The year-long war over Illinois’s budget was a nightmare for social service agencies. And, as the Reader reported in July, even the stopgap deal reached at the 11th hour earlier this summer wasn’t enough to reverse the damage done by a year of inaction.
One of these groups is Lyte Collective, a Chicago-based nonprofit that works to meet the needs of the city’s queer homeless youth. That’s become increasingly difficult during the ongoing budget crisis.
CEO Scott Ammarell says the state originally cut the organization’s funding in half and has only paid it about 35 percent of what it’s owed for the services it provided in 2016. That outstanding bill—which Ammarell says amounts to around $240,000—has had a devastating impact on Chicago House, leading to staff layoffs and a reduction in the number of clients the organization serves.
“A lot of the money that the social service agencies receive from [the Illinois Department of Human Services] is used on matching dollars for federal grants,” Ammarell explains. “Let’s say that the state gives an agency like Chicago House $100,000. If we turn around and leverage that $100,000 with another $100,000 that comes from the federal government, we’ve now got $200,000 to address and use for our programs to support our clients.”
Again, LGBT people are disproportionately affected by this reality: a national survey released in February from the Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project found that the percentage of LGBT folks currently behind bars is twice the rate of queer and trans people in the general population.
Illinois’s stopgap budget goes through the end of the calendar year. Ensuring future funding for these groups won’t just help right the financial ship. As advocates say, it will also save lives.
