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2020-05-01
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless;
This report shows 76,998 Chicagoans experienced homelessness in 2018, per an annual analysis by CCH that relies on the most current U.S. census data.
Though the city's aggregate homelessness count decreased from the prior year, Chicago saw a nearly 2,000-person increase among those who lived on the street or in shelters. It is a development with troubling connotations today: The city's shelter system is a hotspot for COVID-19 infections and homelessness is expected to climb dramatically during the worsening economic downturn triggered by the pandemic.
Per our analysis, the number who experienced homelessness decreased by 4,282 people, or 5.9% from 2017. This net decrease was concentrated exclusively among homeless people in temporary living situations, also known as living "doubled-up" or "couch-surfing." The number who doubled-up in 2018 remained massive, at 58,872 Chicagoans.
2019-09-26
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Millions of people in Illinois experience poverty or are living on the brink. That societal position keeps opportunities out of reach and nearly guarantees worse outcomes in every quality of life domain—making ALL of us worse off. The poverty rate for the United States was 11.8% in 2018, a decline of 0.5 percentage points from 2017. There were 38.1 million people in poverty nationwide. In 2018, 1.5 million Illinoisans were in poverty—a rate of 12.1%. Additionally, 2.0 million Illinoisans are near poor and economically insecure with incomes between 100% and 199% of the federal poverty threshold. This year marks the first time that the U.S.poverty rate is below pre-recession levels; Illinois lags behind this trend,with its poverty rate just returning to pre-recession levels.
2019-02-01
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Chicago is in so many ways a thriving global city. But far too many of us face the daily reality of financialinsecurity caused by jobs that don't pay enough to live on, that have unstable hours, and that don't providebenefits that many in the workforce a generation ago enjoyed. Both as a city and as a people, economicresilience in the face of change is critical to create a thriving metropolis, yet strong forces are pushing us awayfrom this, not towards it: deep racial and gender inequity; steadily widening income inequality; the erosion ofthe middle class; the rise in contingent work and looming automation of jobs. The result? Work is unreliableand income is precarious for those living in deep poverty and all the way up into the middle class.In response to these realities, last summer the Chicago City Council passed a resolution to create the ChicagoResilient Families Initiative Task Force to assess and determine the scope of a guaranteed income pilot aswell as solutions to modernize the Earned Income Tax Credit. Since then, at the behest of Mayor Emanuel,the task force has met, learned, dug deep and explored different paths to economic security and resiliencyfor Chicagoans. We sought advice from community residents and national experts who have been engageddeeply in these questions for years
2019-01-31
NORC at the University of Chicago;
The International Connections Fund (ICF) was established in 2008 with the goal of helping Chicago nonprofit organizations advance their work by collaborating with peer organizations abroad. While eligibility criteria for ICF grants have shifted over the program's lifespan, this core mission has remained unchanged. During the life of the ICF program, MacArthur has administered 14 grant cycles, making 141 grants totaling more than $5.8 million. The majority of these grants—133 in all, totaling $5.4 million—have been awarded to support arts and culture projects. These projects have enabled Chicago artists, audiences, and arts and culture organizations to participate in international exchanges with counterparts from 63 different countries on six continents.
Ten years into the program, MacArthur commissioned NORC at the University of Chicago to take stock of how the program has operated; learn what impact it has made on ICF grantees, their collaborators, and audiences; and consider how the program can best serve future grantees as ICF enters its second decade. The evaluation reviewed 12 ICF grant cycles that took place between 2008 and 2016, during which 114 grants were made to 91 different arts and culture organizations.
2019-01-01
ThriveChicago;
This report summarizes findings from real conversations with boys and young men of color in Chicago as well as results from convenings with community-based organizations. The findings inform an Action Plan that includes opportunities for individual Chicagoans, community-based organizations, and institutions to act around the needs of boys and young men of color in the city.
