AGENDA and MINUTES - Interagency Workgroup on Poverty Elimination First Quarter Meeting March 19, 2025

Interagency Working Group on Poverty Elimination and Economic Security

Meeting Agenda and Minutes

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

1:00-2:30 PM

7/f Executive Conference Room, IDHS Building, 401 S Clinton St, Chicago, IL 60607

Recording

 Agenda:

  1. Meeting ice breaker/conversation starter - Administrator Priya Khatkhate (5 min)
  2. Roll Call - Administrator Khatkhate (3 min)
  3. Public Comment - subject to written comment in advance (2 min)
  4. Approval of Meeting Minutes: December 18, 2024 (2 min)
  5. IWGP Housekeeping - Administrator Khatkhate (3 min)
    1. Mandatory state trainings
    2. Subcommittee participation
  6. Special Presentation
    1. Data Collection and Retention Efforts - Kaitlin Devaney, IRRPP
    2. Successful Cross-agency Workplans - Christine Haley, Illinois Office to Prevent and End Homelessness
    3. Federal Impacts on State Human Services Work, Christine Johnson, Assistant Director of Policy, American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
  7. Next Steps (3 min)
    1. Meeting schedule - invites sent
      1. Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
      2. Wednesday, September 17, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
      3. Wednesday, December 17, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
  8. Adjournment (2 min)

Minutes

Statutory members:

Name Title Organization Attendance
Priya Khatkhate Chairperson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Programs Illinois Department of Human Services Present
Elizabeth Vogt Senior Policy Advisor Illinois Department on Aging Absent
Tyler Bohannon Bureau Chief, Legislative Affairs Illinois Department of Agriculture Absent
Isabel Velez-Diez Deputy Director of Policy Development, Planning, & Research Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Present
Anna Koeppel Legislative and Policy Director Illinois Department of Labor Absent
Marc Staley Deputy Director Illinois Governor's Office of Management and Budget Present
Dr. Janice Phillips Assistant Director Illinois Department of Public Health Absent
Jennifer Saba Chief Education Officer - Operations Illinois State Board of Education Present
Alyssa Williams Assistant Director Illinois Department of Corrections Present

Invited members:

Name Title Organization Attendance
Emily Mueller-Schwartz AD of Policy and Research Illinois Housing Development Authority Present
Carrie Thomas Deputy Director, Business Services Illinois Department of Employment Security Present
Dana Kelly Chief of Staff Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services Present

Facilitators: 

  1. Kaitlin Devaney - Facilitator/Researcher, IRRPP
  2. Nancy Toure - IRRPP

Guests: 

  1. Erik Turner - IHDA, Policy and Research Specialist
  2. Carlos Rodriguez - Illinois Poor People's Campaign
  3. Edward Rule
  4. Christine Johnson - Assistant Director of Policy, American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
  5. Bruce Parry - Illinois Union of the Homeless
  6. Christine Haley - Statewide Homelessness Chief, IOPEH, IDHS

Agenda:

