Illinois is susceptible to shedding vital federal housing sources that preserve hundreds of Illinoisans in steady properties, affecting not solely these people and households but in addition each neighborhood within the state. Current funds and workers discount proposals from the Trump administration would intestine the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement by slashing funding for rental help, homelessness prevention, residence possession applications and neighborhood growth, and terminating half of all HUD workers.
It is going to grow to be tougher — not simpler — for folks to search out and afford a spot to stay.
Packages in danger embrace:
- Homelessness prevention and emergency housing help.
- Rental help, particularly for households with younger youngsters, seniors and folks with disabilities. This contains Housing Alternative Vouchers, Challenge-Primarily based Part 8 and public housing funding, which assist 421,500 Illinoisans (221,000 households) afford a secure place to stay and likewise helps assist the personal market.
- First-time residence purchaser and housing counseling applications that present unbiased, skilled steerage to assist folks purchase properties and stop foreclosures.
- Well being and security in properties, together with funding for the elimination of lead paint and contaminated water from properties.
- Truthful housing training and protections, which guarantee residents find out about their housing rights and honest housing legal guidelines are enforced.
- Group revitalization and growth funding for tasks that preserve neighborhoods sturdy, together with infrastructure priorities from road resurfacing to sewer repairs.
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Proper now, 4 in 10 low-income Illinoisans are experiencing homelessness or pay over half their earnings for hire. Most who qualify for federal rental help don’t obtain it as a consequence of underfunding; ready lists are years lengthy, if open in any respect. These proposed cuts will make it even worse. Extra households will probably be evicted. Extra seniors and folks with disabilities will face homelessness. Extra working households will wrestle to maintain a roof over their heads. Gutting HUD would additionally damage landlords, builders, mortgage lenders and native companies that depend on housing stability.
There are bipartisan options to extend the provision of housing for all earnings ranges, particularly these struggling probably the most. Now is just not the time to hamstring the federal company we have to assist us take care of rising rents and to develop the provision of housing. Illinois residents and our elected officers should rise up for HUD and inform Congress to reject HUD cuts and workers terminations.
Sharon Legenza, government director, Housing Motion Illinois
COPA can’t succeed with out officer assist
Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Workplace of Police Accountability, has resigned. This comes as a major reduction to Chicago law enforcement officials and their union, and it also needs to come as a reduction to Chicagoans. Ms. Kersten’s tenure was turbulent, beginning with the advice that slain Chicago Police Officer Ella French be suspended for her position within the wrongful raid on the residence of social employee Anjanette Younger. The outrage was as a result of French was lifeless when this advice was made; she was murdered within the line of responsibility in 2021, and her identify ought to have by no means been introduced up within the method that it was.
Kersten’s insurance policies, anti-police rhetoric, written communications and blatant anti-police agenda when talking with media was nothing greater than feathering her nest to seem like a “reformer” maintaining the police in verify. Her workers didn’t assist her. Her interview with sports activities character Stephen A. Smith demonstrated her want to hunt the limelight.
Kersten did numerous injury to COPA and the Chicago Police Division. The necessity for brand spanking new exterior management is obvious. Chicago ought to transfer ahead with an outdoor chief to supervise COPA and redesign the workplace in order that it has the whole confidence and assist of Chicagoans, COPA workers, rank-and-file police and the union. With out this, they’re setting the subsequent director up for failure.
It’s time COPA adopted state regulation on investigating police-involved shootings, with out looking for carve-outs. It’s the one method to instill public confidence.
Strict enforcement begins with educated, state-certified felony investigators who’re law enforcement officials or retired detectives and who’re well-versed in violent crime investigations, together with shootings, homicides and different violent crimes. Search out the most effective investigators with the most effective expertise to conduct respectable felony investigations on alleged violations of police division coverage and state legal guidelines, after which ship findings by way of the right channels. The one approach the rank and file can have confidence in any future investigations by COPA is when you have the precise folks in the precise place with the precise {qualifications}.
Cops, together with Chicago police, need investigations to be overseen professionally and have officers’ rights protected. No police officer desires to work with a nasty cop. The one method to transfer ahead is to have a respectable Civilian Workplace of Police Accountability,. Something much less is simply politics.
Tom Weitzel, retired police chief, Riverside Police Division
Trump’s ‘farce of a presidency’
Sufficient is sufficient. In keeping with an opinion piece in “Scientific American,” certainly one of Donald Trump’s February government orders contains bringing supervision and management of the Nuclear Regulatory Fee to the president.
Trump wouldn’t know an isotope from an isobar, which he has already demonstrated throughout Hurricane Dorian. He’s denuded the Division of Veterans Affairs, crippled the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is making an attempt to strip funding from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and handled tariffs like a toddler taking part in with a light-weight change.
His overseas insurance policies insult our allies, placate our enemies and level the world to three-country dominance. Trump’s an incompetent boob. When is Congress going to face as much as this farce of a presidency?
Jim Arneberg, Hoffman Estates
