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CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS:

Illinoi Governor JB Pritzker signs bill aimed at ending homelessness

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Task force brings multiple agencies together to focus resources

By PETER HANCOCK

Capitol News Illinois

[email protected]

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Wednesday that seeks to effectively end homelessness in Illinois by marshaling the resources of multiple agencies into one effort.

House Bill 2831 codifies an executive order Pritzker signed in 2021 that established the Illinois Interagency Task Force on Homelessness and the Community Advisory Council on Homelessness. It centralizes programs across 17 state departments and agencies to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to combat homelessness. 

At a bill-signing ceremony at Featherfist, a homeless services organization in Chicago, Pritzker said the goal of the initiative is to bring homelessness in Illinois to “functional zero.”

Pritzker said “For those who don't know and who may be listening, it's a measurable metric of success that reduces homelessness to something that’s brief and rare and nonrecurring.”

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless estimates that more than 100,000 people in Illinois experienced homelessness for all or part of 2020. 

Christine Haley, the state’s current chief homelessness officer and chair of the interagency task force, said Black people and other people of color are disproportionately affected by homelessness.

She said “We stand here in one of the few Black-led homeless services organizations in our state. And as we stand here, we know that this housing crisis before us is rooted in housing injustice, is rooted in segregation, is rooted in racism. We know this because in our city of Chicago, where now less than a third of its residents are Black, 73 percent of individuals and 90 percent of children and their parents who are experiencing homelessness are Black.”

State Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, who was the lead sponsor of the bill in the House, said that on any given night, an estimated 4,500 people in Illinois are without shelter and the average wait time for someone to receive housing services is 802 days. She also noted that in Fiscal Year 2022, 9,800 people were turned away from emergency shelters.

She said “Ending homelessness and ensuring every neighbor has access to shelter and supportive services has long been possible in Illinois and across the nation, but we haven't had the collective political, economic – and I say this with love – the bureaucratic will to make it happen until now.”

In his State of the State address in February, Pritzker highlighted the state’s “Home Illinois” plan, which calls for increased spending for homelessness prevention, crisis response, housing units, and staffing.

On Wednesday, he noted that the budget lawmakers passed this year includes more than $350 million for homeless services, an increase of $85.3 million over last year.

That includes $50 million in rapid rehousing services for 2,000 households; $40 million to develop more than 90 Permanent Supportive Housing units that provide long-term rental assistance and case management; and $37 million in Emergency Shelter capital funds to create more than 460 non-congregate shelter units.

Governor Pritzker said “No stone will be left unturned in this endeavor,” 

 Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.

TENNESSEE LOOKOUT:

Evolution of the Christian right in Tennessee

Middle Tennessee, and Williamson County, in particular, as the buckle of Christian nationalism

BY: DEVON HEINEN - 6:00 AM

Part of the far right in the U.S. is the Christian far right. According to Philip Gorski, chair of Yale University’s sociology department — political sociology and social movements, as well as religion, are areas of interest for him — the Christian far right in the U.S. has evolved over hundreds of years. Its basic principles, though, date back to the country’s birth, as do its two main groups: “God and country” and “God over country.”

“’God and country’ people believe that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are inspired by the Christian Bible,” Gorski explains. “They believe that America is especially blessed by God, and America has a special mission in history. And they worry that all these blessings and all that power will be taken away if it doesn’t remain a Christian nation. And, for most of these people, the term ‘Christian’ also kind of implies ‘white.’”

“Even further to their right is what I would call the ‘God over country’ people,” Gorski adds. “And these are people who don’t believe that America is a Christian nation or that it ever was, but they’re determined to make sure that it becomes one, and that usually involves destroying the American government and replacing it with some form of Christian government and Christian law.”

Gorski says the U.S. Christian far right has grown over the last 15 or 20 years. One reason, he says, is that there’s been an erosion of authority from older Christian leaders.

“I think there are a lot of conservative white Christians out there who’ve learned a lot more of their ‘theology’ quote-unquote from Rush Limbaugh” — a former Republican media personality who Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom before dying in 2021 at 70 years old — “and Tucker Carlson, than from Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham.”

