The Peoria nonprofit housing more than 60 people in a local motel could receive additional city funding to keep its operation running.
The Peoria City Council is expected to vote next week on a measure granting another $39,000 to Lula NFP on a reimbursement basis.
Lula co-founder Kshe Bernard said the $80,000 of American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] funds allocated by the Peoria City Council in January ran out late last week. Since then, Lula has been operating its pop-up temporary shelter on a completely donation and volunteer basis.
Bernard said volunteers staff the hotel 24/7. The organization feeds the residents what they can, and helps provide hygiene products so residents can clean their own rooms. Bernard said the rooms on their own cost the organization around $13,000 a week.
“I would love to be able to compensate, especially our peer workers,” she said. “It’s been a labor of love.”
Ninety-one people total have been through the motel shelter, Bernard said; there are 62 living there right now. The remaining 29 have moved on to other temporary shelter options, like a special floor in the Dream Center, housing programs, or permanent supportive housing through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD].
‘They’re getting central care and they’re being offered all sorts of programs that are helping them stabilize,” said Bernard. “Medication-assisted recovery, we’ve had people go to treatment and just to see people stabilize and progress through these systems of care, it’s been an amazing thing to see.”
Many of the motel’s occupants came from the former publicly visible encampments in Peoria after the city council passed an ordinance banning public camping and organizations like Lula scrambled to respond. But Bernard said unhoused people also came from caves, drain pipes, business doorways and alleyways around Peoria.
“To be frank, the new [Trump] administration slashing all their federal budgets is not helping the housing situation in Peoria at all, because it can affect the permanent supportive housing placements, and that is what our folks need,” said Bernard.
Lula is exploring every option and will return to City Council chambers on Tuesday as the council considers the additional $39,000 grant. According to the meeting agenda, the grant would extend the time Lula can operate at the hotel through March 28.
“If the city does not want to see 62 people back on the street, they’re going to have to find a way to continue this project or find a different, better alternative,” said Bernard. “And right now, as always, the shelters are at capacity. We’re past capacity and there’s just no options.”
Some city council members are open to considering the additional funding for Lula’s pop-up shelter.
“I think all options should be on the table,” said District 2 council member Chuck Grayeb. “But it is a red line for me that anyone in our city should be allowed to camp or live outside. That’s not the way it should roll in any city in the world, certainly not in our great city.”
Grayeb is an advocate of looking at “different ways to attack the problem.” He specifically references efforts in Rockford to reach “functional zero” homelessness.
However, Grayeb also said he would like to see less criticism of council members’ positions from various organizations.
“I think those people who are interested, in our various agencies, in helping folks, and who are not interested in attacking city council members, casting aspersions on motives and thinking that it’s OK for people to live outside, if you know, if we can work with folks like that, then I think we’ll be cooking with gas,” he said.
District 3 council member Tim Riggenbach said he would “absolutely” support measures providing more funding for Lula.
“Clearly, that’s still a work in progress and I think it’s important that in the middle of March, we don’t shut down this project,” he said. “That it’s staying such an incredible benefit for the unsheltered population.”
Riggenbach said he expects more of a debate among the council on additional measures than the first one passed during frigid January temperatures. But he said he knows his position is defensible.
“I think something that needs to really be highlighted is that, since this ordinance was passed in November, the communication between our agencies that provide permanent supportive housing and the city and Lula, the people actually on the street, has just increased,” said Riggenbach.
This sort of collaboration, he said, is exactly what he envisioned when he voted for the encampment banning ordinance, after initially speaking out against it.
“I think it’s really encouraging to see that the folks on the streets, the ones providing the permanent supportive housing, are out there working together,” he said.
Other city council members have advocated for more conservative allocation of funds to the city’s homelessness programs.
At-large council representative John Kelly said an increase from $10,000 to $80,000 in the first Lula funding ordinance “rocked” him at a mayoral primary debate.
“I thought, ‘You know, we’ve done this money placement before.’ … I’d like a little more warning on things like that,” he said at the Jan. 23 candidate forum. “I do wish to have the city sponsor detox centers [and] recovery housing, not just housing, and I think we can get closer to the bottom of these problems.”
With the city council now set to consider this additional ordinance, Bernard wants people to understand that getting unhoused people into housing programs takes considerable effort and time.
“It’s important that everyone realizes that everyone we’ve had come through has been connected with housing services,” she said. “They’re on the wait list. They’re doing everything they should be doing.”
