Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
Grants
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Our Grantmaking Strategy
For more than 100 years, The Chicago Community Trust has convened, supported, funded, and accelerated the work of community members and changemakers committed to strengthening the Chicago region. From building up our civic infrastructure to spearheading our response to the Great Recession, the Trust has brought our community together to face pressing challenges and seize our greatest opportunities.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 3961–3968 of 4630 results
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Grant Recipient
Goldin Institute
With the support of the Chicago Community Trust, the Goldin Institute will continue to collaborate with the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities to host the Chicago Peace Fellows program to promote real and authentic community safety in the neighborhoods most impacted by violence. In particular, we will host a annual cohorts of Chicago Peace Fellows while expanding the Mutual Aid Collaborative as an ongoing platform for shared learning and collaboration for the network of 60 Alumni and growing.
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Grant Recipient
Viator House of Hospitality
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Grant Recipient
GREATER WEST TOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Greater West Town Community Development Project (GWTP) would be grateful to partner with Chicago Community Trust to help close the racial and ethnic wealth gap at the household and community levels in Chicago. GWTP has been committed to this mission for the last 35 years through educational and economic empowerment in disinvested communities in Chicago, particularly on the West Side (East and West Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Humboldt Park, and Austin). GWTP’s Occupational Skills Training Program was strategically designed to respond to issues of poverty, unemployment, and lack of educational attainment through programs that create access to economic opportunities for multi-barriered and historically disinvested community residents. The program offers two certified tracks in the high-growth industries of Shipping & Receiving and Woodworking & Solid Surface Manufacturing that aim to equip participants with the certifications and tools to retain employment in a growing field and increase their income and opportunities to grow household wealth. GWTP’s Occupational Training in Shipping & Receiving (12 weeks) and Woodworking & Solid Surface Manufacturing (15 weeks) fully incorporate technical skills with basic skills remediation, wraparound services, and 12 months of post-program support, including job readiness and job placement. Both programs are approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and nationally accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges. Two Program Advisory Committees (PACs) composed of local employer partners meet regularly to advise GWTP on curricula and industry best practices. By design, the Occupational Skills Training Program offers individualized employment and educational plans. Those who successfully complete the program and are placed in employment will receive follow-up check-ins at least once a month for their first year in the workforce. With funding from Chicago Community Trust, GWTP will recruit and enroll 90 participants in state-approved, certification-granting occupational skills training programs over the 12-month grant period. 72 out of the 90 participants will complete training and earn an occupational skills certificate, and 63 of those will be placed in living-wage employment with an average wage of $16.75.
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Grant Recipient
Foundation of Little Village
The Xquina Entrepreneurial Ecosystem partnership collective works to build community wealth through the strategic alignment of entrepreneurial resources. By equipping local businesses – both current and emerging – with expanded access to a network of culturally relevant, Spanish-language programming, mentorship, resources, and capital support, they are better positioned to make informed business decisions that, in turn, enhance the economic vitality of Little Village as a whole.
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Grant Recipient
GREATER SOUTHWEST DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
The Greater Southwest Development Corporation’s (GSDC) primary goal is to improve the quality of life in southwest Chicago through economic development strategies designed to address the specific challenges of the neighborhoods and businesses we serve. Our commercial division supports local businesses and entrepreneurs and drives business investment into the area. GSDC also offers residents training and supports and builds and manages rental properties. Requested funds would enable us to help establish, stabilize, and expand more businesses, catalyze greater investments, and help build internal capacity around our Real Estate and Community Development efforts.
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Grant Recipient
REVOLUTION WORKSHOP
Revolution Workshop (RW) builds skills, hope, and resilience in Chicago’s underserved communities through job training, financial capabilities services, and career advancement support. Our Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Job Training Program combines technical skills training with holistic skills-building opportunities in employability, executive functioning, and financial capabilities—all designed to help our participants chart their paths to prosperity. Upon completion of our program, we place graduates into living-wage career pathways in the construction sector and provide ongoing career advancement and financial counseling support via our Career Growth Services. With this application, we are requesting funding to support our program as well as expand the financial capabilities services we offer to our graduates, including hiring an alumni-focused Financial Capabilities Coordinator and building out/offering in-house credit-building, twin-account products. All programming and expansion elements outlined in this proposal are in alignment with the “Quality Employment Opportunities” and “Quality Financial Health Opportunities” priority strategies of the Income Growth Solutions RFP.
