After funding shortfalls and federal policies that have created new challenges for the housing industry, one leader in housing says hope and unity is what will carve a path forward.
Ann Oliva is CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Her resume includes 30 years of experience working on homeless services, including 10 years leading homeless programs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD].
At a Housing Illinois Action conference in Bloomington, Oliva said her hope comes from the stories she hears and the people she meets.
“I do a lot of these; I travel the country and speak at different conferences. Without a doubt, I walk away from these kinds of interactions at the state level, at the local level, with a deep respect for the people who are doing this work and leading this work in localities and the people who are experiencing homelessness in these localities,” said Oliva in an interview on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
She said one of the primary challenges to addressing homelessness today is the Trump administration.
“The way to really understand what this administration is thinking about and contemplating on the issue of homelessness is to read the executive order on homelessness that came out at the end of July from the White House,” she said. “That lays out a vision that is in pretty stark contrast to what the evidence tells us works and to what communities are currently working on.”
The Trump administration executive order signed in July makes it easier to remove unhoused people from the streets, while the administration is shifting away from permanent housing, in exchange for transitional, short-term housing that may include work and service requirements.
“That is going to devastate communities, it’s going to devastate people who work in those programs and most importantly it’s going to mean that people who have overcome homelessness, people who have disabling conditions and have found safety and security in their housing, they’re going to lose that safety and that security,” said Oliva.
The scope of the federal cuts could mean as many as 170,000 people could lose housing, she added.
“These, again, are people who most of them have disabling conditions, they’re veterans, they’re families with kids and there’s nowhere for them to go,” she said. “We don’t have enough affordable housing to absorb that kind of inflow. In the same way communities have experienced spikes in the past, we will see a spike nationwide and it’s completely preventable.”
“I hope folks will reach out to their members of Congress and tell them to stop HUD from making this really wildly problematic choice.”
Another loss of funding could come from the Continuum of Care program in HUD that Oliva said will be cut by a “significant amount.” The final numbers are not able to be published under the current government shutdown.
Homelessness in Bloomington-Normal
As unhoused individuals and the housing crisis has steadily increased in Bloomington-Normal, community partners like Home Sweet Home Ministries have started on solutions like the shelter village known as The Bridge.
Oliva said safe and affordable housing is what cures the problem.
“I think elected officials here and in many places are thinking about this on two fronts. How can we expand the amount of affordable housing … but also in the meantime, in the interim, what are the strategies like tiny home villages that we can put in place that keep people as safe and healthy as possible while we’re pursuing these long-term goals,” Oliva said.
Ventures like The Bridge to truly be successful, she said, means they will have a clear path for individuals to have the life they envision, whether it range from employment to recovery, while keeping them safe and sheltered in the meantime.
Oliva said she has seen communities similar in size to Bloomington-Normal undertake other strategies as well. One example is incorporating previously unhoused people into the formation of new policy.
“There is no better way to understand where there are problems then to ask somebody who’s actually been through it and to allow them to not just participate in decision making and provide input but to actually lead some of this work,” she said. “It’s some of the best work that I’ve seen around the country.”
Oliva said another successful strategy is homelessness prevention or trying to keep people from leaving their housing to begin with.
Statewide homelessness
In broader terms, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported the state of Illinois saw its rate of unhoused individuals more than double from 2023 to 2024. No other state came close to the rate of Illinois.
“So, what that tells me is that there were other factors at play here in Illinois, specifically in Chicago, that points to a system that was not adequately resourced to meet the demand, especially a big spike in demand that we saw in Chicago,” she said.
But Oliva said one year does not tell the whole story of homelessness in Illinois.
“So, I think we have to be careful about making assumptions with one-year changes and we have to look at this data overtime to see how the system is functioning and how many people are exiting homelessness as a result of the hard work of frontline staff and local leaders," she said.
One reason to explain the sudden spike could be the practice of others state leaders who were busing unhoused people, such as undocumented immigrants, to cities like Chicago.
“Part of that story is about global migration, so we might not expect to see those sorts of wild shifts in other parts of the state, but because the state numbers are largely driven by urban areas, the state as a whole has shifted a couple of different times over the last couple of years,” she said.
Oliva said 2025 numbers from the city of Chicago, which has a large share of Illinois' unhoused population, indicate that figure has dropped 60% since 2024.
