Jim O’Connor Establishes Record of State Alignment and Project Readiness
The Second Story Foundation and the 2nd Story Ranch Recovery Home and Jobs Program details two years of alignment, investment, and readiness as opioid settlement capital remains undeployed
Jim O’Connor, Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor and executive director of the Second Story Foundation, delivered testimony to the Illinois Opioid Remediation Advisory Board outlining the project’s full alignment with state guidance, completion of development milestones, and the absence of a clear pathway to deploy approved opioid settlement capital.
At a meeting of the Governor’s Opioid Overdose Prevention and Recovery Steering Committee, Jim O’Connor set out a clear record of the gap between the state’s approval of opioid settlement capital and the absence of a pathway to deploy it. Drawing on years of direct work with men facing addiction and housing instability, he described how stalled funding is limiting bed capacity, delaying shovel-ready recovery projects, and straining a system already under growing demand.
TESTIMONY OF Jim O’Connor, CADC
Executive Director, The Second Story Foundation and the 2nd Story Ranch Recovery Home and Jobs Program
Governor’s Opioid Overdose Prevention and Recovery Steering Committee Meeting
April 23, 2026 at 2 p.m.
Chicago, IL
Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak.
My name is Jim O’Connor, I’m a CADC and I represent The Second Story Foundation and the 2nd Story Ranch Recovery Home and Jobs Program.
I want to begin by placing on the record a clear timeline of alignment between our work and the State’s stated priorities.
In July of 2023, the Illinois Opioid Remediation Advisory Board, through its Access and Equity Committee, reviewed recommendations that explicitly included capital infrastructure support for small and emerging organizations.
Later that same month, the full IORAB voted to approve capital as an allowable use of opioid settlement funds.
In September of 2023, the Governor’s Steering Committee reviewed and voted on the Capital Improvement Construction and Mobile Units recommendation.
The vote was unanimous, no opposition and no abstention.
On January 4th, 2024, we introduced our project to then Director of Substance Use Prevention & Recovery. We described a residential recovery infrastructure model that includes a hybrid recovery community center, capable of hosting meals for up to 100 people, educational programming, mutual aid, and community events, alongside a residential recovery component housing up to 15 individuals, with a long-term vision of a full residential recovery campus.
At the center of this model is our farm and rural retreat, which serves as both the host site and the primary job site for the 2nd Story Ranch program, where each recovery resident has access to structured, on-site work and long-term recovery programming from day one, on a beautiful farm teaming with life.
The model itself is straightforward. Residents live rent-free in early recovery, receive work stipends, and participate in daily work across equine care, agriculture, landscaping, maintenance, and hospitality. As they stabilize, they transition into full employment and independent housing, exiting to market-rate leases without reliance on ongoing government subsidy.
This workforce program ensures all residents retain Medicaid coverage after leaving Substance Use Disorder treatment.
In follow-up discussions, we were told that while this model did not fit a traditional category, it most closely resembled an intensive support recovery home combined with a workforce program, and that it should be pursued as a capital request. We were also told that funding opportunities were being developed.
Later in 2024, we submitted a Recommendation for Funding for programs to the State Opioid Response Administrator. We were denied consideration and we were told that our proposal would be considered supplanting, and again, that it was properly a capital request.
So we aligned ourselves fully with that direction.
We conducted a detailed review of prior DCEO capital projects to ensure we met the state’s standards for viability. As a result, we secured full site control, completed zoning and regulatory approvals, and advanced pre-construction architecture and engineering. To date we have raised over $2 million in non-state matching funds for our project. This is not conceptual, it is fully shovel-ready.
We raised over $1 million in private funding and completed the acquisition of a 68-acre working horse farm with over 50 horses.
We launched a recovery-oriented community service program within 60 days.
We initiated an equine-assisted healing program within 90 days.
We secured full zoning approval for a residential recovery campus with bipartisan support from the Will County Board.
We were granted $250,000 in Will County Opioid Settlement funding for pre-construction, which is now nearing completion, and an additional $500,000 in contingent capital funding through Will County Community Development.
We secured a commitment from the Will County Health Department to provide full medical, dental, vision, psychiatric, behavioral health, and medication-assisted treatment services for future residents.
And this week we began our recovery workforce program in partnership with Joliet area recovery homes and the Recovery Community Center of Joliet’s ‘Day 29 Program.’
An independent economic analysis shows that a one-time capital investment in this project produces a 4-to-1 return by year three and a 9.25-to-1 return by year six, with compounding returns over decades.
Unlike program funding, whose impact largely ends when the funding ends, this capital investment continues working, generating value, and producing outcomes for decades and across generations.
This is the difference between funding ongoing cost and building long-term system relief.
And yet today, after more than two years of alignment with state guidance, we are being told that this project is comparable and duplicative of an existing capital strategy.
To be clear, there is no housing project in Illinois comparable to the 2nd Story Ranch Recovery Home and Jobs Program.
We are not comparable to, or duplicative of, Housing First, and we were explicitly told so by representatives of IHDA in multiple meetings.
Furthermore, in this process I was asked to share suggestions for how IDHS can administer capital. We submitted a recommendation to use Community Development Financial Institutions as Capital Fiscal Intermediaries, this mechanism has been used by IDHS in the past. The recommendation was shelved and no other administrative mechanism has be developed.
When IORAB approved capital as an allowable use in 2023, it did not limit that approval to a single housing model or administrative pathway. The current interpretation represents a narrowing of that approval that was not explicitly adopted by this board.
Two and a half years later, the absence of a clear pathway for recovery housing infrastructure and access to capital for “small and emerging organizations” suggests a gap between board intent and administrative execution.
At a certain point, complexity stops protecting the system and starts preventing it from working.
We have been engaged in this process for nearly 30 months, working with the Director of SUPR, the previous and current State Opioid Response Administrators, and DBHR.
During that time, one division has been folded into another, and a new one has been created. State Opioid Response administrators have turned over. More than 10,000 Illinois residents have died from opioid-related causes. In that same time we developed a viable pathway from severe addiction and housing instability to full recovery and employment.
We have earned the right to be considered for access to approved capital as an approved abatement use.
And if that pathway remains unclear, then that is an issue that should be addressed by the IORAB and leadership.
What we are building is real. It is shovel-ready.
This capital project builds a comprehensive recovery community, structured, accountable, and dedicated to work, community connection, pathways to independence, and long-term outcomes. It is intentionally designed to produce change, resilience, and exits from dependency.
And more than that, it is something rare:
An intentional community with common purpose, mutual support, shared daily life, and lifelong belonging.
It is organic.
It is joyful.
And it is rooted in real human connection, community care, and love.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
