“Criminalization doesn’t solve homelessness—it only makes it harder to escape.”

In recent years, the Springfield community has put in tremendous collaborative effort and made significant progress to improve the system of care to support people in ending their experience of homelessness. Springfield & Sangamon County’s 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness was completed in late 2022 and is our first comprehensive, community-wide framework to work toward functionally ending homelessness. Much work remains to create a community where the experience of homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring but the collaborative efforts we have seen between local organizations and government partners has been a promising sign.

Heartland Continuum of Care partners were surprised to learn Sunday morning of an ordinance  on “Public Camping” that is slated for consideration for Emergency Passage at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. Reading the first five clauses of the ordinance makes it clear that the ordinance is designed to target people experiencing homelessness with criminal penalties. The ordinance mirrors many that are emerging around the State of Illinois in recent months that are based on a model ordinance created by the Illinois Municipal League in response to the Supreme Court’s recent Grants Pass ruling.

An ordinance of this significance deserves careful community consideration and community dialogue, not emergency passage in the midst of a holiday weekend.

The ordinance raises a long list of questions that must be answered.

We are asking for all Springfield residents, including those without addresses, to have the opportunity to engage in community dialogue before any further consideration is given to this ordinance. This topic deserves more than a five-minute time slot on a Tuesday night when people have less than forty-eight hours to organize their thoughts and lives to participate.

Please use the following links for reference and for your advocacy efforts:
- Community Solutions Resource Page on Criminalization of Homelessness
- City of Springfield Ordinance, due to the ordinance being slated for Emergency Passage you do not have to sign up to speak in advance. If you would like to anyway, you can do so here. You can also view the Illinois Municipal League model for the ordinance here.
- Not sure who represents your ward on City Council? Find the map and contact information here.

Do you have questions about the ordinance you think should be considered? Fill out this form to share them with us so we can compile a list.