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.
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Grant Recipient
MAPSCORPS - Northwestern School of Education and Social Policy (SESP)
Building on 13 years of a successful implementation of evidence-based positive youth development, and robust training in STEM and data collection, MAPSCorps proposes to partner with the We Rise Together (WRT) partners. The MAPSCorps team will add meaning to quantitative data analysis to engage identified community members, listen and reflect community voice and to describe community perceptions of the WRT economic well-being impacts. MAPSCorps field staff will facilitate community conversations and surveys (tailored with community input) including questions re: economic well-being metrics, local program/service participation and satisfaction, entrepreneurial interest and attitudes, and contextual/support questions; and support Participatory Action Research (PAR), implementing surveys with a broad range of community constituents; and co-constructing and interpreting the findings.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Neighborhood Technology
This proposal supports the involvement of seven organizations, led by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), to participate in coalitions regarding transportation equity and mobility justice. These organizations - CNT, Active Transportation Alliance, Equiticity, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Metropolitan Planning Council, and one additional organization to be identified - make up the leadership of the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), a coalition formed in 2020 that includes over 40 community groups, civic organizations, equitable transportation advocates, academics, and other stakeholders. This grant will be used in large part to support the continued involvement and leadership of our organizations in this coalition, and will also support our involvement in other related coalitions.
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Grant Recipient
Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America Inc NFP
We are requesting $25,000 in funding to address the critical need for individualized, intensive after-school educational support for Chicago’s newly arrived refugee children, who have had limited/interrupted formal education as a result of genocide, war, and persecution. By expanding the scope and scale of our programs and increasing refugee parent participation in their children's academic progress, we want to empower Chicago’s newest neighbors to reach their full potential -- closing the significant achievement gap between refugee students and their peers, providing greater stability within refugee families, and preparing our students to become economically self-sufficient and robustly engaged in American civic life.
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Grant Recipient
HCP OF ILLINOIS INC
HCP will advocate for homeownership opportunities with the Housing Choice Voucher Working Group, led by CAFHA. HCP brings national expertise on public housing authority (PHA) best practices, key national partnerships, and co-facilitates committees of the Working Group. As a partner on CAFHA’s 2020 CCT Advancing Equitable Homeownership grant and a national advisor on PHA programs that promote equitable access and support for long-term wealth building, HCP will take program/policy recommendations and advocate for change. The aim is to scale up PHA homeownership programs to increase awareness and meet the desires of voucher holders, and create a means to repair past harms caused by federal and local housing policy and the real estate industry.
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Grant Recipient
Star Farm Chicago
This request is to support the construction, landscaping, and pre-development costs associated with rehabbing the Star Farm Fresh Market and Community Kitchen. We are requesting $180,000 to support architect and engineer fees ($15,000), installing black iron HVAC in the shared kitchen ($60,000), installing a set of metal rear exit stairs ($40,000), fencing and landscaping of the side lot ($40,000), and installation of a concrete slab driveway ($25,000).
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Grant Recipient
Fresh Taste
Austin Fresh is a collaborative grantmaking five-year program. started in 2020, to increase access to healthy affordable food, support community gardens and local food production, grow food enterprises, and protect and strengthen food assistance programs in the Austin neighborhood. The vision is an equitable Chicagoland region where all people have knowledge of and access to healthy food. The funders involved with Austin Fresh have committed to a minimum $1M for each of five years to support the neighborhood. This renewal request is for the third year of this successful neighborhood focused funder collaborative. This project aligns with the building supply-side skills and attracting capital strategies of Food:Land:Opportunity while also reducing fragmentation.
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Grant Recipient
Advocates for Urban Agriculture NFP
Advocates for Urban Agriculture is requesting continued support of its initiative to provide capacity-building grants to Chicago area growers, with particular emphasis on small, emerging, and BIPOC owned/operated growing operations, contributing to the expansion of grower’s ability to produce and distribute locally grown food.
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Grant Recipient
FEATHERFIST
Over the past two years, Featherfist has weathered the most unique service environment that we have ever seen. We have consistently serviced people experiencing housing instability and homelessness. We have continued to work during and through the pandemic because our clients are vulnerable and had to be served, despite the crisis that the world was experiencing. Featherfist continues to be mission minded, addressing barriers to obtaining and maintaining permanent housing. Featherfist is requesting general operating support. Our needs are two fold, specifically, we have experienced increased program growth which has led to the need for increased accounting support. Secondly, we have identified the need for increased behavioral health services for our current clients. This funding will allow us the opportunity to hire clinical staff/consultants to increase our capacity to provide these services on an ongoing basis as well as begin the initial service provision. Featherfist will create and implement a behavioral health component that can provide internal referrals. We know that clients have better participation rates and this better outcomes when they can receive services within 1 system. It is our hope that this investment into our agency will set the stage for the development of increased unrestricted funding that can further support our programs within 2 fiscal years.