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 5301–5308 of 4630 results
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Grant Recipient
Logan Square Neighborhood Association
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Garfield Park Community Council
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Foundation for Homan Square
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Chicago Community Foundation
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Foundation of Little Village
The Foundation of Little Village requests $149,500 for the Xquina Business Ecosystem, formerly the Xquina Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, to increase access (and/or readiness) to capital opportunities and improve overall business financial health in Little Village. We will accomplish this through place-based and culturally relevant wraparound support via our collaborative partners – Foundation of Little Village, Food Hero, and Little Village Chamber of Commerce.
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Grant Recipient
INNER VOICE INCORPORATED
Inner Voice/IV was founded in 1984 by the late Reverend Robert Johnson, who opened a soup kitchen on the west side of Chicago to tend to the physical needs of individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty. He quickly realized that while food was essential to survival, a broader array of services was necessary to help people break the cycle of poverty and homelessness and find pathways to independence and self-sufficiency. Over the last four decades since its founding, Inner Voice has worked diligently to build a continuum of care that reflects Rev. Johnson’s vision of compassion and accountability. Throughout its history, Inner Voice has administered interim/emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, permanent housing, rapid rehousing, workforce development, case management, representative payee, and emergency assistance programs for single men and women and families throughout Chicago with three programs specifically serving Veterans. Today, Inner Voice operates 18 programs with two proposals pending (Citi Bank – daytime drop-in center, Boeing – workforce/financial stability) and one not funded due to numerous responses/lack of sufficient funds (Red Rover – to become the first pet friendly shelter in IL). As the agency evolved, a great deal of attention was paid to ensuring that it kept pace with changes in the industry to improve service delivery. Utilizing evidence based best practices in its programs became the standard, and adoption of new concepts such as housing first, low-demand, low-barrier, client centered, culturally sensitive, and trauma informed care, among others, became an integral part of service delivery and program structure. Inner Voice has invested heavily in staff development and training to give case managers, case aides, directors, and other staff the tools needed to bring these concepts into evidence in everyday practice. People experiencing homelessness and other marginalized populations are often at the intersection of multiple systems, including health, housing, and justice. Care coordination across these systems is critical to successfully serving the needs of this vulnerable population. Regardless of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, use of personal pronouns, disability, religion, or veteran status, IV consistently focuses its efforts on linking marginalized individuals and families with safe housing, wraparound support services, and employment preparation and placement options to ensure long-term economic independence providing them with opportunities to reach their full potential and enjoy an improved quality of life. Having long served justice involved individuals in many programs, including employment preparation and placement, Inner Voice is an agency of second chances with a history of employing returning citizens. As the newly arrived migrant population works its way through the emergency housing system, Inner Voice welcomes them into its programs. Currently, IV employs three bilingual staff and has a hiring preference for candidates who speak multiple languages. A core component of Inner Voice's philosophy is the practice of interagency collaboration in the pursuit of ending homelessness. Inner Voice partners with a myriad of agencies that support the overall goal of improving the lives of those experiencing homelessness through stable housing and improved mental and physical health. To safeguard housing stability, staff attend training webinars on the legal aspects of eviction and tenants’ rights and have access to emergency funds, when available, as well as through government entities, to pay for outstanding rent and utility arreage to avoid eviction. Additionally, Inner Voice works with advocacy groups and legal organizations regarding evictions and housing discrimination such as the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Cabrini Green Legal Aid, among others, and is a member of the Supportive Housing Providers Association and Housing Action Illinois that provide services related to housing issues. Inner Voice has been a member in good standing of Chicago’s Continuum of Care since its inception. Inner Voice’s CEO previously served as the Vice Chair and Chair of the CoC board, and its CPO is currently an Alternate on the board, representing the Service Providers Commission. Staff also serve on various committees and workgroups. Inner Voice is also a member of the Illinois Shelter Alliance and Illinois Partners for Human Services to advocate for increased funding for housing and supports services as well as cost of living adjustments for human service workers who are the human infrastructure of nonprofits. After forty years of caring on purpose, the staff of Inner Voice are still motivated and eager to work with those whose shoes many have walked in. Over 50% of our staff have lived experience of homelessness and justice-involved backgrounds with many enjoying decades in recovery. Participants do not have to look far to realize that personal recovery is possible, and life can get better. As the CEO often says, Inner Voice is like the Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Former staff and participants keep returning either to work or to give back; it’s that kind of place.
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Grant Recipient
LIFT
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 support, including financial capabilities workshops and quarterly cash infusions. Through 1:1 financial coaching 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 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. For example, we are introducing solution-focused therapy techniques into our coaching program for members who need more support but do not have access to immediate mental health care. Second, as we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are continuing to offer virtual programming and adopting a hybrid coaching model to be more adaptive to the needs of our parents. Third, we are experimenting with group coaching, 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. Group workshops provide space outside of coaching to connect with peers and focus on holistic goals like positive parenting and well-being. LIFT-Chicago recognizes the importance of enlisting coaches from diverse and low-income backgrounds with matched lived experience to our members. LIFT-Chicago's coaches, who are Master of Social Work interns, undertake specialized training to implement LIFT’s model and gain experience providing culturally sensitive, strengths-based support. As such, LIFT-Chicago supports the career pathways of both its coaches and its members – furthering their educational and career aspirations, informing the next generation of human service delivery with holistic approaches to disrupting intergenerational poverty, and advancing equity by filling a gap in the human service workforce with highly trained BIPOC clinicians.
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Grant Recipient
Community Investment Corporation
In the wake of the high-profile collapse of the Heartland Housing portfolio, the Preservation Compact and Illinois Housing Council have begun an effort to understand what happened and seek ways to prevent or ameliorate any similar portfolio failure. Preliminary conversations with local partners, anecdotal evidence gleaned from national partners, and press reports all point to a changed landscape post-COVID for subsidized housing developers and operators. Preliminary focus group discussions with subsidized developers and tax credit syndicators and investors indicate that unpaid rent, deferred maintenance, skyrocketing insurance costs, increased operating expenses and staffing challenges pose real threats to the long-term sustainability of our state’s subsidized housing stock, particularly for nonprofit owners and providers of permanent supportive housing. More research is needed to better understand these challenges, and to identify the solutions needed to ensure stability for both residents and housing operators in Illinois’ affordable housing landscape. In the months since submitting our LOI for this grant, the scope and urgency of this issue has only come into clearer focus. Therefore, we have shifted focus from the narrow question of preventing the next Heartland-Housing style collapse, though that remains a core aim of this effort. We are now considering a three-tiered approach. The base tier is focused on questions of individual portfolio health, as originally noted. The second tier zooms out a level, looking at the network of developers, agencies, resident service providers, and syndicators that comprise the affordable housing ecosystem in Chicago. Each of these parties plays a critical role in ensuring safe, sustainable homes are created and preserved, and yet can often appear to work in silos or even, at times, at cross-purposes. And for the third and final tier, the Preservation Compact will draw on our national network of housing practitioners to surface challenges as well as potential solutions or best practices. At the end of the grant period, the Compact and IHC will present a report outlining our analysis intended to provide advocates, public agencies and other stakeholders with a robust understanding of the financial challenges facing our state’s current subsidized housing ecosystem, and a roadmap that outlines the solutions needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of affordable housing in Illinois.