Safe and stable housing creates the foundation that every person in our community needs to thrive, live a healthy life and reach their goals. As achieving stable housing grows difficult so too does the number of our neighbors forced to spend their energy in survival mode each day trying to figure out where and how to find a place to sleep and food to eat. To be a strong and healthy community, we have to ensure affordable housing is attainable. Heartland HOUSED and Heartland Continuum of Care partners work to create support across the spectrum of housing need from working to prevent homelessness whenever possible, providing shelter when it is unavoidable, and working to support people as they make their way back into housing by providing necessary support.
In 2025, 1,772 people experienced homelessness and received support through Heartland Continuum of Care partners. To put that into perspective, that is more than a 40% increase from 2019 when 1,245 people received support. The unfortunate reality is that in recent years, housing has become more difficult for Sangamon County residents to afford each year.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers a household to be cost burdened when more than 30% of its income is spent on housing costs such as rent, utilities, taxes and insurance. The Fair Market Rental rate (established by HUD) for a one-bedroom apartment in Springfield for Fiscal Year 2026 is $829, up 48% since 2019. The city of Springfield’s 2025 Consolidated Plan estimates that there are more than 8,000 households who are cost burdened and demonstrates the difficulty this poses adding that a “minimum wage earner must work approximately 68 hours per week to make an average two bedroom “affordable,” meaning that the rent is not greater than 30% of income.”
Households that spend most of their income on housing struggle each month to manage their other basic needs such as food and health care. This burden manifests itself in challenges to maintain housing and the need for community support to help neighbors navigate the challenges that could lead to the loss of housing.
In their book Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern share research about contributing factors to homelessness from throughout the country and make the case that high rents and low vacancy rates have the greatest impact on rates of homelessness in communities across the county. Conversations around homelessness often focus on mental health and addiction, which unquestionably make a person more vulnerable to homelessness, but the most significant driver of how many people experience homelessness in a community is the availability of an affordable places to live.
Fewer people are homeless in communities where homes are available and affordable.
As we work to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness in Sangamon County, doing all we can to make housing affordable is a crucial component. As a community, working together to develop new affordable housing units and figure out how to maintain the housing infrastructure we have by preventing homes and apartments from falling into disrepair is an important step to make sure that housing remains both available and affordable.
Housing affordability is a challenge throughout the country with no one solution that fits all communities but improvement is possible. For example, South Bend, Indiana focused on expanding the number of small, local developers through a serious of networking opportunities, learning forums and a resource hub in hopes of creating a 100 duplexes instead of a 200-unit development. The success of the program is estimated to lead to a 2,300 jump in property tax revenue by 2031.
What worked in South Bend might not be the solution for us but our community has the expertise, passionate people and possibility to do similar if not even greater things. When we increase housing affordability, we also increase the possibility that we and our neighbors get to invest our energy beyond survival in ways that are fulfilling and that ultimately contribute to a stronger, healthier community.
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.
This article appears in January 15-21, 2026.
