The Peoria City Council will address homelessness during a policy session on Tuesday.

PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Could tiny homes be part of the solution to solving the homelessness issue within the city limits of Peoria?

Should the Peoria City Council pay for another month in a motel for less than 50 people who don’t have a place to stay, thus buying time to find them a more permanent landing spot?

Those are just some of the questions that members around the Horseshoe will take up Tuesday night during a policy session. The council calls those meetings from time to time to get a sense of where the 11 members stand on an issue and to offer some guidance for future policy.

"Yeah, I think that it's no secret that our shelters constantly operate at their max capacity," said Joe Dulin, who heads the city's community development department.

He’s been at the forefront of the issue since last fall when the council voted to ban the tent cities that had sprung up around Downtown and elsewhere.

Since then, City Hall has spent nearly $120,000 to reimburse a local nonprofit which was housing people in the motel since December. At its peak, there were just over 100 people in the motel.

Now, it’s under 50, city officials say. Dulin said the help from the community has been able to help those overcome homelessness.

It really has been kind of a huge community collaborative effort with Trillium, OSF, Phoenix Community Development Center, the Dream Center," he said. "Everyone is really coming together and meeting people at the motel project to try to figure out exactly what services they need, what barriers they need to overcome.

Tim Riggenbach, who represents the 3rd District on the council, has pushed for his colleagues for the motel money. And he wants one more extension.

The reason we are asking for this last extension is because we have an end of sight in place for placement for a good number of people who are currently in the motel," he said but admitted, dealing with public money, grants, and tax credits, it's slow and hard. "When you are working with vouchers and all the different things, sometimes it takes longer than you like."

Tiny homes have also been proposed, and the Dream Center Peoria, Riggenbach said, is at the forefront of that.

They have done a lot of research looking into this. They have been exploring it as a way to help expand their outreach," Riggenbach said. "It's important to note. We are not talking about an end solution but this is for a certain population of people that were in the encampments and the motel project that just don't handle (living in groups) well.

Such a move would require some tweaking of the city’s codes and of course, there’s the question of where they would go. Riggenbach said he hopes to get a sense of the council’s sense on the issue to see if it is worth exploring more.

Peoria isn't the only one dealing with this.

"I don’t think it’s just a Peoria problem. It’s a problem across the state, across the country. Unfortunately, as a country, we face issues where people can’t afford safe, quality housing. And unfortunately, they have to go look for space at the shelters," Dulin said.

He said it's important for the community to understand that homelessness is a continual issue, but the work being done can shorten the amount of time people experience homelessness.

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