Housing and homelessness funding opportunities:
1. Preventing and ending homelessness
2. Advancing affordable rental housing
3. Preserving home ownership and preventing foreclosure
The population of the Chicago metro area is very diverse and highly mobile, and housing stock must respond to this reality. Affordability, quality design and construction, energy-efficiency and access to transit and services should be basic criteria guiding the way we think about building and rehabilitating our region’s homes. This requires new ways to plan and develop housing, cost-effective practices in property management and supportive services, and true engagement of residents.
The Trust envisions a region where residents live in places they can call home: true assets for people, communities and our region. And yet, despite significant efforts made during the past decade to advance public, affordable, and mixed-income housing, our region has seen a significant increase of homeless people, cost-burdened renters, and homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments. The Great Recession and the most recent housing crisis have exacerbated all these problems at once.Our hardest-hit residents have been people of color, with African-American and Latino communities disproportionately suffering the effects of homelessness, dilapidated rental stock, mortgage fraud, and foreclosures.
In order to be a sustainable, competitive and equitable region, it is imperative that we provide better housing options to our current residents, as well as opportunities for newcomers from around the nation and the world. The region simply can’t thrive if the majority of our residents are cost-burdened and consider their homes a burden rather than an asset.
The Trust will support organizations that work to increase the number of people living in quality homes that they can afford. Our approach considers the entire spectrum of housing options, from well-
Grant making in Housing supports Community Goal #2: Securing conditions for healthy, safe, just and caring communities.
Funding Opportunity 1: Preventing and ending homelessness
Homelessness has been a persistent problem in all large American cities. Chicago endorsed a Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness outlining a coordinated continuum of care from interim to permanent housing. Since its implementation, the number of homeless on any particular night has decreased significantly, from around 11,000 seven years ago to around 5,000 before the onset of the recession.
Despite this success, maintaining a highly diffuse system and assuring that providers serve key neighborhoods and populations (including “special” populations such as teens, LGBTQ and others) is challenging. It is important to continue to improve the capabilities of the system, especially by effectively using data.
Outcomes Sought
- Reduce the number of homeless persons to 4,000 by 2015.
- Reduce the number of homeless persons in the suburban Cook County point-in-time count to 800 by 2015.
Our Funding
Funding in this area will be developed based largely on the findings of the 2011 evaluation of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness conducted by the University of Chicago and Loyola University. The Trust will support two levels of work. The first is homeless service system management and support, including:
- Local alliances to end homelessness and coordinating programs
- Homelessness call center
- Emergency funds
- Training in assisting clients with substance abuse or mental health disorders;
- Discharge planning
Second, the Trust will support direct service provision by issuing a request for proposals from shelters that demonstrate that their work with homeless persons will eventually result in their attaining permanent housing. Allowable activities may include strengthening referral and follow-up capabilities, street outreach, housing locator, social service support, financial literacy, development of transitional housing units, or other activities clearly linked to clients finding and remaining in housing.
Requests for Proposals
Ending homelessness: RFP will be released on July 15 and proposals are due on September 1.
Contact Us
Please direct all inquiries to Juanita Irizarry, Program Officer, at
Funding Opportunity 2: Advancing affordable rental housing
According to research done by the Chicago Rehab Network, 55% of renters in Chicago spend more than 30% of their income on housing, up from 45% in 2000. This measure of housing cost burden doesn’t include transportation costs, which can elevate the combined housing and transportation (H+T) burden to well over 50% of income for many of our residents. Low and moderate-income households are left struggling to meet other vital needs such as food, utilities, and childcare, and many communities remain out of reach for working families, as groups like the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the Metropolitan Planning Council have documented.
There is an especially longstanding deficit of rental homes that are affordable for the lowest-income households. Scarcity of affordable rental housing is the principal cause of family homelessness and substandard housing conditions, including growing problems of overcrowding. This shortage will likely worsen as unemployment and foreclosures push even more households to compete for fewer affordable units. And without proper monitoring and advocacy, renters’ living conditions are likely to deteriorate.
Fortunately, Chicago has a longstanding tradition of nonprofit organizations working to ensure sufficient, decent affordable rental housing. Advocates, developers and service providers are working closely and in a coordinated manner to elevate the profile of housing issues in the political agenda, advance policies conducive to increase the resources allocated to rental housing, and ensure that all units of government, from the federal government to municipalities, understand and support the type of affordable rental housing that our region needs. This coordinated approach to policy and advocacy deserves to be supported.
Nonprofit developers of quality, affordable rental housing, have grown more and more sophisticated over the past decade. They are finding ways to serve more low and moderate-income people with fewer resources, and are becoming savvier than ever about funding bricks and mortar, utilities, property management, community engagement and social services. In response to the housing crisis, these organizations have learned how to navigate the myriad programs and financial layers needed to make a rental development come to fruition and maintain it over time. They have experimented with tax credits, project-based and tenant-based vouchers, mixed-income housing, and more. In the future, as they maximize those resources, they will have to look at conversions of failed condo buildings into affordable rentals, rescue and rehabilitation of foreclosed multi-family properties, home-sharing arrangements and lease-to-own initiatives, to name a few. And they will also need to continue to reduce costs through retrofits and energy-efficient solutions, as well as “back-office” collaboratives.
