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
Featured
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.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance
With this grant the Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance will enable its partners, Purchasing with Purpose and HHP Lift, to launch a marketing and matching campaign designed to increase purchasing by corporations and other large buyers from Employment Social Enterprises.
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Grant Recipient
Fresh Taste
North Lawndale Fresh (NLF) is a collaborative grantmaking program 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 North Lawndale neighborhood. The vision is an equitable Chicagoland region where all people have knowledge of and access to healthy food. The funders involved with North Lawndale Fresh have committed to a minimum $1M for each of five years to support the neighborhood (2022-2026). 2025 is the fourth year of the five-year commitment to North Lawndale Fresh. This project aligns with the building supply-side skills and attracting capital strategies of Food:Land:Opportunity while also reducing fragmentation. It also fits squarely within the newly announced Access to Capital/Pooled Funding Resources strategy.
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Grant Recipient
Urban Institute
This application is to request a continuation and expansion of ongoing work for the Chicago Community Trust to study capital flows in Chicago. We will collect and analyze data on investment across asset classes and neighborhood types, as well as comparing Chicago with other places. We will assist the Trust in identifying investment targets.
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Grant Recipient
Network for Young Adult Success
UtmostU empowers young adults to achieve their professional aspirations by supporting degree attainment and career preparation. The Bridges to Brighter Futures two-year grant will sustain our post-secondary coaching model, providing direct coaching and critical wraparound services to 100-125 fellows in the City Colleges of Chicago, as well as those who have transferred to four-year institutions or other credentialing programs. We will also support coaches from partners across Chicago and the greater Chicagoland area to support approximately 120 two-year pathway fellows with their degree attainment. By equipping young adults from under-resourced neighborhoods with the tools and guidance to earn degrees and pursue meaningful careers, UtmostU fosters long-term economic and social mobility. Through strong partnerships, structured fellow engagement, and technology-driven support, Bridges to Brighter Futures will build upon past successes to drive economic mobility and opportunities for fellows, their families, and communities.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Community Foundation
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/The Fund for Equitable Business Growth
Over the past four years, the Fund for Equitable Business Growth (FEBG) has focused on strengthening the small business ecosystem through funding individual business serving organization (BSO) partnerships, building those individual partnerships into a networked coalition of service providers, piloting approaches to enhancing data infrastructure, and addressing barriers to capital access. The BSO Collective is the foundation of the work of FEBG, informing the other work of the fund by providing insight into the challenges and needs of Black and Latine small businesses. To date, FEBG funding – over $10 million since 2019 – has provided resources for BSOs to develop the capacity provide more robust services to entrepreneurs. For the first 3 years, the FEBG has supported partnerships of BSOs on the theory that a collective of BSOs working together can provide better, more cohesive service to business owners than individual BSOs. In the current year, FEBG is focusing on the cross-collaboration of BSO partnerships to further build the social and knowledge capital of the business advisors and entrepreneurs, thus strengthening the broader network of entrepreneurial support.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Community Foundation/We Rise Together
We Rise Together: For an Equitable & Just Recovery is a coalition of public and private funders and communities accelerating equity in the Chicago region’s economic recovery so everyone who lives here can reach their full potential. To catalyze an equitable economic recovery in our region from the COVID recession, We Rise Together focuses on grantmaking and engagement in communities hardest hit by COVID and those that are a majority Black and Latine because they are the places and people disproportionately affected by the pandemic. We are funding activities in three areas that we believe will have a substantial impact on the recovery of communities and populations in the City and County. These three funding strategies include: • Investing in community anchor real estate projects in communities hit hardest by COVID • Strengthening and supporting local businesses • Supporting access to quality and sustainable employment and job access. This grant will allow us to further invest in and support real estate projects, workforce development, and small businesses that boost economic activity and growth in long disinvested areas of the Chicago region.
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Grant Recipient
Historic Chicago Bungalow Association
UnBlocked Englewood is a community-driven home repair and stabilization initiative focused on preserving homeownership, supporting aging in place, and strengthening historically disinvested Black and Brown communities in Englewood. The program centers Black homeowners—especially aging and senior residents—who face systemic barriers to maintaining their homes and have long endured wealth extraction through predatory housing practices, disinvestment, and undervaluation. Led by the Chicago Bungalow Association (CBA), UnBlocked builds on two years of trust, results, and deep relationships with residents on the 6500 S Aberdeen pilot block. The initiative prioritizes direct program impact—repairs, stabilization, and vacant lot coordination—while also investing in visibility, research, and community learning. At the heart of UnBlocked is a strategic leadership team rooted in CBA: Tonika Johnson, CBA’s artist-in-residence and an internationally recognized artist and Englewood native, and Amber Hendley, CBA’s researcher-in-residence and respected housing justice expert. Their roles bring vision, accountability, and lived experience to every part of the process—making UnBlocked as much about data and systems change as it is about physical repairs. This three-year expansion will complete work on the pilot block, extend to a newly identified block, and continue refining a replicable strategy for equitable, block-level stabilization—anchored in the leadership and resilience of long-time homeowners. UnBlocked challenges the mainstream gentrification narrative by proving that in communities like Englewood, higher home values do not equate to displacement risk. Unlike rapidly developing neighborhoods, data shows that market pressures do not threaten long-term Black homeowners here in the same way. Instead, the real threat has been decades of systemic disinvestment and wealth extraction. Amber Hendley will expand on this research, demonstrating how reinvestment in Englewood serves to restore homeownership security and generational wealth rather than displace residents. This investment will help reverse decades of undervaluation, ensuring that Black homeowners benefit from rising property values rather than being left behind by them. CBA seeks $2.2 million from the Chicago Community Trust (CCT) to continue scaling UnBlocked Englewood while refining best practices, deepening learning through trusted contractor partnerships, and ensuring long-term stability for Black and senior homeowners in Englewood.