The U.S. Christian far right has grown a lot since the start of Obama’s presidency, Gorski says, both in terms of numbers and power, but especially in power. When it comes to sheer size, a conservative guess by Gorski puts the percentage of current U.S. Republican voters who are either “God and country” or “God over country” Christian far right at 25 or 30 percent. In terms of power, he says the U.S. Christian far right has grown so much that it’s among the loudest voices in the GOP.

Why has the Christian far right grown in the country? Gorski credits social media for being, probably, the biggest reason: social media has let once-small fringe groups interact with each other as well as work on influencing mainstream opinion.

The U.S. Christian far right is also becoming authoritarian. He says it wasn’t like that 10 or 20 years ago.

When it comes to Middle Tennessee, Rev. Kevin Riggs runs down a list of examples showing the region’s power in Christianity. It’s home to several denominational headquarters. Williamson County houses the majority of the Christian music industry. There are a number of Christian publishing houses in the Middle Tennessee area. And a lot of the executives who work in Christian publishing live in Williamson County.

Riggs is 57 years old. For the past 33, he has been a pastor at Franklin Community Church. He’s currently a senior pastor there. When RIggs talks, you hear a Southern drawl. Originally from Nashville, the fourth-generation ordained minister has lived in Franklin for more than three decades.

“Almost anything that gets put out in the quote ‘Christian world’ and ‘Christian culture’ is going to come through Middle Tennessee before it goes out to the world, and a lot of that is going to come through Williamson County,” Riggs says.

There’s more on his list. Middle Tennessee has so-called Christian celebrities. And it has organizations that have large preaching circuits. Plus, it has Christian institutions of higher education.

And Middle Tennessee’s power doesn’t end there. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research tracks the number of megachurches in the U.S. - megachurches being those with average weekly attendance of at least 2,000 people. With 67 megachurches, Tennessee is 5th in the U.S. But on a per-capita basis, Tennessee had the most.

One thing Riggs wants to make clear: Not every Christian is far-right. But he says the Christian far right is definitely present.

He said “You hear the South oftentimes referred to as the ‘buckle of the Bible Belt’ — sometimes that’s Tennessee, sometimes that’s Arkansas — but I’m convinced that Middle Tennessee, and Williamson County, in particular, is the buckle of Christian nationalism.” 

Riggs doesn’t know if the non-violent end of the far-right spectrum makes up the majority or the minority in Williamson County’s Christian community. It’s too close to tell.

Extremism hits close to home for Riggs. He used to have Christian far-right views.

He said “I know what I’m talking about. I know how Evangelicals think. I know how that far right thinks,” Riggs says. He lets out a chuckle. “You know, I don’t need to read it in a survey. I mean, I know.”

If Trump wins the presidency in 2024, Riggs thinks the situation in Williamson County will get worse. There will be more divisiveness. The Christian far right will be even bolder.

Elizabeth Madeira decided to run for local office in the 2020 election cycle. Before eventually losing her bid for the Tennessee House of Representatives’ 63rd district, Madeira encountered the far right numerous times. The most memorable experience came about six to eight weeks prior to election day. That’s when she got a phone call. The caller had a question: Was Madeira running as a Democrat? Yes, she answered.

Then the caller “went on a long ramble about how Democrats support killing babies, pedophilia, support killing police officers — it was a long, very angry tirade, in which she disparaged the college that I attended- ” which is a Christian college. “And then she said that her daughter attends that college, and, now, she thinks she might have to take that daughter out of college because she was gonna turn into a Democrat like me.”

A little later in the conversation about that phone call, Madeira adds: “It was basically a litany of QAnon conspiracy theories for at least five minutes, and then she hung up on me.”

There were 733 far-right hate groups in the U.S. in 2021, according to the human-rights non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center. In Tennessee, the SPLC tracked 28 hate groups.These consisted of two anti-LGBTQ groups, three white-nationalist, four neo-Nazi, nine general hate groups, one antisemitic, four Ku Klux Klan, two anti-Muslim, one Christian identity, one neo-Confederate and one racist skinhead group. Eleven of Tennessee’s 28 far-right hate groups in 2021 were statewide organizations. Of the remaining 17, six were in Middle Tennessee.

MISSOURI INDEPENDENT:

Over one million Missourians on Medicaid will have their eligibility checked between now and next May. Many have never undergone the process before

BY: CLARA BATES - AUGUST 3, 2023 5:55 AM

In June, 72% of Medicaid dis-enrollments in Missouri were due to "procedural" reasons, meaning the state could not determine eligibility — generally because of paperwork issues (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri has begun checking the eligibility of everyone on its Medicaid rolls — a review process that was paused for three years because of pandemic-era federal protections. 

