Homelessness is a major issue in the Quad Cities, and was a major topic Thursday, April 9 as part of the 4th-annual Rooting Out Poverty Conference, presented by Project NOW at the QC Waterfront Convention Center, Bettendorf.
“It's our mountaintop experience,” Project NOW executive director Rev. Dwight Ford said of the event. “It's a way for us to say thank you. It's a way for us to rally all of the organizations, all of our commitments, our partners throughout the state, and of course, here locally in the Quad-City region. We come together, we work so hard alongside of each other, but this allows us to report out what we have done, the gains that have been made. But it also points us to what still is left to be done and accomplished together. And so in many ways, this serves as both celebration, but also a recommitment to the work that remains.”
In light of a new emergency winter shelter in Moline, “What this conference does is to serve as another light upon the challenge. But it also welcomes new voices, new commitments, new individuals, new institutions to the work that is here,” Ford said. “When we talk about homelessness, which is a derivative, as you heard of the presentation, not entirely, but mainly caused by an economy that is not working for everyone, that people don't have enough. And so this, the conversation about housing allows us to talk about everything else.
“Housing is the anchor to all other opportunities, and it actually saves lives and it actually secures futures,” he said. “And so the reason why homelessness and housing insecurity is always a major conversation is because we know that if an individual, individuals are not housed, then where are they? And how can they anchor themselves to take advantage of the other opportunities of education, economic driving initiatives for their household, health care?”
There is a need for more than 7,000 additional units of affordable rental housing in the QC, Ford said, noting that takes regional cooperation. And counts of the local unhoused population need to be estimated to be at least triple the number cited.
“We can only do this together. Project NOW will always be out front, but we will never be alone,” he said. “We believe in maximum feasible participation.
“We have to have a conversation about workforce and where are the jobs that can pay attention to a living wage,” Ford said. “Most people that come to our agency at some point, if they're asking for housing support, almost 70% of their monthly income going to housing -- that is not sustainable. And we're talking about people that work every day and they still can't make enough.”
The area also has to make home ownership more affordable, Ford said.
The emergency shelter in downtown Moline (since mid-January) has served over 280 people over three months, with the capacity at 60 beds, and about 25 others placed in selected hotels.
“We have a chance to move them into housing secure programs that lead to more permanent realities or they're turning the key to their own apartment,” Ford said of the goal, which has Project NOW has helped move 60 people into new permanent housing, compared to 14 from last year’s winter shelter in downtown Rock Island, which served 180 persons who stayed over 12 weeks.
“I couldn't be more pleased. We have saved lives that no one, essentially during the season that we have opened up, the shelter has lost life due to the cold in the environment,” he said.
“But we also have mental health evaluations that have occurred. All of them have bus passes so they can take care of the responsibility of their citizenship, move as a human being without always having to be girded and supported in somebody else's car. They can move and take care of their responsibilities.”
“This opens up a sense of really restoring their dignity. And then we're talking about our own share of humanity that we care enough to do something about the miserable condition that so many are forced to live in right now,” Ford said, noting the emergency Moline shelter will close April 15.
He credited agency partners Salvation Army, MetroLINK, and Robert Young Center this year working with the unhoused population.
“We're trying to make sure people feel like they're connected, that they belong. We have a catered meal over the weekend. So all these things came about because of the lessons we learned last year,” Ford said. “This work really requires that you learn fast and apply the lessons learned in the things that didn't go as well as you hoped or the things that you're still working on to the future.”
The conference brought together 340 people, including from Chicago, Peoria, Iowa City, Clinton, Muscatine and Cedar Rapids, he noted.
“That gives me great hope because the more that we collaborate and work across municipalities, then the more we have a chance of reducing the challenge in a geographical footprint,” Ford said. “It does us no good for Moline to get a win. And Davenport doesn’t. It does us no good for Davenport to win, and Rock Island doesn't. We got to figure out how to win across the region. And how do we do that so that we can leverage our strengths and manage our weaknesses or the things that we're still working on collectively, rather than saying, this city does better than that city or this city doesn't have this problem. This is a collective challenge.”
Chief state homelessness officer
One keynote address Thursday was from Christine Haley, chief homelessness officer for the state of Illinois, appointed in November 2021 as the first in her position, coordinating strategies across the state agencies and community partners to advance housing stability.
“The root cause of homelessness is our lack of affordable housing. And I think that we hear and understand very clearly that we are in a housing crisis in our country,” Haley said, noting that housing was the top reason for calls to the state’s 211 line (42% of all calls) from January 2024 through October 2025.
