PEORIA, Ill. (25 News) – A new effort aimed at reducing homelessness for men who’ve left prison has been paused in Peoria.
Tuesday night, the Peoria City Council voted to put off a decision on a special use request for nonprofit Gro Community to run a halfway house on SW Adams Street.
Gro officials told council members that their Reentry Community Housing Initiative has been successful in Chicago, and they want to bring the program to Peoria.
25 News reports that in the house, 10 to 12 parolees from the Illinois Department of Corrections would pay $200 to $300 a month in rent. To qualify for the program, they would first have to go through a workforce development program.
“Oftentimes what we see is that men who come home from prison, they don’t have the landlord history, they don’t have the pay stubs, so they have a hard time finding apartments. So, our goal is to help build those skills so that when they go to the market, they’ll have everything that they need,” Gro’s founder Aaron Mallory said.
Men living in the home would have to follow strict rules, and no sex offenders would be allowed to live there.
At-large Council member Bernice Gordon-Young supports the program. In addition to her position on the council, she is a mental health provider at the Peoria County Jail.
“We want to make sure we’re reducing recidivism. We don’t want to see people in and out of prison, in and out of prison with no intervention. We want to break those cycles. And this organization is doing the work to help make that happen,” she said.
In the house, residents would have access to mental healthcare and career coaching. Gro’s goal would be to help men living in the facility find more permanent housing within six to eight months.
At-large Council Member Zach Oyler wanted assurances that people living in the home would be from Peoria, not other areas, saying he couldn’t vote for approval without that information. But, that wasn’t Oyler’s only concern.
“I have an extreme amount of concern with this going in the area of town that it’s going because we have an oversaturation already of folks that are on public service dollars and needing extra service agency assistance,” Oyler said.
District 3 Council Member Tim Riggenbach moved to defer a decision, saying he wanted to understand the initiative better, and learn more about Gro’s plans for a building he thinks needs renovation.
The building in SW Adams Street has been vacant for roughly two years. It’s a former mental health facility owned by Trillium Place.
The city council will take up the measure again at its Dec. 9th meeting.