Advocates hope that continuing to get the word out about how to navigate what is, for many, an unfamiliar process, will help those who are eligible retain coverage.

About one-quarter of the state’s population was enrolled in Medicaid - called MO HealthNet in Missouri - in June of this year.

The state has 1.5 million Medicaid enrollees on the books, up from around 900,000 in March 2020 — in part because Missouri implemented voter-approved Medicaid expansion for low-income adults in late 2021 and in part because of the federal rules providing continuous coverage. 

Now, hundreds of thousands of Missourians are projected to lose coverage. Nationally, more than 3.7 million enrollees already have been disenrolled from Medicaid coverage.

Brandi Linder, community health coordinator at Missouri Ozarks Community Health, a federally-qualified health center that assists with Medicaid renewals said “A lot of people got Medicaid during the public health emergency during COVID that had never had it before, so they’ve never had to go through the annual renewal process,”

Linder said the focus has been ensuring that those who are new to the renewal process understand the stakes: “That if they don’t do it, they could possibly lose their coverage.”

Here are some of the things advocates and state officials want participants to know.

1. Renewal month is typically the anniversary month of your first enrollment.

Missouri’s process of evaluating the eligibility of each person on its caseload will unfold over the next year— the state began in June and will end with those due in May 2024. 

Participants can view their renewal date on the Department of Social Services’ new online portal, but need a smartphone and an active email address to sign up for the required multi-factor authentication.

2. Participants should update their contact information with the state, especially mailing addresses.

The social services department “strongly encourages” all participants to keep their address up to date — notifying the state if they’ve moved in the last three years;

check the mail regularly;

and/or verify your renewal date in the Family Support Division Benefit Portal.

Participants can update their contact info online, in-person, or by phone.

3. The participant will likely need to return paperwork to the state.

If the state doesn’t have sufficient data to renew a participant’s coverage, the participant will need to provide additional information.

That paperwork will be sent to the participant by mail and will be a yellow form.

The participant should receive the form 55 days before their annual renewal is due.

The state sends forms already partially completed with information it has about the participant. 

The participant should, in addition to filling out any blanks in the form, be sure to Review the pre-populated information the state filled out;

Cross out anything that is not accurate and correct it;

And be sure to sign the document before submitting it.

5. If there are paperwork issues, eligible participants could lose coverage.

The state can end coverage for two reasons. 

If the participant is found to be ineligible — because their income exceeds the allowed maximum, for instance, they will be deemed ineligible and lose coverage.

A participant can also lose coverage for what are called “procedural” reasons, meaning the state couldn’t determine the participant’s eligibility, generally due to paperwork issues. 

For instance, a participant could be procedurally disenrolled if they did not return the required paperwork, or did not receive the paperwork — perhaps because of a change in address or lack of a stable address. 

In June, the first month of reviews, more than 32,000 Missourians – half of them children – lost Medicaid coverage with 72% of terminations were due to procedural reasons. That means around 23,000 Missourians disenrolled were not directly found ineligible but their eligibility couldn’t be determined. 

Enrollees have 90 days after the termination to submit required paperwork for reconsideration  — rather than filling out an entirely new application for Medicaid. If they’re found eligible, they can get coverage reinstated.

So if you’re in this situation, it’s “very important to turn that paperwork in as soon as possible,” Oliver said. “It’s not too late.” 

8. Those who lose coverage may be eligible for plans through the Affordable Care Act.

There is a special enrollment period for those who lose Medicaid from now until July 31, 2024. 

If you’re a Missourian interested in speaking to a reporter about your experience with the Medicaid renewal process, please contact [email protected].

And finally, the bad joke nobody asked for: Did I ever tell you about my grandfather? He has the heart of a lion. And, a lifetime ban from the zoo.

Welp, that’s it for me. From Denver I’m Sean Diller, original reporting for the stories in todays show comes from the Missouri Independent, Capitol News Illinois, and the Tennessee Lookout. Thanks for listening, see you next time.

Host: Adam Sommer 

Find Adam on tik-tok and bluesky as "midmapdadenergy" - follow The Process on instagram. 

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Outro Song: “The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium 

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