PEORIA, Ill. – Addressing poverty in Illinois was the focus of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s visit to Peoria on Monday.
Pritzker and state officials discussed new initiatives and programs focused on homelessness and food insecurity. He says there’s a “moral imperative” to end poverty.
“Every family that we stabilize is helping us to meet that moral imperative,” Pritzker said. “And it not only lifts them up, but it lifts up our state and our country towards economic success, toward national security, for productivity, and for public safety.”
For homelessess, the newly-created “Home Illinois” program invests more than $350 million in the FY24 budget.
Pritzker says around $35 million of that is set aside to cover basics such as transportation, electricity, and food for around 27,000 state residents. Other initiatives funded by “Home Illinois” include homelessness prevention, crisis response, and adding temporary and permanent housing units.
Chief Homelessness Officer Christin Haley says the program helps communities achieve a goal of reaching “functional zero” in homelessness. She adds that having those resources is important because people may not always be at fault for not having a place to live.
“Homelessness is a crisis of the collective will to address it. Policy failures lead to homelessness. But the good news is that with strong, equitable public policy, we can find a way out,” Haley said.
Food insecurity is also addressed in the new state budget with the “Illinois Grocery Initiative.”
Pritzker says an important part of that is making sure people have to ability to get the food that they need.
“It does us no good to provide a family with money to purchase food, if they have no grocery store to go to when they shop,” Pritzker said.
The initiative focuses on that by providing municipalities funding for independent grocers expand or open in under served areas. It also provides funds to purchase fresh food from Illinois producers.
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