Rents have increased from 2020 to 2024, by upwards of 40%, including the Illinois Quad-Cities, where the increase was over 30%.
The number of people in Illinois experiencing homelessness has risen since 2022, up to 13,289 on any given day in 2025, Haley said.
That’s also reflected in northwest Illinois, in the 15-county Continuum of Care region, homelessness has increased 152% from 2020 to 2025, she noted. In this area, there were 117 sheltered homeless people in 2020, compared to 317 sheltered in 2025 (and another 23 unsheltered).
“The fact that you all have increased your shelter capacity by 200 is an improvement. But that it also just helps to demonstrate that people now have access to resources that they didn't before,” Haley said.
In addition to federal cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, the Trump administration has proposed a drastic cut in housing grants, which are called the Continuum of Care program. In Illinois, communities get about $182 million in federal grants through the Continuum of Care program, providing permanent supported housing and rapid rehousing (meaning mostly rental), she said.
“The majority of people that experience homelessness are able to self-resolve, meaning that they are able to identify a housing resource on their own,” Haley said. “Those who aren't able to access a resource on their own really need government support. That is what we see within those who are housed within the CoC program.”
Haley said people who have barriers such as a mental illness or substance use are not the primary driver of homelessness.
“The primary driver is not having enough money to afford your rent or having someone who can support your rent, like family and friends,” she said. “That the false narrative is that people need mandatory services to reach self sufficiency.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to reduce Illinois funding for permanent housing from 88% of federal grants to 60% for permanent housing. Haley said that means 3,662 households in Illinois who are currently in permanent housing or rapid rehousing will lose their subsidies.
“This is important for local communities to understand because I think that if you see an increase in homelessness in your community because permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing funds have been cut, if they see an increase in homelessness in their community, their likely thought is to blame the person for why they are outside -- not understanding that this is being driven by a policy choice,” she said. “It's important for municipalities to be thinking about how they're planning to prevent the traumas of people losing their housing.”
Haley noted Illinois doesn’t have enough money to be able to make up for the federal cuts. “So we will need support across our communities,” she said, noting statewide there has been a major increase in funding to address homelessness – from $200 million in 2023, to over $500 million in 2025.
Racial disparities in unhoused
Haley also spoke of racial disparities in homelessness, which
disproportionately affect African-Americans. In Illinois, Black residents comprise about 14% of the state, about 29% of those who are experiencing poverty, but 53% of those who experience homelessness in Illinois.
In northwest Illinois, 5% of the population is Black, but 24% of the homeless population is Black, she noted, compared to 41% in 2022.
“We can look at the data and we can see that it's a problem. But why? Why do these disparities exist? And I think that we've done work on trying to get to the why so that we are able to address it,” Haley said, it comes down to income and poverty levels, as Black residents statewide have a much lower level of wealth than whites. In Illinois, Black households have median total assets of $20,000, compared to $325,000 for white households.
Nationwide, Black wealth averages about 5% of white wealth, and average income is 60% of white incomes, she said.
“If someone is having a housing crisis -- you lose a job, you get sick, you miss rent, who do you reach out to? You reach out to your family and friends,” Haley said. “In our segregated times, if our family and friends also are in the same economic status that we are in, then there isn't that safety net that exists within family and friends, right? And that's where we see those differences and assets that could be one of the primary drivers of the disparity that we see in Black and white Illinois.”
Gov. JB Pritzker recognizes that homelessness isn’t due to personal choices, but partly to historical discrimination and structural barriers, Haley said, noting a quote of his from April 2024, when the state adopted a two-year Home Illinois Plan (which expires this June 30).
“In Illinois, these legacies of inequality will require us to collaborate across issue areas from public health to commerce to criminal justice, so that is the work that is before us,” she said, noting they’re working on a new plan.
“Our strategies are, one, really looking at how are we building more affordable and permanent supportive housing that is done in partnership with local municipalities and utilizing low income housing tax credits, permanent supportive housing programs,” Haley said. “Our second strategy is around bolstering the safety net. So how do we think about prevention? How do we prevent people from entering the homeless system?
"So prevention whenever possible, then thinking about shelter, thinking about what are all of our strategies around making it easier for people to access the resources they need. The third pillar is around increasing financial stability.”
Homeless average age of death is 56
The state is also working to close a mortality gap for homeless people.
“The Illinois Department of Public Health released a few years ago our state's first mortality and morbidity report for unhoused folks. And in that we found that the average age of death of an Illinoisan experiencing homelessness is 56 years old,” Haley said, noting some of the reasons for that includes substance abuse, increased disease prevalence, and the increased likelihood of homeless people being murdered.
