With the charge of making sure that the $600 million spent
annually on state housing programs is targeted to residents most in need of
assistance, a task force has put the finishing touches on the first statewide
housing plan.
The plan, to be released
Monday, tries to coordinate efforts of more than a dozen state agencies that use
state and federal dollars to run housing-assistance programs aiming to keep
low-income families in their homes, the homeless off the streets and seniors and
disabled people living independently.
The plan does not include
new resources for housing, but "it's quite different from us working apart in
our own silos to try to develop our own housing programs," said Kelly King
Dibble, chairwoman of the task force and executive director of the Illinois
Housing Development Authority.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich
appointed the affordable-housing task force in 2003, giving members a year to
develop a statewide plan.
Robin
Snyderman, housing director for the Metropolitan Planning
Council and a task force member, said that in a practical sense, the
plan will make things easier for the people the state depends on to help create
affordable housing: developers, mayors and planning
commissioners.
"It's been so uncoordinated
in the past," Snyderman said. "For developers, it's having all
these different places where they could go for dollars, and now to know there's
a table where all the state agencies are working together, it's going to create
efficiencies."