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. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 5201–5208 of 4434 results
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Grant Recipient
Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project
FLAP proposes to help Chicagoland’s low-wage immigrants, including, recently-arrived Latine immigrant families and youth, 15 to 26 years old, to apply for work permits and expungement to be able to enter to the workforce accessing better jobs. Through its free legal services, Know Your Rights community education program and in cooperation with the Latine Consulates and law firms FLAP partners with, the organization will empower low-wage immigrants, including youth, with law knowledge to better negotiate salaries to find better wages and more stable jobs and avoid exploitation and human labor and/or sex trafficking.
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Grant Recipient
Business Services Collective NFP
EMPOWER offers back-office services to create financial readiness for accessing capital leading to access to construction projects. Since inception, EMPOWER has supported nearly 50 BIPOC entrepreneurs to leverage the market opportunity in construction to create the pathways for wealth and job creation reducing the racial wealth gap. EMPOWER is a partnership between Business Services Collective NFP DBA BUILDERS AVENUE and Greenwood Archer Capital, funded by FEBG/CCT since 2020 when we joined forces to create an ecosystem of support for BIPOC businesses to build financial health and access capital. For 2024-25 the partnership will focus on serving the existing clients of GAC through post loan support to be successful at the expanded credit limits. We will also expand our work to support upto 10 clients from the construction portfolios of upto 3 new CDFIs
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Grant Recipient
HOUSING FORWARD
Housing Forward is requesting $150,000 in general operating funds from the Chicago Community Trust to further our vision of ending homelessness and our mission of bringing people out of housing crisis and into housing stability. Flexible funding from foundations like the Trust will be utilized to support programs, staffing, and other administrative costs as needed to fulfill our mission for all 2,000 of our existing clients each year, particularly as we work to expand our own congregate shelter and supportive housing options available to our clients.
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Grant Recipient
University of Chicago Urban Labs
Safe and stable housing allows people to live with security and dignity. It also provides the stability necessary to invest in themselves and their communities. Unfortunately, housing is not considered a right or entitlement in the United States: only 26 percent of households who are eligible for housing assistance receive some form of support due to chronic underfunding of these programs. At the same time, the supply of affordable housing has dramatically declined in recent decades, creating a permanent housing affordability gap for a vast majority of low-income households. The challenge of finding affordable housing is particularly acute for returning residents, who face additional barriers to accessing subsidized housing and pronounced discrimination in the labor market. For these and other reasons, people who are exiting incarceration are at extremely heightened risk of experiencing homelessness as compared to other residents, particularly within the first month of release. Stable housing is critically important for returning residents to successfully reintegrate into the community and, notably, is required to avoid reincarceration; “insufficient housing” is considered a parole violation. Despite the clear need for services to address a wide range of foundational housing and additional supports for this population, there is very limited evidence on what types of programs help returning residents find stable housing. There is rich ethnographic data on the barriers returning residents face when trying to find stable housing and reintegrate into the community, but much less information on how existing pilots or programs may be falling short of addressing these barriers and meeting returning residents’ complex support needs. The Cook County Justice Advisory Council (JAC) and City of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) have both secured funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to launch pilots focused on addressing the housing needs of returning residents. Each program offers a short-term housing subsidy and wraparound supportive services. JAC and DFSS both believe that stable housing is pivotal to promoting economic mobility for residents, allowing them to obtain and retain employment. They further expect that residents’ well-being will improve and their probability of recidivating will decrease. Given the limited guidance from existing research, as well as the fact that these innovative pilots are both new programs for each respective agency, JAC and DFSS have invited the Inclusive Economy Lab (IEL) to serve as an analytic partner and help them understand in real-time whether these programs are meeting their stated goals. IEL is proposing two complementary research components to better understand how these programs are serving returning residents: 1. A process evaluation, for which IEL will co-design a data dashboard with the JAC to help them understand whether programming is meeting important interim metrics, such as lease up rates, length of time required to find housing, and participant levels of engagement in supportive services (note: DFSS has already developed a similar dashboard internally, which can serve as an important model) 2. Qualitative data collection from those directly impacted, including program participants, service providers, parole officers, and landlords, to glean insight into the successes and challenges that each group is experiencing through their participation in the respective programs. Partners will use these quantitative and qualitative to improve their programming in real-time, helping ensure the success of these two specific pilots, and will also use lessons learned to inform the design of future programs, should the pilots be sustained and scaled. IEL will facilitate a community of practice with the two agencies that will meet on a quarterly basis, allowing partners to reflect on these insights and identify implications for ongoing program design and administration in real time. IEL will compile a policy brief with key findings from the pilots and lessons learned in the Community of Practice by August 2026. (Note: the timeline for this project is two years, extending one year beyond the one-year CCT grant.)