“We also looked at things like hospital admissions and found that we had over 15,000 admissions over a six-year period for suicide attempts,” she noted. “We also found, and I think which is something that we really need our thought partnership and leadership on, is that for what we spend on health care and healthcare costs, that we spend between 3 and 4 billion dollars annually on health care for people that are unhoused.”
Solutions must come from a wide variety of places, Haley said.
“It’s coordination across state, county and local governments to create opportunities where we're building the housing infrastructure, we're building the shelter infrastructure, and we're building pathways for people to move from being living in their cars, living in shelter, living in encampments, to living in their own home,” she said.
She’s worried as of May 1, many people will lose federal subsidies.
“Previously, people who were unhoused veterans and people who were aging out of foster care had a waiver from work requirements and that waiver went away,” Haley said. “Now for able-bodied adults without dependents will lose their SNAP coverage if they are not able to identify work or volunteer or school activities or can be identified to have a disability.
“People who experience chronic homelessness according to the state definition are eligible for a waiver. But we anticipate that statewide for who we know, there are about 13,000 unhoused individuals who will lose their benefits, and will either need to be working 40 hours a week or meet those requirements,” she said. “So we are very concerned about HR1 in that aspect for SNAP in which as of May 1 is when the first round of people will get the notification that they may lose their benefits.”
During a panel discussion, Haley said what’s giving her hope is “all of this work that's happening at the local level to really be able to change these very harmful narratives about people experiencing homelessness.”
“It’s at the local level, unfortunately, with a number of ordinances that really can be harmful,” she said. “Illinois has one of the highest number of local ordinances around criminalization of homelessness in the country. And so that means because we have quite a bit of work to do to ensure that we can stop those types of criminalization ordinances from moving forward. And so I think that the work of that we saw today is very inspiring and really is a model for the rest of the state that we'd love to share.”
Moline’s progress
Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati credited the city council and staff for implementing the Level Up partnership with Project NOW (launching in January 2024), to provide critical or emergency assistance to residents in economic need that are not met by other programs or services. It aims to meet critical emergency needs while also employing sustained techniques to help qualifying participants move from one socioeconomic level to another and help to stabilize home and community economics.
Funded by the City of Moline from cannabis revenue and administered by Project NOW, the program dedicates $120,000 to year-long disbursement of $400 per month to 25 qualifying families and $60,000 in varying amounts for emergency critical assistance to residents.
“The shelter project this year, there were a whole lot of people that began to be volunteers because that existed,” Rayapati said, noting the janitor at her building at Augustana College spoke to her about the shelter. She has volunteered on weekends at the downtown Moline shelter.
“I’m so proud there was an opportunity to feel important, by
helping others,” the mayor said. “None of this happens in isolation. There’s no way the change we brought to Moline could happen without the members of the city council.”
Rayapati is working with the Rock Island County Board to explore a potential permanent shelter on the Illinois side.
“We have the tools that we need and of course it takes partnerships with folks like you all and Project NOW to make anything happen. So that's very exciting to me and I think just continuing to have a really open conversation with members of the community,” she said.
Ron Lund, chief operating officer for Project NOW, said creating a new permanent shelter will require a fight.
“We absolutely need a large permanent shelter here on the Illinois side. And understanding that this is not going to be a one city council meeting,” he said. “This is going to be a years-long, multi-year fight. And I'm not saying that you're going to have to fight elected officials. That is not the case. Your elected officials, at least the ones that I've been communicating with, they recognize this and they're on board.”
“However, nothing is going to happen overnight. And while we admit affordable housing and housing units, that is a long-term permanent solution,” Lund said. “But if we don't start addressing the homeless population right now that is outside, these individuals will not survive to that housing coming online.
We have to address both of these issues at the same time.”
Support of The Third Place QC
Christie Adamson, co-founder of The Third Place QC in downtown Rock Island (2000 3rd Ave.) a drop-in center for homeless people that serves about 100 a day, said there’s a larger need than just the creation of more affordable housing in our communities.
“We absolutely need to continue doing that and we need to do it more quickly than we ever have in the history of at least my life. And we can't forget that people who enter the homelessness system are no longer seen,” she said. “We don’t look at them, we don't see them, we don't allow them into public spaces. We've lost a lot of public spaces. So accessing areas where we can build community, where we can find friends, where we can talk to each other about day-to-day things in life and share jokes together over a cup of coffee.”
Adamson has worked in homeless services a long time, and works to provide that invaluable personal connection, support and resources at The Third Place.
