In 2020, our community began to take tangible steps to evaluate gaps in services to address homelessness and chart a new way forward. Community leaders, service providers, people with lived experience of homelessness and community members gave input about challenges related to homelessness and shared their hopes for what could be. The result was the Springfield and Sangamon County’s 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness. This plan set an ambitious goal: by the end of 2028, our community would have the capacity to help everyone who becomes homeless move back into suitable, safe housing within 30 days.
Aiming for a goal that has not yet been reached by any other community in the U.S. has generated significant conversation. Some find the goal naive, while others see it as an inspiring target. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing: to live in a community where homelessness is rare and brief.
The question is: how do we become that kind of community?
We believe our Strategic Plan provides the necessary framework. Since its inception, Heartland HOUSED and the Heartland Continuum of Care have worked to ensure the plan moves from words on a page to real, tangible change for our neighbors. To gauge our progress and learn how to be more effective, we invited Homebase, which helped design our strategic plan, to conduct a Mid-Plan Progress Report, which was recently completed.
The Strategic Plan consists of six high-priority action steps and a total of 32 action steps split across four strategy areas. Of the six high-priority steps:
• Three have been completed.
• Two have seen significant progress.
• One has seen some progress.
What does this mean for our community? It means we have:
• Established an engaged strategy board with strong community representation.
• Established and expanded a Lived Experience Advisory Board.
• Achieved a perfect score on the “built for zero” singles scorecard for data quality.
• Increased the number of people served directly from the streets by 57% between FY22 and FY25.
• Housed 29 unsheltered individuals during a 100-day challenge to jumpstart housing efforts.
• Doubled emergency shelter capacity.
• Placed 458 vulnerable people in housing between September 2024 and November 2025.
• Increased capacity and planning, resulting in a 500% increase in state and federal funding.
The mid-plan progress report highlights a dramatic shift from establishing infrastructure to achieving measurable community impact in Springfield and Sangamon County. For all 32 action steps in the plan, 13 have been completed, 13 have seen some progress made and six are in preliminary stages.
This progress is not the result of one organization or person. It is the collective impact of funders, agencies, case managers, shelter staff, health care providers, community leaders and neighbors taking next steps toward housing stability. This progress demonstrates that when we surround challenges with support and collaboration, real progress can be made.
While we are proud of these milestones, we recognize we still have a long way to go. Each day, community partners field calls from families and individuals struggling to make ends meet. Case managers work tirelessly to help households navigate the transition to housing and the complex support needed for healthcare, food, and employment. We have youth in our community moving from couch to couch in search of safety.
We are mindful of the painful realities housing instability brings, and we know that no amount of progress feels adequate to those currently waiting for services while dealing with the trauma of homelessness. However, the groundwork is now laid to make homelessness rare and brief. The progress report identifies exactly where to invest our energy next:
• Expand mental health and behavioral health care access for those at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
• Support workforce development efforts.
• Create additional supportive housing to address the approximately 350 households prioritized for housing.
• Increase outreach capacity to serve the 80-plus unsheltered individuals on the By-Name List.
• Increase community communication regarding efforts, challenges and solutions.
The Strategic Plan and the partnerships it fostered have served our community well. We look forward to expanding these services and hope you will continue to work alongside us.
Want to learn more? You can view the executive summary of the Mid-Plan Progress Report on the news tab of our website, heartlandhoused.org/. You are also invited to join us via Zoom at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 16, for the Heartland Continuum of Care Membership meeting, where Homebase will present the full report.
Josh Sabo is executive director of Heartland HOUSED, which serves as the backbone organization tasked with developing strategy, supporting implementation activities and facilitating the collaborative work of the Heartland Continuum of Care with the purpose of effectively addressing homelessness in Sangamon County.
