2025 legislative agenda strengthens families

The Shriver Center on Poverty Law is taking action in the face of unprecedented threats to democracy and the social safety net. Our 2025 legislative agenda for Illinois strengthens the anti-poverty programs and benefits residents rely on. From providing cash assistance to struggling families and increasing worker protections, to removing barriers to housing; our proposed legislation creates a fairer state where everyone can thrive.

Our work matters more now than ever. We confront a federal government with ambitions to cut benefits like Medicaid, a move that would send countless more Americans into poverty. The uncertainty has affected even solidly blue states like Illinois. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed a budget that eliminates health care funding for undocumented adults, benefits that our health care justice team have championed. The move, in part, was due to concerns about losing crucial federal dollars that fund state programs. Next month, we’ll explore what funding cuts would mean for health equity in Illinois and across the country.

While the stakes couldn’t be higher, our mission to advance economic and racial justice remains steadfast. In our 2025 agenda, we continue to build on decades of successful legislative advocacy in Springfield. Here’s a snapshot of the work we’re doing this session.

Read our full list of proposed bills.

Economic justice

Our economic justice team supports programs that provide direct cash assistance to people who need it the most. Jeremy Rosen, the director of economic justice, leads the Shriver Center’s community-driven efforts to improve the state child tax credit, a big achievement from last year. The refund eases the financial burden for thousands of working families, but for political reasons, the current law limits the tax credit to families with earned income. Our new proposal removes that limitation. It would extend the benefit to caregivers who don’t work for pay, including people who receive disability benefits.  It also gives eligible families the maximum credit of $400 per child, up from $300, putting more money into the pockets of families.

The Shriver Center understands that poverty is a policy choice, not a personal failure. Applying for benefits should be straight forward, but often the process is punishingly difficult. Staff attorney Nolan Downey is working with a coalition of community partners to reduce the complexity of applying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Currently, only 37 percent of eligible families use TANF, which gives families cash assistance for up to five years to use as they need. The Shriver Center wants to remove the hurdles imposed by the federal government, which are likely to get worse under the Trump administration. If we succeed, Illinois can expect enrollment numbers to rise.

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Wendy Pollack, the director of the Women’s Law and Policy Initiative, heads the Shriver Center’s efforts to reintroduce two pieces of legislation to bolster worker protections. A veteran of Springfield, Wendy warns it can take years to garner the political will to expand labor rights. “To honor our core commitment to building better workplaces, you have to stay the course,” she said. “You need a strong coalition led by workers to meet the political moment.”

This session she’s fighting for something we introduced in 2023: the elimination of sub-minimum wages for tipped workers. Earning less than the minimum wage forces restaurant and other service industry workers to rely on gratuities, or their employer, to compensate for their extremely low pay. We believe all workers should be guaranteed a living wage. Ending the sub-minimum wage will level the playing field and help ensure that more workers have the economic security they deserve.

Wendy is also renewing the push for paid family and medical leave. In 2022, the Shriver Center supported a bill that would allow workers to take extended time off to care for loved ones or themselves without losing their job. According to a 2021 report, 77 percent of Americans have no paid medical leave, which puts millions of Americans one health emergency away from financial collapse. Working in coalition with Illinois Time to Care, the Shriver Center is pushing for a law that would create a statewide insurance program to fully fund paid family and medical leave. This work builds off our successful advocacy around paid leave laws. Effective last year, the state guarantees that most workers can earn up to five days of paid time off to use as they wish.

Housing justice

The goal of our housing justice team is to ensure that all people can live in safe, affordable housing in neighborhoods of their choice.  Key to that work is the fight against housing discrimination, which disproportionately hurts communities of color. The housing team’s staff attorney, Ashley Bishel, is the Shriver Center’s representative for two bills this session, both with the aim to expand housing protections for marginalized groups.

One calls for the prohibition of crime-free housing and nuisance ordinances. These municipal laws and policies, or CFNO’s, single out properties where alleged nuisances occur and hold tenants responsible through fines and evictions.

Municipalities increasingly pass CFNOs due to the mistaken belief they make communities safer. In practice, however, the broad language in these ordinances can be used to evict people who pose no threats. Under these laws, landlords can evict victims of domestic violence and people with disabilities simply for contacting the police or paramedics. Banning CFNOs will keep people in their homes and prevent housing instability.

The other bill would expand access to safe, affordable housing by ending the discriminatory practice of housing banishment.

Currently, state banishment laws impose draconian housing restrictions on people with criminal records. People on the Sex Offender Registry, for example, cannot live within 500 feet of any school, playground, daycare or childcare facility, making it virtually impossible to find housing except in the most remote areas. Despite entrenched fears about public safety, zoning restrictions don’t reduce crime. They create homelessness. This legislation would decrease the likelihood of chronic homelessness for people who have served their time by cutting zoning restrictions in half. Our efforts support a campaign called the Chicago 400, which sponsored the bill. The coalition is led by people experiencing homelessness due to banishment laws.

Finally, Samir Hanna, the director of housing justice, leads the team’s response to the recent Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass. The ruling paved the way for local governments to criminalize homelessness and arrest people, even when no alternative shelter is offered. (Last year, the Shriver Center co-authored an amicus brief to demonstrate that targeting unhoused people with criminal records only exacerbates homelessness.) In lieu of federal protections, Samir is pushing to stop the criminalization of homelessness on the state level. This bill would preempt local rules and prevent both the passage and enforcement of ordinances that make it functionally illegal to be homeless.

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With this legislation, we’re really trying to shift the narrative around housing. We don’t make neighborhoods safer by scapegoating folks trying to find a place to live. You have to address root causes like systemic racism and income inequality.

— Samir Hanna, director of housing justice

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 📖📖Read our full legislative agenda. It includes efforts to eliminate fines and fees — a system that disproportionately hurts poor and working families — and a program to provide health insurance to survivors of sex trafficking.

📞📞Support our agenda by calling your local legislators. If you can, please consider making a monthly donation to sustain our work today.  🗞️🗞️ For media requests, please email media@povertylaw.org.