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…
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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.
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Grant Recipient
Urban Gateways
Urban Gateways’ 63-year commitment continues, as we connect the next generation of artists and change makers with opportunities to amplify their voice and expand their imaginations. As Chicago’s premier access point for youth arts experiences city-wide, Urban Gateways is proud to be an innovator of arts integration in the classroom, to foster and facilitate future arts patrons, and to provide tools, training, and access for developing artists and multimedia specialists. Urban Gateways generates multiple access points for engaging, relevant arts experiences through collaborative community partnerships and by empowering young creatives to claim their narratives as the critical change agents our world needs. Mission Urban Gateways engages young people in arts experiences to inspire creativity and impact social change. Organizational Values We support artists. Artists are the soul of our work and without them we would not be able to fulfill our mission: we hold ourselves accountable to their voices. We honor artists and their creative practice by centering the impact of the arts on local communities. We nurture wonder. The power of the arts lives in the exploration of possibility. We believe that the most provocative art and experiences begin with questions, and we honor the vulnerability and courage it takes to create and share. We encourage learning through curiosity to imagine new ways of expressing and being. We cultivate inclusion. All people are full of creative promise. The arts are essential for cultural exchange, expanding our worldview, protesting inequity, and advancing social justice. We foster a sense of belonging by intentionally listening, and by supporting diverse voices, experiences, and stories to value every person and honor their contributions. We are collaborators. We connect young people, artists, and arts experiences; these links lay the foundation for inspired artmaking and for actionable social change through the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and resources. We aim to forge lasting partnerships built on integrity and reciprocity. Urban Gateways has created several pathways for youth to interact with the arts in accordance with their age and interests. The aim of all Urban Gateways learning goals is to increase artistic literacy, develop four key areas of the artistic process (creating, producing, responding, and connecting), generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work, and organize and develop artistic ideas and work using arts learning metrics as proposed by the National Core Arts Standards and the Illinois Arts Learning Standards. Urban Gateways supports Chicago’s young people through the following core programs: Instruction Programs: Multi-disciplinary artist residencies, workshops, and teacher professional development programs connect K-12 students and their teachers with many of Chicago’s most experienced Teaching Artists specializing in music, dance, theater, visual arts, literary arts, and media arts. Touring Performances: Urban Gateways features a roster of 30 performance groups that support broader cultural and social awareness by bringing artistic expressions from world cultures directly to young people as a celebration of our shared humanity. Performances also build an essential pipeline for Chicago’s future artists and audiences that sustains Chicago’s reputation as a world-class arts and culture destination. Street Level: Recognizing that few media spaces exist that are youth-led and youth-centered, Street Level provides free access for young people to nurture their unique creative voice utilizing technology and media through journalism, music production, and youth clubs. Street Level activities, including podcasting, filmmaking, anime, and other forms of media revolve around topics that young participants identify as relevant to their interests and experiences, such as code-switching and the impact of systemic racism. Teen Arts Pass (TAP): Teen Arts Pass (TAP) enables teens to purchase day-of-show tickets to 26 cultural venues for the extremely reduced cost of $5 or for free to enable young people to attend live performances under a model of unprecedented access and inclusion. TAP includes arts partners that represent all performing arts disciplines, institutional sizes, and diverse geographic locations to foster broad program access and inclusion.
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Grant Recipient
Law Center for Better Housing
The Law Center for Better Housing or LCBH meets the needs defined in the Sustainable Solutions for Housing Stability RFP by providing free legal and supportive services to renters facing eviction. LCBH is Chicago’s only legal aid organization that focuses its work exclusively on protecting renters’ rights. In 2023, LCBH served nearly 20,000 households at risk of eviction. Our programs reached renters in all 77 Chicago community areas and throughout suburban Cook County. LCBH requests a $150,000 grant to strengthen its organizational capacity to manage innovative programs that empower tenants to use chatbot technology to solve landlord disputes before an eviction is filed; protect renters in eviction court by providing them access to attorneys and emergency rental assistance; and advance housing justice by collaborating with the courts, government agencies, and community organizations to make Chicago’s eviction courtrooms more equitable.
