This is it.
We have struggled to provide supportive case management to 89 formerly homeless households since the State budget impasse began on July 1, 2015. More info can be found here.
We began the year with five dedicated social workers providing services to these families, and we have had to lay all five off over the last 11 months because the State of Illinois has not paid us close to $120,000 for the services we were contracted to provide.
Hoping to maintain some level of service, we asked two Masters of Social Work interns to continue working with these households over the last two months. Those interns left us last week as their term ended.
We now have one AVODAH volunteer who will attempt to work with households in immediate emergencies until her year of service ends on August 4. After that date, we have no further back-up plans to be able to provide services to these 89 families.
Without your support, we will be cutting all services on August 5 to all of these households, including 29 single mothers and 85 children. This will likely mean that many families will become homeless again over the next year, and that many of these Homeless Dedicated Units (HDU) will be lost to the city as landlords move away from the unfunded program.
Our last chance to preserve this program is to raise $40,000 to cover salary and fringe benefits for a full-time case manager to continue providing services during fiscal year 2017 by mid-July at the latest. This will enable us to weather the storm of the ongoing budget stalemate and preserve housing for these families.