You can take action on this alert by reading the information below and following the directions at the bottom.

This week Illinois Senator Richard Durbin and other members of the Senate Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (T-HUD) Appropriations Subcommittee are expected to mark up and vote on the FY 2011 spending bill.

This legislation will include funding for McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants program, Section 8, and other programs within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The federal government just awarded $79,675,377 to nonprofits in Illinois through the 2009 Continuum of Care (CoC) competitive grants process. These grants provide funding for transitional and permanent housing and supportive services. A list of the awardees can be accessed be clicking here.

Congress passed the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act last year, which made changes to the McKinney programs. The HEARTH Act increases funding for many important homelessness prevention and re-housing activities, but allocating more funding for these activities means that overall homelessness funding will have to increase to avoid cuts to other activities. The activity most at risk is the creation of new permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities, which has successfully reduced chronic homelessness.

Providing $2.4 billion for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants program in FY 2011 will allow for funding new homelessness prevention and re-housing activities and enable the same level of funding for new projects as in FY 2010.

Please contact Senator Durbin to thank him for signing on to a April 2010 "Dear Colleague" letter in support of full funding and ask him to continue his advocacy during the mark up of the T-HUD Appropriations bill.

Your message will be sent to each of the following targets:

Senator Richard J. Durbin

A sample message appears below, which you may edit before sending.

This Action Alert Campaign is Closed.