Springfield's Plan to end homelessness marks first year

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — It's been a year since Heartland HOUSED created the Heartland Continuum of Care Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness. The goal of this is to bring homelessness to functional zero by 2028. Functional zero means anyone who is newly homeless would be able to find housing within 30 days.

Heartland HOUSED says from the January 2023 Point in Time Count, 264 people are homeless in Sangamon County on any given day. 2023 is the first of five years in the plan to end homelessness.

WAND's Carlee Bronkema talked to Josh Sabo, the Executive Director of Heartland HOUSED, about how progress on the plan has gone so far this year.

"For the first time in our community's history, we have a backbone organization that's helping to build and support a systemic approach to homelessness," said Sabo. "Four years ago, we had one person who was devoted to a to the system to address homelessness, now we have a team of five and are trying to get more."

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While the strategic plan covers many issues, most of the goals can be broken down into two parts. The first is creating enough housing opportunities for those who are already homeless. Their goal is to create 765 new units, either through new builds, or working with landlords on already existing, but empty buildings.

Progress has already been made on creating more of these opportunities. One of them is the New Park Place Apartments, which adds housing for 33 people. There are other locations that community partners are looking to purchase or turn into housing opportunities for people who need them.

The second part of the strategic plan helps those who become homeless. The new Helpings Hands of Springfield Shelter will fill some of the need in the community.

"We'll have a shelter building that's open 24/7, throughout the year, so that people have a safe place to be in a stable place to be to work on the things that they need to achieve stable housing," said Sabo. "So it's really going to be a housing focused shelter. It helps to consolidate clinic space, case management in a way that that really makes it easy for people to take the next step in the direction of stable housing."

Heartland HOUSED has several goals for 2024, including creating 100 new housing opportunities. They are also creating a new dashboard so people can see how many people are utilizing shelter services.