“I woke up one morning living in a home I've lived in for 12 years in downtown Rock Island, and there was a tent across the street from my house,” she recalled. “So Chloe and I chose to create a standard drop-in center, one that you might find similar resources across lots of our communities in the country and certainly across the state of Illinois, where we can provide basic needs for people, things like laundry vouchers and hygiene supplies and clothing and all of the things that you might need to survive to the next day.
“But more than that, we wanted to create a space where people who are not seen anywhere else are always seen when they walk in our front door,” Adamson said, noting they know all their clients by name and get to know them.
“We acknowledge their achievements, and we also walk alongside of them when they're struggling,” she said. “And part of what has made The Third Place so successful is not just that we have the buy-in which we do from an enormous amount of community support. A lot of people that said, hey, you're right, we don't see these folks, we don't provide them the type of community integration that we all need to be successful, thriving citizens and a thriving, healthy community.”
“We thought we would serve only 40 people a week. We looked at the data, we did the research, and turns out we're serving over 100 people a day,” Adamson said. “And that is because we all want to be seen. And we do not have enough places in our community where we allow people to be seen in all of their messy, wonderful, challenging ways. And we really try to make an effort to do that in a very simple way every day at The Third Place.”
To break down barriers, “we have to start treating people like people and we have to know them,” she added. “We all know in this room that to truly stop the cycle of homelessness, we have to address poverty and we have to increase affordable housing. Like I said, we will continue to say we need more of it. We need it to come online faster and specifically right here in this community. And we also need people moving into that housing that feel like they are a part of something, that they have value, that they have meaning, and that they are important members of our community.
“And that starts with creating a system when somebody enters homelessness that does not continually re-traumatize them while they are living unsheltered,” Adamson said, noting that’s the Third Place role. “We believe that The Third Place is proof that when you lead with dignity and invest in human potential, that the community will rise up to meet you. We believe that belonging changes everything.”
“I want to build a Quad Cities where everyone, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their housing status, has a place to grow, to be heard, and most importantly, a place to belong.”
The power of storytelling
Annika O’Melia is a Rock Island native and therapist who last year started a website and podcast, Rock Island Line, and she’s extensively written and discussed the homelessness issue. Thursday, at the conference, she spoke about the power and importance of storytelling and narrative, to reflect the true nature of people’s lives.
“Stories build community. And research finds that when communities have robust storytelling networks, whether that's telling stories at the dinner table or through social media or in the local media, that people are more likely to be civically engaged, to trust one another, and to cooperate,” O’Melia said.
“There's actually a lot of science behind storytelling that I had no idea about when I started doing this. When residents see themselves and their neighbors reflected in stories, they feel more connected to place, more invested in civic processes, and more likely to show up.”
She has gotten to know unhoused people, told their stories, and attended city council meetings with them. Thursday, she played an audio recording of an interview with an unhoused man last fall outside the downtown Rock Island library.
“Stories do something that data cannot do. So while we talk about poverty rates and shelter beds and housing needs, and those are really important, data-driven kind of metrics for policymakers, research can inform us, but stories are what can transform us,” O’Melia said. “Research shows us that people don't change their mind based on stats alone. They change their mind when they can connect and be kind of transported through the narrative of someone else, kind of tied in with their own sense of values and meaning and purpose, and that those stories are really what change us fundamentally.”
Her most popular story was called “A Night of Miracles in Rock Island,” this past December, about the temporary overnight shelter in Rock Island hosted by Martin Luther King Center.
“I think that really reflects that people want to love each other, that people want to be in a supportive, loving community,” O’Melia said. “Where we treat people with dignity. And you think that the most salacious stuff or the stuff that's the most controversial would get the most attention, but it's actually, people are so hungry for connection and kindness and understanding. We share this thing called the human condition.”
She said the city she loves has a history of treating the unhoused as second-class citizens.
“That is just as disgusting as any civil rights issue we faced in our nation's history,” O’Melia said. “I'm hopeful that more people will see themselves as valuable of basic safety and good things in life and start standing up for themselves speaking out and I'm really hopeful that we fight with all the tools in our arsenal and that we fight legally. Getting people to stand up for themselves in a legal way is often the only way that powers that be will change because they don't do it when you ask nice…I'm really hopeful that people will stand up in ways that really hold power to account.”
The theme of Thursday’s conference was “Reclaiming Human Dignity and Restoring Our Shared Humanity.” For more information on Project NOW (which serves Rock Island, Henry and Mercer counties), click HERE.
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