Elgin officials say pilot program to help homeless people is producing positive results

Elgin’s pilot program to help the former residents of the Tent City homeless encampment is producing positive results, program officials told city council members this week.

The Unsheltered Pilot Program, a temporary housing project for which the city partnered with the Association for Individual Development (AID), was launched to provide safe shelter for 42 residents of Tent City who were moved to the Lexington Inn & Suites after a series of fires.

Six months after those fires, Deidra Trout, Behavioral Health Director at AID, said the project has “truly assisted with closing the mortality gap” with its housing-first model.

“While we are so early in this pilot, the progress is real,” Trout said. “People are getting connected to services, stabilizing, and in some cases, rebuilding their lives entirely.”

Trout said they’ve provided case management to 26 of their residents and conducted outreach with 13 others with basic needs that weren’t being met when they were unsheltered.

“The outcomes are clear that when individuals are given shelter, a focus on other impacts deterring stable living and housing opportunities are able to then be addressed,” she said.

Two people have relocated into permanent supportive housing, and another has moved into a nursing care facility. Four clients have received supportive housing referrals through the state, and another is on the waitlist for the DuPage Housing Authority.

Trout said residents at the Lexington have maintained or improved physical health, none have required psychiatric hospitalization, and several have started therapy for the first time in their lives.

She singled out one success story about a woman who had drug issues before moving into the hotel.

“For the first time, she’s clean, and she has passed a drug test,” Trout said. “She has now been reunited with her children and has frequent visits since being sheltered.”

Lore Baker, president and CEO of AID, said the program is a “perfect example” of how being housed can change someone’s life.

“Once they’re able to not have to think every day about where they’re going to lay their heads safely, if they’re going to have enough to eat, if they’re going to be safe at all, they’re able to actively engage in the services and supports they need to move their lives forward,” Baker said.

Jena Hencin, Elgin’s homelessness response coordinator, said the program is about more than simply providing shelter.

“It was about connection, connecting people to services, to benefits, to accurate data systems like the statewide referral network and the Kane County Continuum of Care,” she said.

Hencin said the city and AID are working toward obtaining more grant funding for the program.

“This is long-term work,” she said. “But we’re seeing progress.”