Chambana Sun

Jennifer Carlson, manager of Neighborhood Programs for the City of Champaign, recently explained a new joint agreement for homelessness relief sponsored by the City Council with the use of other funding sources.

"We realized that all of these different pots of money were going to become available around the same time, and they were going to be used for the same purpose," Carlson told the Champaign City Council during a Nov. 1 meeting. "So we decided this would be a great time to collaborate together and come up with a consolidated application for funding."

The City's Housing and Homeless Innovations (HHI) program is a collaboration with the City of Urbana that first focused on affordable housing and is now aimed at initiatives and solutions for homelessness in the area, Carlson said. Since some of the identified funding came from local and state funds while other money came from the American Rescue Plan Act, Carlson noted that the two cities worked together to create a joint application for many of the grant and funding opportunities.

During a study session on April 26, the City asked officials to come up with a competitive process to "allocate $2.2 million to address homelessness and housing gaps in the community using innovative approaches," Carlson explained. Since then, other funding has become available.

"The cities work cooperatively together year-round on affordable housing, so it was very natural" to come up with ideas using state and federal funds, she added.

Altogether, there is $5,857,000 of funding planned for the project, which comes from the Urbana Home Consortium along with the cities of Champaign and Urbana; Carlson said. The team wants intergovernmental approval for the cities of Urbana and Champaign to create a joint force on HHI, which will then be able to provide a single application and source for all the relief funds rather than three different streams. The intent is to simplify and streamline the process for both funders and applicants.

The City has held workshops to explain the process, and more information is available online; Carlson said. The application window opened on Nov. 4 and will close on Dec. 12. The staff of the two municipalities will evaluate and score the applications, and the funds will be distributed in February of 2023.