Five years in: What the ‘Home Illinois’ plan reveals about the state of homelessness

Homelessness in Illinois decreased overall by 6% between 2025 and 2026, but chronic homelessness, where people have been homeless more than once in the last year and have a disabling condition, rose by 28%, according to a new state report.

Five years after Gov. JB Pritzker launched the Home Illinois Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, the Illinois Department of Human Services released a report meant to serve as a roadmap of action from fiscal year 2027 to 2029.

In fiscal year 2027, the Illinois Interagency Task Force on Homelessness, a state group of agencies led by senior leaders on the issue, expects to spend almost $620 million combating homelessness.

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These funds are designated to meet four main goals: investing in housing, ensuring everyone has access to eligible benefits, ending unsheltered homelessness, and building a prevention system.

These goals target homelessness trends across Continuums of Care, or CoCs. A CoC includes multiple counties and administers services for people experiencing homelessness in its area.

The report outlined specific agency-based proposals to achieve these goals. It suggested these actions in accordance with broader strategies like scaling up available homes and making housing services easier to find and apply for. It also suggested “strengthening partnerships” between housing, healthcare, public health and behavioral health systems, as well as employers, workforce development programs and public benefits.

One example of this strategy for the IDHS is to conduct outreach to people sleeping in public transport and connect them to longer-term services and shelter.

Disparities in homelessness

One trend highlighted by the Home Illinois Plan is that, even though Black Illinoisans make up only 14% of the state’s population, they account for 55% of the population experiencing homelessness. This disparity is familiar to service providers, Bob Palmer of Housing Action Illinois said.

“People who are Black are much more likely than anyone else, even controlling for other factors, to experience homelessness,” Palmer said. “It is a longstanding reality, and it’s not something that fluctuates from year to year.”

Statistics like this not only reflect systemic trends but also inform the four action goals, said Christine Haley, chief homelessness officer, in a written statement.

“Understanding the disproportionate risk of homelessness affecting certain segments of the population is crucial for pinpointing the interventions needed to make sure Illinois’ homeless response system is effective at addressing the housing needs of everyone in the state,” wrote Haley.

The report also noted the Trump administration’s approach to homelessness has exacerbated challenges.

Several policy changes since 2025, especially the cuts to Medicaid, a low-cost health insurance policy, and the addition of a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — a federal assistance program helping low-income individuals buy groceries — put people experiencing homelessness at risk of losing their benefits.

“We need to make sure that people are getting all the federal benefits that they’re eligible for, even though the federal government is making that more difficult,” Palmer said.

Statewide coordination reduced the number of people experiencing homelessness at risk of losing SNAP benefits from 32,000 to 7,400 by May 2026, the Home Illinois Plan reported.

Last week, President Donald Trump cut $56.1 million in federal housing counseling funds per a Crain’s Chicago Business report.

Housing Action Illinois, where Palmer is policy director, lost $1.5 million in funding and joined a lawsuit Tuesday against President Trump and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with nine other plaintiffs. A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the cuts.

Homelessness count varies

The overall homeless population count varied by CoC. Although homelessness decreased by 6% statewide, some CoCs saw increases, with the highest being a 43% increase in the Southern Illinois CoC. But when talking about these percentages, you have to consider the overall number of homeless people, Haley wrote.

The CoCs conduct a “point-in-time” count on a single day in January. Volunteers go out into a community and count the homeless population.

“Many communities have a literal homelessness point-in-time count in the range of 150 – 350 people. This means that a shift of resources or conditions could cause the count to increase by a modest number of people but represent a large percentage increase or decrease,” Haley wrote.

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In the Central Illinois CoC, for example, the homeless population increased by 31%, which was noticeable on the ground too, Joan Hartman, CEO of the Center for Human Services in McLean County, said.

Hartman said that was at least partially attributable to how homelessness is counted. In the most recent point-in-time count, the Central Illinois count reached more rural areas that were not previously included.

Palmer said measuring homelessness is difficult because it’s hard to figure out someone’s situation just by looking at them.

The second reason Hartman gave for the rise is tied to finding a home itself.

“Being able to find stable housing that you could afford is really a challenge in our area,” Hartman said.

The state currently lacks about 142,000 homes, and by 2030, the number of new units needed to keep up with the demand is likely to be closer to 227,000.

“The main reason why we have homelessness in Illinois, and the rest of our society, is the shortage of affordable housing,” Palmer said.

At the state level, Pritzker sought to address the housing gap in a plan he dubbed BUILD Illinois in the spring session. But the measure, which would have created statewide zoning laws aimed at spurring housing development, stalled amid opposition from municipal leaders.

The General Assembly did, however, approve $250 million in capital investments, including $100 million to develop new housing projects, $100 million to the Missing Middle and Affordable Homes program and $50 million for new and first-time home buyers.

The BUILD plan, Haley wrote, brings Illinois closer to addressing one of the key issues affecting homelessness.

Plan finds rising  costs

The Home Illinois Plan also found that rents increased by 27%, while home prices rose by 54%, between 2019 and 2024.

This economic situation is worsening faster than service providers can address, Doug Kenshol, executive director of South Suburban PADs, a nonprofit that aims to prevent homelessness, noted.

“Rents have increased so dramatically, and people’s incomes have not increased at the same rate. As a result, more and more people are becoming homeless every year, and we are struggling to keep up,” Kenshol said.

Housing costs rose faster than inflation in 90% of Illinois counties between 2020 and 2026, according to the report.

This creates a race to shelter, Kenshol said. South Suburban PADS can serve about 10 households, but on average, 30 others are on the waitlist for the same spots.

“Those individuals are struggling on their own, living in cars, living in the forest preserve, living in abandoned homes,” Kenshol said.

Sarah Howe, a board member of the Central Illinois Continuum, said it is sometimes hard to even get local zoning approval to open a shelter, especially in rural counties with fewer social services.

But when shelter zoning succeeds, new models become possible. In Bloomington-Normal, Home Sweet Home Ministries opened The Bridge Shelter Village in January.

The shelter can accommodate more than 50 adults in separate living spaces, Matt Burgess, the CEO of Home Sweet Home Ministries, said. This ‘shelter village’ also has a bathhouse and a community center, according to an NPR Illinois report.

“We’ve demonstrated a new way for the state to be thinking about providing shelter to individuals who are experiencing homelessness. Rather than doing it in one big building with a bunch of beds lined up side-by-side, we have demonstrated the success of building a little enclosed community with individual sleeping cabins,” Burgess said.

Burgess said the report’s varied strategies were necessary to solve the issue, from scaling housing to expanding access, increasing life expectancy, reducing healthcare costs, and connecting people to jobs and income.

“We can’t think that doing just one thing is going to adequately solve homelessness. Homelessness is a complex set of circumstances. That means the way that we respond to it needs to be complex at some level,” Burgess said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.