Chicago is Primed for Creative and Targeted Home Lending Solutions

The beauty of Chicago is that every person, every place, and every home has a story. And while my personal story didn’t begin here, it mirrors the experiences of people across this great city.

In the wake of the Great Recession, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Between October 2008 and April 2009, an average of 700,000 American workers lost their jobs every month. The housing market crumbled, and nearly 4 million homeowners lost their homes due to foreclosure. The economic collapse impacted every corner of the country, including Chicago and including my own.

When I was 14, my mother was one of the countless Americans who lost their job directly because of a failing housing market. The small, family-owned real estate business she worked for was struggling in the strained economic environment and her role was unsustainable for them. I heard conversations every night at the dinner table about how to save money and plan for what our family hoped would be a brighter future.

Conversations just like that were taking place in kitchens all over Chicago. Unfortunately, for many families, they still are.

At The Chicago Community Trust, we are listening to those families and supporting the organizations that are most proximate to the challenges of accessing and maintaining homeownership in Chicago’s most underinvested communities.

Those challenges include finding affordable lending products, applying for downpayment assistance, saving for post-purchase emergency costs, and gaining access to home repair services designed to retain – and grow – a home’s value. The challenges are complex, and no one solution works for all of them in every part of the city.

One example of how targeted solutions can have an immense impact on communities comes from Chicago’s West Side. In April, Habitat for Humanity broke ground on seven new homes in Austin. Three of those homes were financed by a new mortgage product designed specifically for neighborhood residents. The financing is part of a bigger program supported by the Trust called the Home Lending Partnership – an effort to bring organizations together to work collaboratively on design and implementation of innovative financial solutions for first-time homebuyers. Potential buyers in communities like Austin have been cut out of the potential path to homeownership by way of lending practices and lack of affordable housing development. This work, while obviously impactful for the families who now enter homeownership for the first time, is also a clear signal that organizations are ready to be creative and targeted in their solutions to this wide array of challenges.

These new homes will tell a story. They will tell a story of a resilient community, of resilient organizations making every effort to solve every problem thrown their way. But above all, they will tell a story about people trying to carve a path for their families and wondering aloud and working towards about a brighter future.