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
Surge Institute
This event celebrates a decade of empowering leaders of color, transforming education, and making a lasting impact.
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Grant Recipient
Community Foundation of Will County
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Transplant Fund
The Illinois Transplant Fund (ITF) is a not-for-profit organization that provides grants to individuals in need of an organ transplant. These grants must specifically be used to cover medical insurance premiums, a requirement for patients in poverty to get onto the transplant list. The ITF is driven by a powerful principle: that organ transplantation should be accessible to all community members. Over 875,000 noncitizen residents in Illinois lack access to subsidized healthcare, with nearly half unable to afford expensive private insurance premiums. Because transplant recipients must demonstrate an ability to obtain lifetime access to post transplant medications and care, these individuals have been unjustly denied life-saving transplantation. Since 2015, when ITF was founded, over 575 patients have received lifesaving transplants. Through our work, we have not only saved lives but also ignited hope and equity within our community. ITF's impact is a testament to our unwavering commitment to ensuring fair and accessible transplantation for all, regardless of immigration status or income. The organ donation and transplant system is based on the altruism of all members of a community. Fairness is of paramount importance in maintaining this system for the entire community.
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Grant Recipient
Inner-City Muslim Action Network
This grant will provide critical capacity-building funds to the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, supporting the organization's equitable community and economic development activities between Chicago Lawn and Englewood, building a health and wellness corridor along 63rd Street.
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Grant Recipient
North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council
The North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council (NLCCC) is a planning, organizing, and community and economic development body for North Lawndale led by and for residents and deep stakeholders. We have created a comprehensive Quality-of-Life Plan that we are now implementing – catalyzing neighborhood investment in support of the programs, projects, and capital developments as planned by and for residents. Funds requested here would support operations, ongoing expansion of NLCCC, convenings, and organizing efforts to advance community and economic development in North Lawndale.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Trust/Flexible Housing Fund
This request of $200,000 for FY25 will contribute to the sustainability of the Chicago Cook County Flexible Housing Pool (FHP) intervention and with it the ongoing data collection, data linking, record retention, and outcomes tracking for the program. The FHP represents a dynamic community of high-need individuals and families that are of great interest to policy makers, practitioners, and public and private funders. The groups at the center of the FHP include youth at-risk for community violence, individuals with high rates of public system involvement, and individuals discharged from state correctional facilities. This grant, aligned with previous contributions from the Trust, provides a vital foundation for groundbreaking and ongoing research analyses including of return on investment, changes in healthcare utilization, population-specific housing outcomes, and qualitative factors. It is only through research and evaluation that the FHP has had the ability to sustain and be positioned for future growth. The Chicago Community Trust created the Flexible Housing Fund in 2021 and has entered into an agreement with the City of Chicago, to become a formal partner to the Chicago Cook County Flexible Housing Pool (FHP). The Flexible Housing Fund at the Trust is a conduit for funds to go to the City-held escrow account that funds the FHP. The FHP pays for direct client-level interventions for supportive housing and services to break the cycle of homelessness and housing instability, exacerbated by incarceration, community violence, poorly managed behavioral health, and emergency healthcare in the City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. The FHP, managed by the Center for Housing and Health, underwrites the administrative costs such as data management, reporting, and facilitation of records and documents for research participation. Since the launch of the FHP in 2019, it has raised $64 million to support the services, rental assistance, outreach and engagement, pre-tenancy supports, tenancy supports, and administration. Of this amount, the Trust facilitated $17,875,000 in contributions via its Flexible Housing Fund mechanism to the City-held escrow account. If it were not for the Trust and its Fund, these contributions would not have been made to support and expand the FHP over the past years or support critical research and evaluation reports used to inform future services. Programmatic Achievements include: -Increased housing placements to a total of 