1000 Feet From Love

On distance, humanity, and Rock Island's Social Service License Ordinance

One thousand feet.

Lay the Eiffel Tower on its side and you've got it. 1,083 feet, tip to base. Line up three and a third football fields, end zone to end zone. Stack three Statues of Liberty, base to torch, and start on a fourth.

1000 feet is the distance Rock Island requires between social service providers that serve people experiencing homelessness. If you serve the homeless, you need to be 1000 feet from a school, a pre-school, a childcare provider, an institution of higher learning, any school-related facility, a park, a park facility, a recreational facility of any kind, and from any provider of the same kind. Providers are defined as boarding houses, congregate living facilities, detoxification facilities, food pantries, emergency shelters, halfway houses, daytime homeless shelters, nighttime homeless shelters, soup kitchens and transitional housing. Exemptions exist. For example, emergency shelters in response to natural disasters that operate no more than 30 days do not need a license, nor do small footprint food pantries that are accessory to churches.

A map, created by the City of Rock Island and circulated to stakeholders, draws the 1,000-foot circles, measured parcel boundary to parcel boundary, around protected places and highlights that after all the distances are measured, there is little real estate left. My Freedom of Information request for copies of the 1000-foot map and an additional 500-foot map was denied, citing exemption 5 ILCS 140/7(1)(f). If and when they are publicly available, I will share.

We don't write ordinances against people

There was a time when American cities were considerably less subtle about deciding who belonged. Ugly Laws made it illegal for any person who was "diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" to expose themselves to public view.  Illinois led the nation in sundown towns, where cities used ordinances and intimidation to enforce when and where Black people were permitted to exist. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 made this type of discrimination against people illegal.

We don't write ordinances against people today.

Now, we regulate land. We regulate buildings. We regulate service providers and control licenses. We dictate where organizations that feed people, shelter people, provide mental health support, hand out supplies, create community, throw baby showers, house people and give someone a place to sit when they have nowhere else to go, can operate. We write ordinances that tell providers how long they can be open, how many people they can serve, how high their fences need to be and how wide their buffer zone from the rest of us.

I wonder if we have confused an evolution in language and process with an evolution in ourselves?

Because the outcome is the same. Bodies existing in an "othered" state indirectly pressured to exist someplace else. Not for breaking the law or violating the social contract, but for existing outside, in public view, with attributes like poverty or skin color that evoke certain responses in the general population.

According to the published ordinance, "this article is not intended to restrict or stigmatize homelessness, but to ensure that facilities providing shelter and related services operate safely and equitably, in coordination with community standards for public health and safety." Alderman Dylan Parker noted that an additional purpose is to address the concentration of social services in the downtown Rock Island area, noting that places like the Third Place QC would need a city-granted waiver to operate.

Winter is coming

A homeless community member died a week after Thanksgiving last year. She spent the holiday surrounded by friends at the Third Place QC and froze to death a week later in an abandoned building as the region scrambled for a shelter option.

We are roughly 90 days from that anniversary. Project Now has not confirmed an emergency winter shelter location for this winter. The Third Place QC, the day shelter in downtown Rock Island, sent a letter to their supporters last week saying they are looking for a larger building to accommodate the more than 100 guests they serve daily. When co-founders Christie Adamson and Cloey Miller dreamed up the Third Place, they anticipated serving between 40-80 people per week.

Two key providers on the Illinois side, both based in Rock Island, are searching for a suitable place to provide services while navigating Rock Island's social service license ordinance, one of the most restrictive of its kind in the State of Illinois.

Decisions about people, without people

According to multiple sources across multiple agencies and cities, Rock Island County leaders have been holding private meetings with key stakeholders from Illinois metro cities, including key city economic and community development professionals, mayors, non-profit leaders, and others to find a location for a winter shelter, a day shelter, and possibly a permanent low-barrier shelter.

Over months, the list of possible sites across the Illinois Quad Cities has been narrowed to one: the Rock Island city-owned Skip-a-Long building, which will become vacant when Skip-a-Long moves into its new location on 11th Street, with the hope that it could hold both a day shelter and an emergency winter shelter.

According to multiple people with knowledge of those meetings, City of Rock Island staff have indicated the ordinance will not be an issue and the City Council will approve the site for shelter use.

I am grateful that Illinois Quad Cities leaders are meeting, planning, and identifying potential locations to provide life-saving shelter. I am grateful to hear they have discovered the one location between Milan and Silvis that can work. I am perplexed by its location given the requirements Rock Island codified into municipal law.

I reached Rev. Dr. Dwight Ford for comment on the county meetings, as I had heard of their existence and proceedings through multiple sources over time. I had two questions. Are any people who have experienced homelessness involved in the discussion, and are leaders in the West End aware of this plan?

According to Rev. Dr. Ford, members of the homeless community have not been brought in to the conversation at this point, and, noting the absence of West End leadership in the planning process, Rev. Dr. Ford invited the West End Revitalization coordinator to the August 19, 2026 meeting, formally bringing West End representation to the table. Rev. Dr. Ford emphasized Project Now's commitment to work with any partner that offers a pathway to shelter this winter season.

What we require elsewhere. What we waive in the West End.

Downtown, or perhaps my neighborhood, or maybe yours, a shelter must sit 1,000 feet from schools, parks, recreational facilities of any kind, and from other providers unless a waiver is granted.

In the West End, the City of Rock Island claims no waiver is necessary to place a temporary shelter zero feet from Rauch Park, in a mainly residential neighborhood, zero feet from Century Woods, where 200 low-income families reside, and to potentially co-locate two social service providers in the same building. One floor for the day and one floor for the night.

AND... this ideal location just happens to sit in the epicenter of minoritized poverty in all of Rock Island County. You cannot find a poorer, Blacker area for a hundred miles in any direction. There are no services or meal sites or really anything available in the area, except Demetrius Johnson's Green Store. This small, locally-owned grocer already stretches himself thin to serve the Century Woods' community and neighbors.

Why the West End May Say Yes

I reached out to some contacts and friends in the West End, many who had already heard this plan and did not seem surprised about the lack of engagement with the community. Community voices repeated a similar response: that the West End would likely welcome the shelter... or at least not fight it.

In one conversation, I said, "that's so fucked up though... and unfair... and hypocritical."

This person, who wished to remain anonymous, said to me, "What you don't understand is that we get the UN-wanted, the UN-heard, the UN-invited, the UN-whatever. It's a story as old as time here. Pushed aside, ignored, relegated to certain parts of town without access to things our neighbors enjoy. We can't turn our backs on the UN-housed."

This is not consent. This is a neighborhood that has been delivered everything nobody else would take, for generations, and has developed the moral muscle to carry it, while the parts of town with the most resources have carefully arranged never to develop the muscle at all.

So, Rock Island plans to spend down the compassion of the people with the least because it's more politically viable than asking more from the people with the most.