Progress Illinois

Yesterday, Heartland Alliance's Mid-America Institute on Poverty released its annual report on the state of Illinois poverty, shedding more light on some disturbing statewide trends we've been following over the past year. Illinois may be the fifth wealthiest state in the nation, but based on some 2007 census data, still 12 percent of the population (totaling 1.5 million people) lives in poverty, earning less than $22,050 for a family of four. As if that figure wasn't alarming enough, researchers projected that if the unemployment rate rose to 9 percent (which it surpassed in March), an additional 405,000 people will fall on the wrong side of the poverty line this year. More from the Tribune:

The projected increase means a 27 percent jump in the number of the region's poor over the past two years. The state jobless rate is now at 9.1 percent -- a rate the state hasn't experienced since November 1985.

"It's a real deepening of hardship," Amy Rynell, director of Heartland Alliance Mid-America Institute on Poverty, said Wednesday. "People today need the basics, like shelter and food. The [downturn] has had the greatest impact on those who had the least to begin with."

With many social service providers on the brink themselves, some serious holes in Illinois' safety net are currently being exposed. In a sign of how bad things have become, homeless shelters began turning away people over the winter months when they couldn't make payroll and cover other operating expenses. Without "shoring up the system," Rynell warns, more people will be tipped into poverty unnecessarily. "Now it's more important that ever ... that our state assist in helping meet immediate needs: preventing families from losing stability."

Along with legislative and county data that highlights the connection between unemployment, education, and poverty, Heartland Alliance laid out its state policy agenda in the "2009 Report on Illinois Poverty." Encouragingly, some of the recommendations stand a chance to be adopted in the statehouse. (Click through the links below for some of our reporting on where these proposals stand):

-Promote tax fairness and increase Illinois' Earned Income Tax Credit;

-Leverage stimulus money to train and employ people with barriers to employment through reforming Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Workforce Investment Act programs;

-Invest $500 million from the capital budget in affordable housing over the next five years;

-Increase funding (including capital money) for community schools so programs -- including out-of-school learning, health services, family support, and community activities -- are accessible;

-Create Children’s Savings Accounts with incentives that encourage low-income families to save for education.

As the researchers point out, "hardship, spiraling unemployment, increased poverty and homelessness, and weakening financial security for the coming years are not inevitable." But it's going to take strong public policy to make sure that low-income families are given the resources needed to recover.