Starting next August, under a law passed unanimously in the General Assembly and signed last week by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, all public and private post-secondary institutions – two and four-year colleges and vocational, technical and business schools — will have to designate someone as a liaison to assist homeless students.
High school districts in Illinois have had liaisons to help homeless kids under a 1987 federal law — the McKinney-Vento Act — with issues like enrollment, access to resources and transportation. There was no such no requirement to help college students in Illinois. The new law changes that situation.
State Senator Suzy Glowiak Hilton, a lawmaker from Chicago suburb Western Springs, said she was eager to take on the legislation because she remembers hosting homeless student friends of her then-college age children.
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