In 2013, HomeStart was awarded $1.4 Million by the Attorney General of Illinois, through the National Foreclosure Settlement funds. We have been working with many Boone, Winnebago, and Stephenson partners to bring those dollars to neighborhoods who continue to struggle with equity recovery post-recession. To read one success story from this program, click here and you will read the story of Evera Moreland, our friend in the Rockford community. Evera needed some help herself, as talked about in the story, but since her work has been completed, she has worked to bring friends in to meet with us, too.

As we are entering the final six months of this grant funding, we will be focusing our remaining funds on roof-replacement projects that have been on wait lists for our partner organizations. We want to show our support for our friends in housing, making sure their programs can use their dollars as effectively as possible to stabilize our regions' vulnerable neighborhoods. We have heard in recent news how low our inventory of affordable housing is in the region, and these programs work to preserve the housing stock that we currently have. For more information about the progress of our partners, look up the websites of the Northwestern Illinois Community Action Agency, the City of Rockford's Community and Economic Development departments, and the Winnebago County Health Department's Creating Lead Safe Rockford program.