Grants

Grant Recipient

Northern Illinois Food Bank

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $100,000

Grant Recipient

Health and Medicine Policy Research Group

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $83,350

Grant Recipient

IFF

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $100,000

Responding to decades of community organizing focused on attracting positive commercial activity to the neighborhood, The Harrison Gateway project is a new facility that builds on several core components of the Foundation for Homan Square (FHS) Strategic Development Plan. This new, three story, 16,773 square foot mixed use development will combine five unique local businesses and community-based organizations that serve Homan Square and the North Lawndale community in a singular building. The building will house Alderwoman Scott’s office and café on the ground floor, two office tenants with flexible office spaces on the second floor and culminate with a new satellite office for IFF on the third floor – all in an inviting design that is organized around a central open courtyard. The project site has long been targeted for development due to its current vacancy status, high transit accessibility, and strategic location as an entryway to the Homan Square neighborhood.

Grant Recipient

Ageoptions Inc

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $33,350

Grant Recipient

National Consumer Law Center Inc. (NCLC)

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $25,000

NCLC seeks funding to continue its representation of Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) in multiple cases, filed by Illinois gas utilities, including the just-filed Peoples Gas rate case, to significantly improve the affordability of utility rates for low-income customers who struggle each month to afford essential utility service. COFI’s mission is to build the power and voice of parents, primarily mothers and grandmothers from Black and Brown communities, to shape the public decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families. NCLC, on behalf of COFI, will highlight the unaffordability of Peoples Gas’s current rates and the need for a robust discount rate for low-income customers before the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), which regulates Illinois’ investor-owned utilities. Proposals will include implementation of robust, tiered discount rates, with the largest discounts going to those with the lowest incomes; a lower flat monthly customer charge; and an end to accelerating disconnections for customers deemed “high risk” for nonpayment. Pending NCLC’s ability to raise additional, dedicated funds, NCLC is hoping to similarly engage in other matters, including relevant proceedings for the major electric utilities, which will be filing proposals for discount rates in early 2024. NCLC’s work with COFI is a part of our Illinois-based Project Stay Connected (modeled after the highly successful Project Stay Connected Massachusetts), which focuses on improving utility affordability practices statewide. We are also working with the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies (IACAA) to accelerate an increase in funding for a critical infusion of dollars for the state’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the funding for which is anticipated to be exhausted by May of this year. That bill, Senate Bill 1842, includes new provisions that would require (1) year-round access to LIHEAP, which is currently unavailable to persons in need during the summer months, and (2) a more streamlined enrollment process. Our legislative work also includes partnership with Blacks in Green, a Woodlawn-based organization, toward passage of the People’s Utility Rate Relief Act (HB 2172) at the General Assembly this Spring, which will help protect Illinois’ financially struggling families from the increasing threat of losing essential utility service each month, by making bills more affordable and creating stronger protections against disconnection for financially struggling seniors, families with children under 6 and households with medically-compromised individuals. NCLC presented testimony at a hearing before the House Public Utilities Committee on March 27, 2023, and left with a renewed sense of hope for passage of legislation this session, given the Committee Chair’s direction to the utilities, following our testimony, to come to the negotiating table and produce legislation. Should that not occur this legislative session, we would continue that consensus-building negotiation with the utilities in the months ahead. Please note this legislative work is funded by internal NCLC funding. oAs a leading voice for low-income utility customer protections, NCLC has achieved the following successes before the ICC in its representation of COFI: o Helping lead negotiations with Illinois electric and gas utilities on creating new protections from disconnection and additional energy assistance in three separate settlements from 2020-2022 during the COVID-19 epidemic. o Proposing, and ComEd and Ameren agreeing to adopt, a new affordability metric that provides financial incentives for the utilities to reduce disconnections in the top 20 zip codes with the highest disconnection rates by 34 percent over a four-year period. The Commission officially adopted the new metrics in two September, 2022 rate orders. These metrics will take effect beginning January 1, 2024 and can serve as a model throughout the midwest. o Successfully advocating for the creation of low-income discount rates. o With internal NCLC funding, helping address unaffordability through a successful push in 2021 for legislative changes and funding increases in existing state and federally funded affordability programs. o Negotiating significant budget increases and adoption of best practices in electric and gas utility low-income weatherization programs through ongoing work at the Illinois Energy Efficiency Stakeholder Advisory Group and before the ICC. Other successes include successfully advocating for the passage in 2021 of SB 265, otherwise known as the “Fix the PIPP” bill, which removed a structural barrier from participation in the CIty of Chicago in Illinois’ Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP) program, establishing a framework for increased funding of the program and adding language in the Energy Assistance Act to ensure undocumented persons could participate in Illinois LIHEAP, PIPP and weatherization programs. PSC-IL also is focused on working with Legal Action Chicago and Metropolitan Family Services to permanently modify existing ICC rules related to utility credit and collection practices through ICC workshops and through the aforementioned passage of legislation (HB 2172). A rulemaking proceeding at the ICC will likely follow the workshops later this year. Among the issues we are raising is the end of a utility practice of accelerating the disconnection of customers deemed “high risk” for non-payment that uses an opaque, third-party-delivered algorithm process. NCLC PSC IL works to positively affect all low income communities, but under this project working with our client group COFI, the majority of whom are mothers and grandmothers from Black and Latiné communities.