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Grant Recipient
Inspiration Corporation
Each year, Inspiration Corporation provides resources and opportunity to hundreds of resilient Chicagoans who face systemic disparities rooted in social, racial, and economic inequities that result in homelessness, hunger, poverty and social isolation. In order to help individuals and families overcome these barriers, we work to connect those experiencing homelessness and poverty to the critical services and resources they need through our homeless engagement and housing programs. With a proven track record and multi-pronged approach, Inspiration Corporation seeks to create a supportive community that recognizes the humanity of each person with whom we work. Honoring each person’s lived experience, we employ best practices and provide services aimed at offsetting our city’s long history of disinvestment in communities of color. We provide a range of programming that responds to critical basic needs and supports greater opportunity so that individuals and families can lead dignified, fulfilling lives. For 35 years, Inspiration Corporation has connected to individuals in need in the Uptown community and been an integral part of the city’s “system front door.” Our Homeless Engagement program provides made-to-order breakfasts served with dignity and respect in a restaurant style setting through our flagship program, Inspiration Cafe with the goal of connecting participants to additional resources and a deeper level of service. Over time, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness feel comfortable sharing their basic needs and short- and long-term goals. In turn, our staff work tirelessly to connect program participants to referrals for housing and other essential resources and services. Since we are the only drop-in provider within eight miles that serves breakfast, opening hours before warming/cooling centers or other daytime support services, we serve many persons from encampments, shelters, and those who have been riding the train all night and traveling from distances. Providing breakfast and a welcoming environment, along with crucial needs, offers a basis for supporting participants in improving economic security and increasing housing stability. Likewise, our Housing Program provides individuals and families experiencing homelessness with access to housing and ongoing rental support. Access to programming is open to all who qualify and participants are referred based on eligibility and vulnerability, most often by Chicago’s Coordinated Entry System. We employ a housing first approach and work diligently to find appropriate housing, maintain good relationships with landlords and provide wrap-around supportive services to ensure that participants are able to remain housed and pursue their own goals around greater stability for themselves and their families. Our on-going strategies to expand services, enhance approaches and deepen engagement are rooted in best practices, what we have learned from our participants over several decades, and recent trends that have emerged in our work. Aligning with reported data, Inspiration Cafe has seen a steady uptick in new participants every month, with meals at or over capacity, and a record number of drop-in sessions. To date, a few new participants have been recent arrivals or asylum seekers, but we anticipate we will continue to welcome increasing numbers of migrants. Like so many of our peer organizations, our housing team has been stretched to their limits with high rates of turnover and staff vacancies. An investment in a dedicated housing navigator will streamline and expedite the process of securing units and facilitating relationship between participants and landlords. Removing many of these complex administrative tasks from existing Case Managers duties will free them up to deliver a higher level of individualized engagement and support. In the past couple of years Inspiration Corporation has piloted an innovative Aftercare Program to support individuals in maintaining housing stability as they exit our program models. Through the Aftercare Initiative, we have added up to a year of additional supportive services for households that have recently exited our Housing Program or Homeless Engagement Services (HES) Program. This extended support has helped prepare participants for unforeseen challenges or barriers and increase future housing retention. Early data has proven that this level of engagement, investment and collaboration with participants yields impressive results with 100% maintaining their housing. Further investment in these key areas of our work will enable Inspiration Corporation to deliver a higher level of service to a greater number of individuals and families. The proposed enhancements to our service delivery model will better meet the needs of our participants and foster sustainable solutions to promote housing stability. We recognize that our participants are our best resource, both in understanding the root causes of homelessness and in creating lasting solutions.
