Housing funding cut in Illinois budget as homelessness increases
[July 05, 2025]
By Ben Szalinski
The number of homeless people in Illinois is rising, but the state’s
spending on homeless prevention and other housing programs is headed in
the other direction.
Facing a tight budget year with constrained spending and limited natural
revenue growth, the $55.1 billion fiscal year 2026 budget that took
effect July 1 reduces total funding for housing programs by more than
$14 million, including Pritzker’s signature initiative designed to
eliminate homelessness in Illinois.
“Last year homelessness increased 116% in the state of Illinois,” Doug
Kenshol, co-founder of the Illinois Shelter Alliance, told Capitol News
Illinois. “To be in the midst of this crisis and then have the state cut
funding was beyond disappointing.”
Discretionary spending rose by less than 1% in the FY26 budget,
according to the governor’s office, despite total spending increasing by
$2 billion. That minimal spending growth led lawmakers to reduce several
programs.
“Is it enough? No, it isn’t … we know that homelessness is an
existential crisis, and the state of Illinois takes this seriously,”
Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Buffalo Grove, who serves on a state homeless
prevention task force, told Capitol News Illinois. “We have a really
bold vision for ending homelessness and we’re going to continue down
that path.”
Spending reductions
Pritzker first established a task force by executive order in 2021 that
would create a plan for “Home Illinois” to reduce homelessness in the
state to “functional zero” — where homelessness is temporary and people
without housing can quickly obtain housing resources. The executive
order did not set a date for the state to reach functional zero, and
funding for the Home Illinois is declining by $26.6 million in FY26.
Pritzker’s administration had previously targeted housing programs for
substantial increases in recent years. The FY26 budget appropriated
$263.7 million for Home Illinois, down from $290.3 million in FY25. That
was a $90 million increase from FY24, when the program received $200.3
million in its first year after Pritzker signed legislation in 2023
codifying the task force and Home Illinois program.
Among the decreased spending in Home Illinois is a $25 million reduction
to the Court-Based Rental Assistance Program that provides financial aid
to people facing evictions. Other programs saw steady or increased
funding, including shelters, which rose to fund Chicago’s One System
Initiative that integrates migrants into the city’s typical shelter
system.
Spending on housing programs is also down overall, according to the
advocacy group Housing Action Illinois. While some housing programs saw
increases that offset reductions to Home Illinois, total spending on
housing programs is down by $14.6 million in the FY26 budget, to $354
million. Pritzker’s proposed budget had called for a $7.6 million
decrease.
“FY26 is largely a maintenance year for the state budget,” an Illinois
Department of Human Services spokesperson said in a statement. “We
remain as committed as ever to advancing strategies that prevent and end
homelessness across Illinois.”
Johnson said the spending reduction is “temporary” and the state is
still working toward long-term goals that would require more funding.
“The state is trying to do the best it can with limited resources,”
Housing Action Illinois Policy Director Bob Palmer said in an interview.
Some of the avenues lawmakers used to fund programs also divert funding
away from one area in favor of another, Palmer said. For example, the
Affordable Housing Trust Fund is supposed to provide funding for new
permanent rental housing, but money in the fund is also being used to
increase funding for emergency or transitional housing.
“We were in a way glad to see that increase but also feeling conflicted
because it’s taking money from another important housing resource,”
Palmer said. “We had been advocating for that increase to come from
general revenue funds.”
Funding for the emergency and transitional housing program increased by
$7 million, a small win for advocates, but nowhere near the $40 million
increase sought by the Illinois Shelter Alliance. The group wanted
lawmakers to increase funding by $100 million overall for housing
programs.
Palmer also worried proposed federal cuts to rental assistance programs
will put additional strain on the state’s budget.
Homelessness continues to grow
The spending reductions come as homelessness in Illinois continues to
rise despite the new program.
The latest data on homelessness in Illinois from an October report by a
Department of Human Services task force shows the state had 25,787
unhoused people on the night of the annual “point in time” count in
January 2024 — a 116% increase from 2023.
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Several tents sit just off of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago’s Uptown
neighborhood, in a park known for its homeless encampments. (Capitol
News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
The increase is largely driven by migrants who have been sent to
Illinois by other states such as Texas. Of those without housing in
January 2024, 13,891 were new arrivals. However, non-migrant
homelessness is still on the rise, increasing 22% in 2024.
Homelessness is also increasing throughout the state. It’s up 207% since
2020 in Chicago, while DuPage and St. Clair counties were the only
places in Illinois to see a decline over that time.
“You can argue that we can always do better, but Illinois is on the
right path,” Johnson said.
Despite homelessness increasing since Home Illinois was established,
Kenshol said the program is making a difference.
“They’ve created some great programs and they’ve gotten funds
distributed and a lot of housing and a lot of shelter has been created,
but we have to sustain that effort and we need to keep making
incremental increases because we’re not there yet,” he said.
Data backs that up, according to IDHS. The Court-Based Rental Assistance
Program, which received a substantial cut this year, has helped 7,500
households. And more than 18,000 people were served by Home Illinois in
the first half of FY25 — 10,000 more than IDHS’ prior homelessness
prevention program helped in FY22.
The problem, according to advocates and IDHS, is rapidly growing housing
costs that make finding permanent housing and affording rent more
unreachable for more people. A report last month from the Illinois
Economic Policy Institute found Illinois needs 142,000 more housing
units to meet the current demand for homes.
Finding more resources
Data in the task force’s annual report that provides a road map for Home
Illinois shows service providers still need substantial resources to
make a dent in homelessness. The state has more than 23,000 beds and
housing units for homeless people, but needs about 27,000 more.
The task force, which includes advocates, lawmakers and top leaders in
state agencies, says the problem will continue to grow if these
resources aren’t addressed.
“The longer it takes to meet these targets, the more resources will be
needed to reach functional zero as homelessness is a dynamic systems
problem, or, in other words, annual unmet need for shelter and housing
can be expected to increase each year that the need is unmet,” the
report said.
Palmer agreed.
“If we’re taking the plan to prevent and end homelessness in Illinois
seriously, we need to be providing the increased resources to eliminate
that shortage … otherwise we’re just managing homelessness at its
current level,” he said.
Palmer said lawmakers should be increasing funding for housing no matter
what the state’s budget situation is because housing insecurity can be a
root cause for other issues that cost the state more money, such as
health problems.
Increasing funding for shelters alone also isn’t enough, said Kenshol,
the Shelter Aliance co-founder. A lack of funding for affordable
permanent housing leaves people stuck in the shelter system, which means
growing rental assistance programs to help prevent people from being
forced into shelters should be a budget priority, he said.
In a $55.1 billion budget, Kenshol argued the state should be able to
find the money to increase funding each year for housing programs.
“As a society, as voters, as elected officials, we make different
choices. We turn our backs on the people who are desperate and at risk
of perishing and instead we invest in other things,” Kenshol said. “My
values suggest that we should put caring for the least of these first.”
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.
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