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Grant Recipient
LIFT INC
LIFT-Chicago's mission is to break the cycle of poverty by investing in parents. We do this by partnering with parents to achieve economic stability and mobility through our holistic, two-generation coaching model with wraparound supports, including financial capabilities workshops and quarterly cash infusions. Through 1:1 coaching focused on Family Economic Mobility and group workshops, LIFT-Chicago members work with coaches to identify goals and develop individualized action plans to achieve them, including obtaining higher education, securing family-sustaining employment, and developing critical financial capabilities that promote long-term economic security. LIFT-Chicago serves families in Chicago, focused on the South and West sides of the city. Because of our hybrid coaching model, parents are not limited by their geographic location and are able to access virtual coaching that fits into the rhythms of their daily lives. In addition, parents have the option to access in-person services at our location in Bronzeville. LIFT-Chicago recognizes that our members’ persistence toward economic mobility, including their self-identified education and employment goals, is rooted in their resilience. As we move forward in our direct service work, we are investing more deeply in trauma-informed, healing-centered, and racial equity-driven coaching, with staff training and updated coaching protocols, to promote members’ wellbeing. We are expanding our group coaching availability, which offers opportunities to scale coaching to more families while capitalizing on the bridged and bonded social capital that can be developed in a group setting – particularly important after the social isolation during COVID. Finally, we are focused on continuing to achieve high-quality impact as we scale and expand our direct service work to support members’ wellbeing. For example, we are introducing evidence-informed skill-based stress reduction techniques into our coaching program for members who need more support but do not have access to immediate mental health care. LIFT-Chicago's coaches, who are Master of Social Work interns, undertake specialized training to implement LIFT’s holistic model and gain experience providing strengths-based support through a race equity and inclusion lens. LIFT-Chicago recognizes the importance of enlisting coaches from diverse and low-income backgrounds with matched lived experience to our members. As such, LIFT-Chicago seeks to identify LIFT members interested in human services careers and create a pipeline for future coaches as members complete their social work programs. LIFT-Chicago will create a framework to offer opportunities to current and past LIFT members who express an interest in social work as they work toward their personal career goals. This will further the educational and career aspirations of our members, inform the next generation of human service delivery with holistic approaches to disrupting intergenerational poverty, and advance equity by filling a gap in the human service workforce with highly trained BIPOC clinicians.
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Grant Recipient
La Raza Chicago, Inc.
La Raza’s Hispanic Homeownership Educational and Advocacy Toolkit (HHEAT) is a multimedia journalism initiative aimed to increase homeownership literacy, information, and opportunities; to reduce misconceptions about access to mortgages; and to document testimonials, actions and policies of individuals and organizations working towards increasing access to and equity in homeownership. All with a specific focus on the Chicago Hispanic community and the Spanish speaking population that experiment a significant lack of information, resources, and opportunities to own a house. Homeownership is critical for family and community wellbeing, with the additional importance that homeownership is the pillar of transgenerational wealth and to increase the opportunities of economic stability and progress. This is especially relevant for underserved communities that are affected by factors such as low homeownership rates, low income, job insecurity, lack of credit and of access to mortgages, lack of financial education, and by insufficient affordable housing, gentrification and property tax hikes, interest rate increases, discriminatory practices, and limitations such as lack of immigration status, criminal record, or misconceptions about homeownership and lending. However, homeownership is possible, and La Raza wants to help our community to get high-quality, culturally competent, fact-based, and actionable information, testimonials, discussions, and tools to increase their possibilities to become homeowners and to enjoy the benefits that homeownerships provide to individuals, families, and communities. We also want to document the negative effects that low rates of homeownership have on our community and the solutions to attend and solve them. This will increase awareness on the fact that homeownership has holistic implications and that owning a home opens the way to a lot of individual and collective benefits and helps to reduce wider problems and disparities. La Raza’s HHEAT will include the following Spanish content and activities: 1) news features addressing problems and solutions regarding homeownership in Chicago, access to mortgages, and other housing issues and possibilities, to be published in print and online; 2) a podcast series including key tips and topics regarding homeownership, published and promoted in our digital platforms; 3) an online discussion panel series to bring experts to explain homeownership topics and engage the audience, published and promoted in our digital platforms; 4) an online and print compilation of the more relevant resources that will serve as a useful guide about homeownership in Chicago. Some of the key contents may be also available in English, but the focus is to generate Spanish content to mitigate the lack of useful information about homeownership in that key language for our community. Also, La Raza’s HHEAT will contribute to increase advocacy to and awareness among financial institutions about Hispanics’ needs and possibilities regarding lending and access to mortgages, and to motivate banks to interact more with our audience and to provide additional support to our programs. With 53 years serving the Chicago Hispanic community, La Raza’s currently publish 35,000 copies in print with 124,000 print Latino Readers according to a recent survey by National Association of Hispanic Publications (NAHP), plus around 80,000 social media followers and 45,000 monthly web users, and a potential combined reach (according to NAHP) of more than 300,000 Readers Latinos. In addition to reporting and interviewing individuals, local leaders, and experts, we plan to reach banks, credit unions, realtors and community organizations working to increase homeownership that serve the Chicago Hispanic community to invite them to collaborate with relevant content and to support La Raza’s HHEAT. Financial institutions such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wintrust, Fifth Third Bank, CIBC, PNC, and others, and organizations such as Spanish Coalition for Housing and the Chicago Housing Authority have been La Raza’s advertisers and now HHEAT will provide them with a window to collaborate with us, to support La Raza, and to participate in our goal of increasing homeownership awareness and opportunities to benefit the Chicago Hispanic community.