CHAMPAIGN — Champaign County has seen an uptick in homelessness in recent years. A group of organizations focused on ending homelessness in the region gathered this week to take steps toward creating a new strategic plan.
The ballroom at the I-Hotel in Champaign was transformed Monday evening into a place for open discussion and brainstorming solutions to homelessness. The “Plan to End Homelessness Kickoff Event” was hosted by the Champaign County Continuum of Service Providers to the Homeless.
Damita Parsley, vice-chair of CSPH, said there are many misconceptions about homelessness.
“People often equate homelessness with crime, addiction, laziness, lack of education,” Parsley said. “But I beg to differ. I equate homelessness with unfortunate events that can happen to any one of us at any time.”
The cost of living has gone up, she noted, contributing to financial instability for many people. And unhoused people also deal with medical issues and stigma.
“All these unhoused people, they are our families, our friends, our neighbors, and they need our support,” she said.
Parsley knows what it’s like to be homeless. She said she previously spent 90 days living in her van, which led her to seek out services provided by Cunningham Township. The community she found there, she said, kept her coming back as a volunteer.
Cunningham Township is part of the CSPH, which is made up of over 50 groups, including nonprofit, faith-based and government organizations that focus on ending homelessness in Champaign County through “client-centered services, community engagement, advocacy, and strategic resource allocation,” according to the group’s website.
With state funding and support from the Illinois Office to Prevent and End Homelessness, CSPH hired Homebase, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, to aid in its strategic plan.
“Communities all over the country are working with consultants like Homebase and are coming together to end homelessness and make it rare, brief, and one-time; that’s the definition of functional-zero homelessness, and we can do that here,” said Cunningham Township Supervisor Danielle Chynoweth.
Homebase recently supported the Heartland Housing Plan in Springfield, Illinois, to work toward eliminating homelessness by 2028. The plan, which is currently three years underway, has led to a 50% decrease in unsheltered individuals between 2024 and 2025 Point in Time Counts, according to Bridget Kurtt DeJong, director of capacity building at Homebase.
DeJong said she hopes to see this same level of success in Champaign.
“Over the past three years, homelessness has been growing in Champaign,” DeJong said. “We’re seeing more people not being able to exit homelessness successfully… This is really a reflection point, that we need to be paying attention and working together as strategically as possible in order to reduce homelessness.”
Champaign County has seen a steady increase in homelessness since 2022, with an estimated 355 people homeless according to Champaign County’s 2025 Point in Time Count — the most recent data available.
CSPH and Homebase are using local data to see how homelessness affects the community in an effort to identify gaps in resources.
The next step, DeJong said, is a qualitative analysis based on information from people with firsthand experience with homelessness. CSPH will then craft a strategic plan, which should be complete by June.
The “Plan to End Homelessness Kickoff Event” was the starting point for CSPH’s strategic plan.
At Monday’s event, attendees chose seats at one of 11 different discussion tables, each labeled with a specific issue related to homelessness, such as street outreach, transitional housing and emergency housing.
Attendees shared insights and feedback throughout the event. Each table had a facilitator who took notes and encouraged discussion.
Throughout the event, participants could vote on different ideas, models and programs that could be used to reduce homelessness.
“We find that strategic plans are a great way to get the whole community pulling the same direction,” DeJong said. “We really hope we can change the trajectory of homelessness in Champaign and improve partnerships in order to reduce homelessness and reduce the number of people who become homeless.”