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Grant Recipient
The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Chicago is a highly-ranked public institution whose mission is to provide access to excellence for a highly diverse student population. The largest university in the Chicago area, UIC has 33,522 students enrolled in its 16 colleges. The 2024 rankings from U.S. News & World Report recognize the University of Illinois Chicago as one of the top public universities in the country. UIC tied for 40th among public national universities and tied for 82nd among the top 100 national universities overall. The rankings reflect improvements of two and 15 spots, respectively, over UIC’s previous rank. UIC made its most significant jump in the category of the most innovative schools, reaching 46th. UIC is tied with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and others in this category. Additionally, U.S. News & World Report ranked UIC 16th among the nation’s top performers in social mobility. The category measures the extent to which universities enrolled and graduated students receive federal Pell Grants (given to students whose total family incomes are less than $50,000 annually). The university is also ranked 37th (tie) for campus ethnic diversity, 46th in least debt, 46th (tie) in economic diversity, and 50th (tie) among the best colleges for veterans. In the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking, UIC ranked 13th among U.S. public universities and 55th overall. The rankings also measure social mobility, where UIC placed 8th among all public and private universities. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) is proud to educate a large percentage of Chicago's college-bound, minoritized, Pell-eligible, and first-generation students. Despite robust student success programs across campus and inclusive teaching initiatives among the academic units, LAS has identified an equity gap in first-to-second-year retention of Black and Latinx students. This equity gap is further deepened when considering the Pell-eligible and first-generation status. Students in these populations who enter their first year of study with a developmental placement in Mathematics, Chemistry, or English and/or students who come as "undecided" see a further impact on their retention rate. In sum, students who enroll at UIC and LAS with two or more of these characteristics are substantially more "at risk" of not being retained as sophomores. In general, we see a retention gap between 10% and 38% for this student population, depending on the number of characteristics they have. Under the oversight of the Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs and the LAS Office for Student Success and Retention Initiatives, the Become a Strategic Learner Program (BSLP) — which includes the BSLP Academic Study Skills Online Course and Workshop Series, the implementation of Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) assessments in the LAS 110 first-year seminar, and the LAS 120 Major Exploration and Career Development Course—aims to substantially reduce this retention equity gap by offering a holistic focus on higher education literacy, academic skills attainment, major exploration, and career development aligned with students' strengths and interests during their first year of college. By focusing on academic study skills, major exploration, and career readiness, the Become a Strategic Learner Program will reduce the first-to-second-year retention gap and accelerate time to graduation for this student population, thus decreasing their loan burden, setting them up for successful job placements in their career of choice, and boosting their early career earning potential.
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Grant Recipient
South Suburban PADS
South Suburban PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), or SSPADS, greatly appreciates the past years of support of the Chicago Community Support to prevent and end homelessness in the South Suburbs of Chicago. We respectfully request renewed and increased support of $100,000 under the Addressing Critical Needs, Essential Services for Housing Stability RFP. Our approach to sustainable housing stability will provide the following services to roughly 2,000 people and 800 households in the Southland: homelessness prevention (or diversion), street outreach, emergency shelter, intensive case management, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and local and state-wide homelessness advocacy efforts through key collaborations and partnerships.
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Grant Recipient
The Dusable Black History Museum and Education Center
As a historically underserved African American institution based in the historically underserved south side of Chicago, The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center formally requests general operating funds to support our exhibit maintenance, archive digitization, and development department efforts. All of these efforts continue to strengthen the museum’s organizational capacity, community relations, and staff professional development.