Learn more about housing advocacy in Illinois and ways that affordable housing advocates can help use their voice to support residents at communities like ELC’s.
Something that Embrace Living Communities (ELC) takes seriously is finding opportunities to advocate on behalf of residents and affordable housing at large whenever possible. For supporters of ELC looking to make a difference, there are always opportunities to use your voice too. Here are some simple ways you can advocate.
Engage with Policymakers
An easy way to advocate for affordable housing is to contact policymakers about issues that impact the affordable housing space.
For example, Congress has begun determining its fiscal year 2026 budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s programs. The current budget includes a proposal to shrink federal funding for HUD by 43.6%. HUD is a funding source for ELC and many other affordable housing providers across the country, and cuts to this funding can have severe consequences not only for these providers but also for the countless people already on waitlists in need of affordable homes.
LeadingAge, a community of nonprofit aging services providers of which ELC is a part, has a section on their website for “Action Alerts,” where affordable housing advocates can fill out a form to contact their Senators and Representatives about preserving HUD funding. We encourage you to do so!
This is money that goes toward funding social service coordination programs at communities like ours, and cutting it puts seniors across the country at risk of losing connections to necessary resources and services. These programs are cost-effective because they help prevent hospitalizations and nursing home placements, which ultimately saves the government money.
The American Association of Service Coordinators, with whom ELC has a connection, has set up a petition you can sign today to urge Congress to fully fund service coordination and affordable housing.
In addition, we encourage you to find out who your elected officials are in Illinois and contact them directly to make sure they know their constituents care about affordable housing and service coordination as a priority. You can also connect with your Representative or Senator by calling the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to let your voice be heard.
Sign Up for Housing Advocacy Alerts
There are countless organizations that are regularly facilitating and sharing opportunities to advocate. We’ve already highlighted LeadingAge, but some other key organizations include Housing Action Illinois, National Low Income Housing Coalition, and The ACTION Campaign, all of which have advocacy pages we have linked to where you can find active opportunities as well as sign up for advocacy alerts/updates to stay on top of what you can be doing to help.
Educate Yourself and Others
Staying educated is important because being aware of what the issues are, their root causes, and what solutions are available only makes your housing advocacy more effective. Extending that education to others then strengthens the community of advocates by having an informed base to help do the work.
A great starting point is the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Advocates’ Guide 2025. It is a comprehensive guide to what issues should be important to affordable housing advocates, resources for advocates to understand the processes that inform funding, and a host of other resources related to affordable housing issues and needs.
LeadingAge also has a page called “Issues & Topics” where you can select what you’d like to learn more about and find articles related to it. While some content is for LeadingAge members only, there is still a lot of important information for nonmembers to access, especially on their page related to policy.
Thank you for your interest in advocating on behalf of ELC’s residents and residents at affordable housing communities across the country, who rely on advocates to champion the programs and organizations that support them every day!
Please consider sharing this blog to spread the message to other advocates across Illinois who may want to get involved but don’t know how.
Feel free to contact us for any future resident, current resident, or general inquiries.
