December 14, 2023
Your support is needed to help make Hope Village a reality.
Hope Village is a development of 30 “tiny” homes and a community center that will provide Permanent Supportive Housing to individuals who are medically fragile and experiencing chronic homelessness. Hope Village will fill a gap in our housing system for homeless individuals. Individuals in this population have lifespans that are significantly shorter, by 20 or 30 years. They get sick and often die much sooner from preventable and treatable conditions. Hope Village is an innovative model developed from the perspective that “Housing is healthcare”.
Right now, we are seeking approval of a permanent “Planned Unit Development” from the Urbana City Council so that we can proceed with building the Hope Village homes and development. The Urbana City Council meets on Monday, December 18 at 7 p.m. and will be voting on the Hope Village permanent Planned Unit Development.
Please see below to learn more about Hope Village and what you can do to help with this exciting new development.
About Hope Village:
The idea for Hope Village came about as a result of CCHCC’s work in 2021 with medically-fragile individuals who were experiencing chronic homelessness and who were unable to be housed in area shelters.
CCHCC staff worked with these individuals, providing health care case management and support in trying to get them housed. We saw first-hand how difficult it was for medically-fragile individuals to find suitable and accessible housing that also provided the intensive case management support needed to stay housed.
CCHCC has partnered with Carle and the UIUC to create Hope Village, in order to close this housing gap in our community for our most vulnerable residents.
Hope Village will provide 30 Permanent Supportive Housing homes to medically-fragile individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, who have high medical needs and who need intensive case management support.
Hope Village has been developed using trauma-informed design for both the individual homes and the village itself, to create a welcoming, peaceful, healthy, and secure environment conducive to healing and recovery. CCHCC will be providing the intensive case management services at Hope Village. Carle will provide health services on site, as well as fresh produce through their mobile grocery. UIUC is helping to make the homes and the village as energy efficient and conducive to good health as possible. And together, we are creating an innovative model of housing that allows for aging-in-place and health improvement.
Hope Village is located in north Urbana, just north of Carver Drive. While Carver Drive is in Champaign, the former agricultural property located just north of Carver Drive is in Urbana, where Hope Village is being built.
To see what Hope Village and the homes look like, you can go here.
How you can help:
You can help Hope Village and the individuals it will serve by contacting the Urbana City Council and asking them to approve the Hope Village Planned Unit Development.
It does not matter whether you are a resident of Urbana or not – the City Council is taking comment from people throughout our community.
Who to contact: You can contact the City Council as a whole, by writing an email to CityCouncil@UrbanaIllinois.us
The message: If you wish to support Hope Village, you can contact the Urbana City Council at the email above with a message like this: “I am writing to urge you to support Hope Village by approving the Hope Village Planned Unit Development. We need more permanent housing for our most vulnerable community members.”
Thank you for your support!
Sincerely,
Claudia Lennhoff
Executive Director
Champaign County Health Care Consumers