active Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, the city has accumulated, and likely will continue to generate, a large surplus of funds that could be used to alleviate the affordable housing problem.




TIF districts were created to promote revitalization of blighted or struggling neighborhoods, and the availability of affordable housing is instrumental to a neighborhood's stability. Unfortunately, the city's policy on the use of TIF funds for housing has not gone far enough to adequately address the fundamental need for affordable housing in developing neighborhoods. Expenditures on affordable housing have accounted for too small of a percentage of TIF funds. An even smaller percentage of TIF funds have supported housing affordable to people in the neighborhoods in which it is built and for those with the greatest housing needs.




Key findings are:

• As of 2008, there was nearly $1 billion built up in Chicago's TIF accounts at least $350 million of which has not been dedicated to a particular project.[1]
• Between 1995-2007, only 4 percent of TIF funds were targeted for development of affordable housing.[2] (Note: 1995 was the first year the Chicago Department of Housing began issuing detailed reports on its production and spending)
• TIF funds have been used to create housing that is more expensive and targeted for higher incomes than existing housing in the neighborhoods in which it has been created. In 50 percent of the wards in which TIF-funded housing was built, at least half of the units were too expensive for current residents.[3]
• TIF-funded units go disproportionately to higher income households. Between 1995-2008, only 27 percent of the units created with TIF funds went to the households with the most critical needs -- those earning less than $20,000 a year.[4]

Recommendations:

• Target 20 percent of TIF funds each year for affordable housing.
• For those targeted dollars, affordable should be defined as housing that meets the needs of neighborhood residents and those with the greatest need.

This report was prepared by Chicago Coalition for the Homeless on behalf of the Sweet Home. Chicago Coalition.


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National data suggests that young people transitioning from wardship to adulthood experience the expectation of self sufficiency as too fast, unplanned and unexpected, making them feel "dumped" by the system, helpless to take control of their lives, and unhopeful about the future. Id. In Illinois, approximately 2,000 youth spend their seventeenth birthday in foster care. The picture of youth aging out of the system in Illinois is no more hopeful than the national picture, as shown in a recent study of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, in which caseworkers responded to questions about a sampling of 580 older youth living in substitute care. Only 52% of the wards age 18 and older had a high school diploma. Only 12.8% were working full time. Complete listing and access info »

For people who experience homelessness, access to living-wage employment is often the key to finding and maintaining stable housing. Many struggle to become employed because of multiple barriers such as criminal records, lack of work experience, low skills and education levels, and mental health issues such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The transitional jobs model is gaining in popularity as a better way to help people with barriers gain employment. Complete listing and access info »