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Grant Recipient
National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities
Building on the successful partnership of the Contextualizing the Migrant Narrative webinar series, Alianza Americas, along with the Latino Policy Forum, the Resurrection Project, and the Center for Immigrant Progress are planning to lead an educational delegation of decision-makers and stakeholders from the Chicago area to Mexico City, Mexico, and Bogota, Colombia, to understand firsthand the complexities of migration in these two countries and to define further how stakeholders in the U.S. can more sustainably and empathetically respond to the needs of all migrants with a transnational lens. Alianza Americas has been leading delegations to the region for 20 years and is well-known for its transnational approach to policies that impact Latin American and Caribbean immigrants. Participants will engage with civil society leaders in Mexico and Colombia to deepen their understanding of the various factors that force many to leave their homes, with an emphasis on Venezuela and Venezuelan migration; understand firsthand how sending, transit, and receiving countries like Mexico and Colombia can improve their policies and practices, and finally strengthen existing collaborations with allied organizations and build on new relationships with civil society actors to strengthen advocacy efforts across borders.
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Grant Recipient
The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
The University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG) requests funds to support the Civic Leadership Academy (CLA) for the 2025 cohort year. The funding from CCT will be used to support fellows whose organization are working towards addressing the racial and ethnic wealth gap in Chicago.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Changing Lives
Center for Changing Lives (CCL) serves as a HUD-approved Housing Counseling organization and Financial Opportunity Center, addressing the dramatic increase in homelessness and barriers faced by newly arrived migrant and refugee populations. With a longstanding commitment to assisting the community with housing searches and application process, CCL ensures all services are delivered in a linguistically and relevant manner, inherently addressing barriers to secure housing. As data indicates a higher likelihood of doubled-up living situations and growing homelessness among the Latiné community in the City of Chicago, CCL utilizes a coaching model to eliminate barriers, facilitating migrant and immigrant families in securing and preserving their own safe housing. Furthermore, CCL provides continuous Resource Development Coaching, ensuring access to public benefits pertinent to housing, utility expenses and other income supports that are accessible to the Latiné immigrant community, and when possible to undocumented immigrants.
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Grant Recipient
Metropolitan Planning Council
MPC is planning an implementation partnership model to shape the early implementation of equitable lending products that were designed by the Advancing Innovative Homeownership Financing Solutions Community of Practice that we led over the past year. The goal is to ensure that the proposed impact of these products can be achieved. Creating an intentional transformation to the homeownership system goes beyond catalyzing exclusive capital to communities and focuses on shifting how capital enters communities and communities’ ability to shape that capital. We have also created an advisory committee to support the planning process of the implementation partnership and building out a Change Lab strategy for 2025.
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Grant Recipient
SMALL BUSINESS MAJORITY FOUNDATION INC
Small Business Majority requests support to work with small business owners, policymakers and other key stakeholders to address barriers to accessing responsible capital that impact entrepreneurs, and especially entrepreneurs of color, across Chicago. We will work to advance reforms on these issues, championing the small business perspective in policy movements and amplifying the ways potential policies can support equitable entrepreneurship and advance racial justice and wealth-building in disinvested, low- and moderate-income communities. We will empower diverse entrepreneurs as subject matter experts and advocates in these movements, adding an influential voice of support in public and policymaker education campaigns.
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Grant Recipient
Latino Policy Forum
The programs and initiatives to be carried out through this proposal will advance four vital outcomes – Closing the Latino wealth gap, Reducing homelessness and housing insecurity, Supporting the wellbeing and flourishing of asylum seekers, and Developing skilled multicultural leaders who collaborate toward civic betterment. The Latino Policy Forum will pursue those outcomes in the research-based, highly collaborative ways that are consistent with the Forum’s stated mission – Through advocacy and analysis, the Forum builds a foundation for equity, justice, and economic prosperity for the Latino community.