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…
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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 5421–5428 of 4630 results
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Grant Recipient
Metropolitan Planning Council
MPC is planning an implementation partnership model to shape the early implementation of equitable lending products that were designed by the Advancing Innovative Homeownership Financing Solutions Community of Practice that we led over the past year. The goal is to ensure that the proposed impact of these products can be achieved. Creating an intentional transformation to the homeownership system goes beyond catalyzing exclusive capital to communities and focuses on shifting how capital enters communities and communities’ ability to shape that capital. We have also created an advisory committee to support the planning process of the implementation partnership and building out a Change Lab strategy for 2025.
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Grant Recipient
SMALL BUSINESS MAJORITY FOUNDATION INC
Small Business Majority requests support to work with small business owners, policymakers and other key stakeholders to address barriers to accessing responsible capital that impact entrepreneurs, and especially entrepreneurs of color, across Chicago. We will work to advance reforms on these issues, championing the small business perspective in policy movements and amplifying the ways potential policies can support equitable entrepreneurship and advance racial justice and wealth-building in disinvested, low- and moderate-income communities. We will empower diverse entrepreneurs as subject matter experts and advocates in these movements, adding an influential voice of support in public and policymaker education campaigns.
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Grant Recipient
Latino Policy Forum
The programs and initiatives to be carried out through this proposal will advance four vital outcomes – Closing the Latino wealth gap, Reducing homelessness and housing insecurity, Supporting the wellbeing and flourishing of asylum seekers, and Developing skilled multicultural leaders who collaborate toward civic betterment. The Latino Policy Forum will pursue those outcomes in the research-based, highly collaborative ways that are consistent with the Forum’s stated mission – Through advocacy and analysis, the Forum builds a foundation for equity, justice, and economic prosperity for the Latino community.
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Grant Recipient
EVANSTON REBUILDING WAREHOUSE
Rebuilding Exchange (RE) operates at the intersection of environmental sustainability, social justice, and economic development as we strive toward our vision of building a community where people and resources are valued and celebrated. One key effort in achieving this vision is our Building Trades Workforce Training Programs, of which we offer two pathways into the construction sector—a 20-week transitional employment program and 9-week pre-apprenticeship training program. In addition to vocational skills development, both of our programs offer additional skills-building and supportive services, including financial literacy, to help trainees and graduates break cycles of poverty for themselves and their families. We seek funding to grow stronger pathways between building trades employers and our program graduates, especially within the clean-energy sector. Greater focus on building employer and apprenticeship program partnerships will result in more high-quality job placement and apprenticeship program opportunities for our graduates and support their path to income growth and wealth.
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Grant Recipient
RED CLAY DANCE COMPANY INC
Red Clay Dance Company is seeking general operating support to advance it's mission of igniting Glocal Artivism through dance. Artivism (social justice artmaking) is ethos and bedrock of the organization.
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Grant Recipient
GREATER WEST TOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Greater West Town Project (GWTP) seeks to continue our partnership 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 work for over 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, Austin, and Belmont Cragin). With funding from Chicago Community Trust, GWTP will seek to enhance our Occupational Skills Training (OST) and Career Pathways (CP) programs. GWTP’s programs are strategically designed to respond to poverty, unemployment, and lack of educational attainment by creating access to economic opportunities for multi-barriered and historically disinvested community residents. GWTP’s OST program offers two certified tracks in the high-growth industries of Shipping & Receiving (12 weeks) and Woodworking & Solid Surface Manufacturing (15 weeks). These programs fully incorporate technical skills with basic skills remediation, wraparound services, and 12 months of post-program support, including job readiness and job placement. Both trainings are approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and nationally accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges. Two employer partner Program Advisory Committees (PACs) composed of local employers meet regularly to advise GWTP on curricula and industry best practices. In addition to OST, GWTP is proposing additional programming for participants who need immediate employment through our Career Pathways (CP) program. CP provides career services that include case planning and management, Individual Education and Employment Planning (IEEP), job readiness training, job placement, and follow-up services. With funding from CCT, GWTP proposes: - GWTP will recruit and enroll 90 participants in state-approved, certification-granting Occupational Skills Training programs. 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 $18/hr. - GWTP will recruit and enroll 40 participants in the Career Pathways program. These participants will receive job readiness training, job placement, and ongoing support. 30 out of the 40 participants served via the Career Pathways program will be placed into employment and earn an average wage of $16/hour.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Community and Workers Rights
Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights (referred to in this application as Chicago Community) houses a worker-owned cooperative incubator (EJE - Economic Justice and Equity for Collective Development), which includes providing outreach and education surrounding general cooperative concepts, and provides alternative business models that empower workers to create collective wealth and opportunities for their communities. There is a lack of equity and justice that leads to the poverty rates in the community we serve; the types of jobs offered to workers provide no unions, unsafe working conditions, lack of a liveable wage, and no opportunities for growth. We believe in economic justice, and are working to support low-income workers and Latinx communities by helping them access more opportunities to set their own business goals, work standards, and create their own wealth through cooperatives, collectives, or family businesses. Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights will continue to provide outreach and education on Worker Cooperatives to Latinx immigrant communities on the Southwest Side of Chicago. The organization’s goal is to provide outreach and education on worker cooperatives, and ensure that the community we serve familiarizes itself with the concept of worker-owned cooperatives, and how beneficial they are to both the community and workers. Not only will we continue to find workers who want to participate in our cooperative incubator and successfully create a cooperative, but our organization will work to encourage community support for emerging and existing cooperatives. Worker-owned cooperatives benefit the community because they give back the neighborhoods, and our organization hopes to conduct outreach to help those we serve understand how important it is for them to support these businesses. Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights will continue working to create an ecosystem that supports each other, and towards expanding equity, social justice, and workers rights. Our organization will also continue to work with Raise The Floor to advance pro-worker laws, as well as the Illinois Worker Cooperative Alliance to promote economic equity and support for worker cooperatives in communities of color. We will continue to work and collaborate on initiatives, projects, and campaigns with many organizations across the state to defend the rights of workers, fight racial inequity, and advocate for laws and policies to promote and advance the living conditions of workers of color and their families.
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Grant Recipient
The Network - Advocating Against Domestic Violence
The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence is seeking funding through the Chicago Community Trust Sustainable Solutions for Housing Stability grant to expand our trauma-informed direct legal representation on housing issues for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) who have fled violence and are staying at Chicago domestic violence shelters. The Network engages in housing work focused on directly representing survivors of GBV in housing legal issues (including eviction defense, lease termination negotiation, and fair housing/Violence Against Women Act claims), conducting on-site assessments of survivors of gender-based violence for the Continuum of Care GBV system, increasing access to housing for survivors of GBV, and improving system responses to those who are at risk of experiencing homelessness due to GBV. Our housing assessors visit Chicago domestic shelters throughout the month to intake survivors for housing opportunities, and our proposal seeks to hire an additional attorney to our housing legal team to conduct legal intake, offer advice, and provide representation to survivors in shelters or survivors who contact the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline. As survivors are fleeing or planning to flee an abusive relationship, they are burdened with many challenges to reaching safety and independence, including a lack of resources, ongoing threats to their safety, housing instability, concerns about their lease, coerced debt, and threats to their assets from the person trying to cause them harm. For many survivors, these barriers can seem insurmountable and can lead to them reconciling with the person harming them, especially if they have not been the primary income-earner in their family, have been isolated from their support networks, or if they have additional vulnerabilities such as having disabilities or medical conditions. Frequently, at the root of these issues are civil housing legal solutions that survivors do not know about or understand. Our project proposes to create low-barrier access to legal support, advice, and representation on housing issues for survivors, to ease a survivor’s path to safety. In addition to gaining access to free legal counsel, survivors will also be connected to other resources, including emergency housing assistance (for past housing debt, credit repair, rental debt, security deposits/move-in fees, or moving costs), shelter, and long-term housing opportunities. A small part of the funding will be dedicated to analyzing the data collected through the program to learn more about how best to mitigate housing harm to survivors and what changes are needed to address housing instability in our shelter systems.