December 02, 2025
There is a feature in today’s The News-Gazette on page B3 where some community members were asked for their comments about “What to do with Strides?”
CCHCC’s Executive Director, Claudia Lennhoff, was asked to submit comments on behalf of CCHCC.
You can read her comments below.
The News-Gazette – Tuesday, December 2, 2025 – “The Great Debate: What to do with Strides?”
Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) would like to see the Strides shelter continue because it is a vital resource in our community. But Strides needs robust funding to meet its staffing needs and its monthly expenses.
Without the Strides shelter, the number of unsheltered homeless individuals would increase dramatically. More people would suffer from the devastating effects of being unsheltered, and the community impact would be immense. The strain on our social services systems, first responders, hospital ERs, food banks, public health, and the locations where people might try to shelter themselves overnight would be devastating.
Closing Strides would not make the increasing problem of homelessness go away. It would just make it much worse.
The number one cause of homelessness in our community, and around the nation, is the cost of housing. We need far more affordable housing than what we have in our community. In fact, part of the crowding and overflow at Strides is due to this fact alone. CCHCC works closely with Strides and we have helped many of the Strides residents apply for, and be approved for disability benefits. But due to the lack of affordable housing in our community, individuals who are homeless but who do have income from disability benefits, cannot overcome the financial barriers to housing. And that is why there is a “bottle neck” at Strides in terms of people being able to move out of the shelter and into their own housing. The lack of truly affordable housing in our community is, in and of itself, having a devastating impact on the Strides shelter because people who are ready to be housed simply cannot find housing they can afford.
Unfortunately, the lack of affordable housing is about to get much worse, as the Trump Administration is calling for states to slash the numbers of people who are receiving housing vouchers through programs like the Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) vouchers. These PSH vouchers help pay the difference in rent between what the tenant can afford and what the market rate for rent is. The federal government is telling communities that they will have to reduce the use of housing vouchers down to a third or less. This means that currently housed people who are using PSH vouchers might end up losing their homes, as landlords lose income from the vouchers. This is a recipe for disaster and tragedy, and local communities will be left picking up the pieces.