Rock Island’s New Social Service Ordinance Threatens the Spirit of Our City

The Rock Island City Council has introduced a new Social Services License Ordinance that will reshape how our community responds to homelessness. At first glance, it may look like regulation, but beneath the legal language lies a shift in values that risks undermining the very character of Rock Island.

You can read a copy of the ordinance here:

Rock Island Social Services License Ordinance.pdf

Download PDF • 107KB

Here are five reasons why this ordinance is deeply concerning.

1. Rock Island Will Become the Most Restrictive City in Illinois for Homeless Services

The ordinance places an absolute cap of one daytime and one nighttime shelter within city limits. It also establishes 1,000-foot exclusion zones around schools, parks, and other shelters. No other major Illinois city has adopted restrictions this sweeping and severe.

Cities like Chicago, Evanston, Champaign-Urbana, and Peoria regulate shelters through zoning and safety standards, not through hard limits on their existence.

Instead of creating space for services to adapt to need, Rock Island has chosen to close the door before it even opens. Is this the type of policy Rock Island wants to make history for - creating restrictive ordinances that harm people in a time of escalating need?

2. The Ordinance Sends a Message: “You Don’t Belong Here”

At its heart, this ordinance communicates something chilling: that people who are unhoused are unwanted, a burden, and incompatible with public life. By fencing shelters away from schools and parks, and by limiting their very number, the city is not simply managing logistics—it is making a statement about who belongs in Rock Island.

And this stance is particularly troubling given our own demographics. Rock Island has a higher poverty rate than our Quad Cities neighbors. While Moline, Bettendorf, Davenport, and East Moline face economic hardship too, Rock Island has more residents teetering on the edge of housing insecurity. When your community has the greatest number of people at risk, the last thing it needs is an ordinance that makes helping them harder.

3. This Ordinance Undermines the Spirit of Rock Island

Rock Island has always been a city of resilience, creativity, and second chances. Our history is one of transformation—industry to arts, immigrants to community builders, setbacks to reinvention. This ordinance ignores that legacy. It treats unhoused people as static, incapable of growth or renewal.

If you don’t believe that the people in your city can grow and transform, what hope do you have for the bricks and mortar, the storefronts, and the industry? Our vibrancy does not come from concrete. It comes from our people—all of them.

Many of the more resourced folks in Rock Island choose to live here because of Rock Island’s grit, heart, and realness. A successful city requires the loyalty and investment of committed and engaged residents across the socioeconomic spectrum. If Rock Island chooses to turn its back on its core principles and identity and approve this ordinance, it risks alienating Rock Islanders who show up for this city with heart and dollars. Rock Island pride = Rock Island community engagement.

4. The Ordinance Will Not Solve the Real Issue for Businesses Downtown: Visible Homelessness of the Most Desperate Type

Americans have trouble looking at the pain of our society - homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, isolation, and desperation. This ordinance was born from concerns related to visible homelessness and the issues that arise with a small portion of our unhoused population, mostly the population that doesn't engage with services. Examples include folks with untreated mental illness suffering visibly on the street, folks breaking into buildings for a place to sleep, or folks publicly using drugs who are too sick to touch the hope that change is possible. All of the regulations in the world will not erase these unique problems, but the ordinance will make it harder for unhoused children, mothers, babies, senior citizens, and people who have disabilities to stay safe, alive, and housed.

When you have many more people who require shelter than the shelter space offered, the problems in the public eye will multiply. It is illegal in Illinois to remove unhoused people from public spaces, so while these ordinances will make it more difficult for people to seek services and be indoors, the rules will make the lives of the unserved who live outside tremendously more difficult, desperate, and visible. The only real solutions to this issue include HOUSING and more medical, mental health and substance abuse services. The ordinance does not promote any solutions and only offers barriers.

5.. The Ordinance May Violate State Law

In 2013, Illinois passed the Bill of Rights for the Homeless Act, declaring that unhoused people have the same rights as anyone else to move freely in public spaces, receive equal treatment by government, and access emergency medical and social services. By severely restricting the number and location of shelters, Rock Island may be placing itself in violation of that law.

The last thing Rock Island needs is a costly lawsuit, the findings of which could threaten the existing funding of Continuum of Care and other dollars.

The Choice Before Us

We can accept a future where homelessness is hidden and help is rationed—or we can stand up for a Rock Island that sees every resident as part of our collective story. A city that values growth and transformation cannot pass laws that deny that possibility to its most vulnerable.

We can seek regional solutions, we can put in place regulations that improve safety or cleanliness, we can enact downtown solutions to working with our unhoused population, we can improve responses to criminal behavior (like squatting or public drug/alcohol use), but we cannot treat an entire class of unhoused humans as though they are fundamentally different than other people and therefore require special management so we don't have to acknowledge their existence.