The Trust is committed to support innovation and excellence, and to fund organizations advancing research, policy, advocacy, housing development and renters’ rights, making Chicago a national leader in rental solutions for the 21st century.
Outcomes Sought
- Significantly reduce the percentage of cost-burdened renters in our region.
- Inform renters about their rights and responsibilities, connect them to resources and services and ensure their full engagement in the communities where they live.
- Nurture successful models for the provision of affordable, well-located and energy-efficient rental housing that include excellent property management, services and tenant engagement strategies.
Our Funding
The Trust will directly solicit proposals supporting a coordinated approach to research, policy and advocacy designed to increase resources for rental and supportive housing, remove obstacles to its preservation, rehabilitation and development, and ensure that it meets standards of quality, affordability, location and sustainability across the region.
The Trust will directly solicit proposals from groups working to provide information and resources to renters, especially those living in subsidized housing.
Finally, the Trust will also issue a request for proposals from nonprofit developers that directly provide quality affordable housing and services to low- and moderate-income families in innovative, cost-effective and impactful ways. RFPs were released on November 15 and proposals were due by January 5.
There will be no RFP process for policy or for renter outreach.
Contact Us
Please direct all inquiries to Juanita Irizarry, Program Officer, at
Funding Opportunity 3: Preserving home ownership and preventing foreclosure
The Chicago region has suffered a tremendous impact in homeownership rates due to a foreclosure crisis of unprecedented size and complexity. The nationwide foreclosure crisis, initially triggered by the debacle of the subprime mortgages, hit our region in late 2007. The crisis was quickly followed, and reinforced, by a deep economic recession and pervasive unemployment. By 2008 the extent of the foreclosure crisis had reached unprecedented levels. According to the Woodstock Institute, a local think-tank funded by The Chicago Community Trust, 250,000 foreclosures were filed between 2007 and 2010 in the six-county area, affecting every kind of loan. The hardest and earliest hit areas were neighborhoods and suburbs with high percentages of African-Americans and Latinos, which had been targets of subprime lending and mortgage fraud. Rapidly, the crisis spread throughout the entire metropolitan area leaving a track of vacant homes, failed condominium buildings, and declining home values.
The Chicago Rehab Network, a Trust grant recipient monitoring the housing crisis, recently reported that in the past decade the percentage of homeowners burdened by housing costs in the city went from 33% to 50%. An estimated 25% of them are currently “under water”, i.e., the outstanding balance they own on their mortgage is more than the value of the underlying real estate. Housing market indicators are not showings signs of recovery and most experts coincide in that this crisis will have long-term effects in our region.
The growing crisis has revealed gaps in the region’s ability to respond to rising numbers of distressed homeowners, troubled renters and vacant properties. Housing counseling agencies often lack sufficient resources to help the growing number of struggling homeowners and to deal with unresponsive loan servicers. Federal foreclosure prevention programs have not been effective in addressing the current causes of default and keeping homeowners out of foreclosure. The rising number of vacant properties has put a growing strain on municipal resources and threatens the desirability and safety of neighborhoods. Meanwhile, municipal governments struggle to put these properties back to productive use. Tenants in buildings in foreclosure face uncertainty and deteriorating living conditions as properties change hands. Despite appealing prices, demand for homes is still low and current loan products are insufficient to stimulate demand, especially in the hardest hit neighborhoods. A coordinated regional response is needed to address these issues and help the region stabilize and recover from the foreclosure crisis.
Outcomes Sought
- Significantly reduce the foreclosure rate in our region.
- Ensure that sustainable homeownership and financial literacy are widespread, decreasing the percentage of cost-burdened homeowners.
- Housing counseling capacity is evenly distributed across the metro area.
Our Funding
The Trust’s response to the foreclosure crisis is guided by the Regional Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (RHOPI) Action Plan, developed in 2009 by 100+ experts from across the region, and led by several nonprofits with a region-wide footprint. The Regional HOPI has set priorities in the areas of Housing Counseling and Legal Aid, Lending and Financial Products, Vacant Properties and Research and Communications. The Trust will provide funding for RHOPI coordination and leadership, and sustainable home ownership policy/advocacy, by directly soliciting proposals from organizations participating in the initiative.
Aside from addressing the current foreclosure crisis, the Trust will support efforts to establish the basis of a new financial system that encourages sustainable home ownership and focuses on quality mortgage products, financial literacy, and proper oversight.
Requests for Proposals
For housing counseling services for home owners and buyers:
Requests for proposals will be released in March 2013.
Requests for proposals will be released in March 2013.
The Trust will directly solicit proposals for technical assistance and capacity building for nonprofits and municipalities addressing the foreclosure crisis and promoting sustainable home ownership. There will be no RFP process.
Contact Us
Please direct all inquiries to Juanita Irizarry, Program Officer, at