1,504 participants in 866 households. FHP enrollment increased by 96 households between January-June 2024. -Sustained a 90% housing retention rate for all participants since January 2019-June 2024. -Expanded the FHP model to the Reentry population resulted in all 50 individuals referred by the Illinois Department of Corrections being placed into permanent housing directly from state correctional facilities. -Improved program workflows, data monitoring and Quality Improvement measures. -Assisted over 600 FHP clients apply to alternative housing subsidies. -Reengaged previous funders with the Chicago Housing Authority returnings as a funder investing $500,000 in 2024. This past year, FHP reached a critical juncture. There were a number of factors that pushed the average cost of the intervention from $25,000 to $32,000 per household per year, causing spending at a faster pace than contributions were covering. Late 2023-early 2024 was the first review of the true cost of the intervention since the implementation began. The factors below were not built into the original cost model and as a result spending began to outpace flat-rate contributions: -Adjustments for rental inflation, which pushed up by 20% since 2019 -Larger sized households in the Youth cohort – over half of youth households have dependent children requiring larger, more expensive apartments -Commitment to higher base salary for all FHP staff of $50,000 -New cost model accounts for annual inflation moving forward As a result of the financial pressures, the FHP Governance Council approved an increase to the cost model from $25,000 to $32,000 per household. All new funders will be asked to contribute at the new rate, and existing funders are being asked to renew funds at the new rate to ensure that people are not discharged back into homelessness in the coming years. The current projection is that the FHP will exhaust its funding in March 2027. Ambitious yet achievable fundraising goals have been set for each sector involved in the FHP - Public, Healthcare, and Philanthropy. In total, the FHP hopes to sustain current levels of contribution and increase revenue by $45 million between 2024-2028. Of this amount, the goal for philanthropic contributions is $2 million. The Trust's FY2025 grant will help make progress toward that goal. The FHP has a Sustainability Work Group that meets monthly to benchmark progress in meeting funding goals. Representatives of the Governance Council comprise the Sustainability Work Group and include City of Chicago, Cook County Health, CountyCare, and the consultant to the Trust (on behalf of the Flexible Housing Fund). In addition to the Sustainability Work Group, there are four additional Work Groups: -Racial Equity: Ensures the FHP operates equitability meaning there are no differences in project outcomes or performance based on race or ethnicity. --Current priorities are employment (culturally specific opportunities) and housing stability (legal aid, unit location, tenant education); making recommendations to Governance Council on the Dashboard -Evaluation: Identifies priorities and additional research questions. Current priorities are sharing the current evaluation/data collection underway across various partners, planning formal research evaluation updates, and identifying/prioritizing additional research questions to position for funding -Healthcare Engagement: Engages and educates healthcare funding partners. -Lived Experience Advisory Council: Provides feedback and guidance on FHP operations and utilizes first hand expertise to inform recommendations. Current priorities are informing tenant-facing documents, advocacy, creating a tenant satisfaction survey.
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Grant Recipient
LATINOS PROGRESANDO
Latinos Progresando (LP) is requesting renewed support from the Chicago Community Trust to further equitable community development in the Marshall Square community, home to a largely Mexican, immigrant population located on the southwest side of Chicago. LP’s approach centers on developing Marshall Square’ commercial corridors, the intersecting Cermak and California Avenues that form the neighborhood’s commercial core, with development activities organized around a cluster of community assets: the locally owned small businesses that make up the heart of neighborhood commerce; the Latinos Progresando Community Center, a redevelopment of a long-vacant Chicago public library branch; and the CTA Pink Line California station. LP uses a number of tools to activate this work: equitable transit oriented development, public green space/green infrastructure design, placemaking, and robust community engagement. By driving economic development through investments in commercial corridor improvements, and facilitating opportunities for the small, immigrant-owned, entrepreneurial businesses that are the economic engine of Marshall Square to sustain and grow, LP envisions increasing community wealth in a neighborhood with historic disinvestment. Our broader vision also includes collaboration with the neighboring community of North Lawndale under the One Lawndale umbrella, leveraging investments across neighborhoods.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance
This is the funding request for the collaborative Fund: The Human Service Workforce Initiative