  1. Roll Call - Administrator Khatkhate led the roll call; seven members were present out of 12. Quorum was declared.
  2. Public Comment - subject to written comment in advance; none received.
    • Bruce Parry - Attending to observe and listen.
    • Carlos Rodriguez - We cannot solve the substance use issue without having stable jobs and stable places for people to live. Everything is all interconnected.
  3. Approval of Meeting Minutes: December 18, 2024 - Dir. Staley moved to approved the December 18, 2024 meeting minutes seconded by Ms. Jennifer Saba. The group unanimously approved the December 18, 2024 meeting minutes.
  4. IWGP Housekeeping - Administrator Khatkhate reminded the group of the following.
    1. Mandatory state trainings
    2. Subcommittee participation - if any new members would like to join any subcommittee, they can reach out to Administrator Khatkhate.
  5. Special Presentation
    1. Federal Impacts on State Human Services Work - Christine Johnson, Assistant Director of Policy, American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
      • Congress approved a continuing resolution on March 14, 2025 ensuring federal funding remains in place through the end of F Y2025 (September 30, 2025).
      • The Senate passe its version of FY2025 budget resolution on February 21st while the House passed its version on February 25th. Discussions to reconcile are ongoing.
      • Potential cuts to watch in Illinois among others: Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, TANF, SSBG, Head Start, School Lunch programs.
      • A big difference between the House and Senate bills is there is a debt ceiling in the House budget bill of about $4 trillion while on the Senate side, there's no debt ceiling specified.
      • President Trump's first action was to rescind 78 of the previous administration's executive orders many are human services-related EOs.
      • Trump created DOGE thru three EOs.
      • EO on ending taxpayer subsidization of open borders prohibiting "illegal aliens" from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits preventing people from accessing economic services and benefits.
      • EO on continuing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy mandates the elimination of non-statutory components and functions with several federal entities including the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
      • EO directing the Attorney General and Department of Homeland Security to take legal action against sanctuary cities and states with the potential to strip federal funding from these jurisdictions.
      • APHSA drafted the Courageous Imperatives for Human Services providing recommendations for the federal government and new administration to help develop strategies to unlock the potential of human services.
      • Ms. Thomas flagged that Medicaid is very critical to the workforce system. Administrator Khatkhate shared that per HFS, the 1115 waiver and Medicaid for health-related social needs are still available as funding was approved prior to the change of administration.
      • Advocacy is important at present especially from people from the ground to impress to Congress particularly to Republicans the potential impact of federal funding cuts most especially to Medicaid.
      • Ms. Thomas shared the advice that Mark Sanders provided to focus on cost savings whenever there is opportunity to give information or to educate and then focus on ways that will help people live their lives on their own and not to depend on any benefits or government services.
    2. Successful Cross-agency Workplans - Christine Haley, Illinois Office to Prevent and End Homelessness
      • Members of the Interagency Task Force on Homelessness include IHDA, DHS, DPH, DCEO, HFS, DCFS, IDOC, ISP, IDJJ, ICJIA, IDOA, ISBE, GOMB and others as well as four members from ILGA, two from Senate and two from House and one from each party.
      • The OPEH senior leadership team comes from IDHS, IHDA, IDOC and HFS (and will have additional from IDPH) which enables IOPEH's ability to work in an interagency manner.
      • IOPEH's foundation is the EO signed by Gov. Pritzker in 2021 to fight homelessness. First state plan, Home Illinois, was created in 2022 and released in 2023 with a $200 million investment.
      • All the work on creating Home Illinois was codified into law so it will not go away even if the administration changed.
      • Four pillars of the Home Illinois framework: build affordable and permanent supportive housing, bolster safety net, secure financial stability and close mortality gap.
      • When IOPEH was created, agency directors were convened and asked a series of questions to get a picture of how the state government is addressing the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
      • The Task Force focused on understanding access points to service and how to expand the work of each agency involved.
      • Significant investments have been made on population reports, racial equity roundtable discussions, randomized controlled trial, dashboard and access assessments, and data infrastructure (specifically data on homeless morbidity and mortality) over the last three years under the Home Illinois Plan.
      • The IDPH data on homeless morbidity and mortality was used by IDHS' Division of Substance Use Prevention and Recovery (SUPR) to create two new programs: street outreach for unsheltered people and capital investments to create more permit for supportive housing for people with substance use disorder (which is now in the IHDA proposed budget).
      • Data on homelessness rates was used on the interagency plan that includes activities across six state agencies including DCFS, IDOC and IDHS.
      • The Home Illinois Plan for FY25-26 is made up of more than 125 activities that state agencies commit to implement over the two-year period. Some of the state agencies involved are IHDA, IDJJ, DCFS, IDHS, DCEO, IBHE, ICCB, ISBE, ISP, HFS, etc.
      • The Community Advisory Council on Homelessness has three seats for three people with lived expertise on homelessness in addition to a seat for a person with lived experience. A member of the OPA senior leadership is also a person with lived expertise on homelessness. OPA is also working on creating a youth internship for youth with experienced homelessness and interns will sit at OPA and at DCFS in the director's office.
      • There is also funding for leadership development activities for people with lived expertise on homelessness.
    3. Data Collection and Retention Efforts - Kaitlin Devaney, IRRPP
  6. Discussion - how to model some of OPA's and Interagency Task Force on Homelessness' approach to create a collaborative policy arm on data collection/sharing across the agencies under the IWGP
    • Continue highlighting agency work but with guiding questions like where an agency can connect with other agencies or where is support needed to make sure there's alignment.
    • Come up with a visual calendar to show alignment or misalignment of funding rounds that might spark ideas on collaboration; a shared document among agencies could be started where people could put in new priorities or new plans.
  7. Next Steps
    1. Next meeting - one or two agencies give a snapshot of activities for FY26 on the next quarter meeting; Priya and/or Kaitlin will send out information and reach out to agencies
    2. Meeting schedule - invites sent
      1. Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
      2. Wednesday, September 17, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
      3. Wednesday, December 17, 2025, 1:00-2:30 PM
  8. Adjournment - Ms. Thomas moved to adjourn the meeting seconded by Ms. Mueller-Schwartz at 2:36 PM.