In collaboration with the IFF (formerly the Illinois Facilities Fund) and thirteen other agencies in the state, Streator Unlimited has been awarded federal stimulus funds through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. We plan to build an 8-bed, fully accessible group home in order to downsize Knox Estates to 8 beds as well. This will allow all residents to have their own room, which would be a great improvement in quality of life. After all, who of us as adults would want to share a bedroom with an assigned roommate?
Since IFF is working with so many different agencies, they have reserved the right to select the architect and contractor to build the home. Thirteen agencies is enough work for them to coordinate, much less 13 different architects and 13 different contractors. While it is unfortunate Streator Unlimited will not be able to select these ourselves, we accepted these limitations in order to have such a great opportunity for the people we serve.
Streator Unlimited will have to come up with some of the funds ourselves because the funds don’t quite cover all of our needs. We have successfully obtained a $20,000 grant from the Dunham Fund to help cover this. It is a truly strange thing to be granted federal funds to build a new home at the same time the state is cutting our funding and getting further and further behind in payments.
Update: a nice article from the Times on this.