2018-10-23
Chicago Community Bond Fund;
In 2013, more than 10,000 people were incarcerated in Cook County Jail on any given day, and the Cook County Sheriff's Department had a budget of $445 million dollars. On October 21, 2018, there were 6,095 people in Cook County Jail and another 2,180 people in custody on Electronic Monitoring. Despite this massive 44% decrease in the number of people incarcerated in the jail between 2013 and 2018, the Sheriff's Budget grew 28% over that same five year period—reaching a whopping $588 million in 2018.
This historic decline in the number of people in Cook County Jail, the result of successful pretrial justice reforms, should coincide with a similar decrease in the Sheriff 's budget. Instead of being reallocated within the Sheriff's budget, these funds should be redirected to services benefitting Cook County's most marginalized residents. These residents overwhelmingly live in the very same Black and Brown communities most harmed by Cook County Jail and our broken pretrial system.
Cook County is already spending tens of millions of dollars each year specifically targeting these neighborhoods; that money is being allocated to surveillance, policing, and incarceration. Righting the wrongs of this unjust system must include taking the funds previously used to incarcerate Cook County's most marginalized communities and channeling them towards resources that actually strengthen those communities. Spending on Cook County Jail is fundamentally regressive, whereas investment in lower-cost community services allows us to address the root causes of the social problems so often cited to justify bloated budgets for incarceration. Cook County residents need access to mental health treatment in the community, stable housing, effective educational opportunities, and jobs that can support a family. The declining number of people in jail shows that Cook County is ready to take the next step in ending mass incarceration. By re-allocating money from reactionary corrections programs to proactive and preventative community services, Cook County can begin to effectively invest in the communities and people previously neglected and criminalized.
2018-01-22
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Illinois es uno de los primeros estados en la nación que aprueba la legislación de ahorro para la jubilación utilizando Secure Choice. Con la implementación de Secure Choice, los trabajadores en Illinois en empresas calificadas sin acceso a un plan de jubilación basado en el empleo serán automáticamente inscritos en un programa de ahorro para la jubilación. Se estima que 1,3 millones de personas de Illinois que actualmente no tienen acceso a planes de jubilación en el lugar de trabajo se verán potencialmente impactados por Secure Choice. Sin embargo, a medida que Illinois avanza hacia la implementación de Secure Choice, hay una serie de preguntas clave que deben responderse para ayudar a garantizar que el programa aborde las barreras que impiden la participación, especialmente entre trabajadores de bajos ingresos, mujeres, inmigrantes y trabajadores de color. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo entender mejor estos obstáculos.
2017-12-15
Woodstock Institute;
Testimony of Lauren Nolan before the Committee on License and Consumer Protection regarding the proposed ordinance under consideration that would prohibit licensees from refusing to accept cash as payment for goods or services.
2017-11-28
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Illinois is among the first states in the nation to pass retirement savings legislation in the form of Secure Choice. With the implementation of Secure Choice, workers in Illinois at qualifying businesses without access to an employment-based retirement plan will be automatically enrolled in a retirement savings program. An estimated 1.3 million Illinoisans who currently do not have access to workplace retirement plans will be potentially impacted by Secure Choice. As Illinois moves toward Secure Choice implementation, however, there are a number of key questions that should be answered to help ensure that the program is addressing barriers to participation, especially among low-income workers, women, immigrants, and workers of color. This research is aimed at better understanding these barriers.
2017-10-24
Chicago Community Bond Fund;
In the past two years, community organizers and advocates have made dramatic headway in the fight to end money bond and pretrial incarceration in Cook County. The most significant and recent victory is the introduction of General Order 18.8A by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans, effective September 18, 2017.
Following litigation and public pressure to reduce the number of people locked up in Cook County Jail only because they cannot pay a monetary bond, the order is supposed to ensure that judges do not set money bond except in amounts that people can pay. If followed, the order represents a dramatic shift away from unpaid money bond as the primary driver of pretrial incarceration and toward a new respect for the presumption of innocence in Cook County. Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF) and our partners in The Coalition to End Money Bond are currently working to ensure that the order is fully implemented and that no one is incarcerated in Cook County Jail solely because they cannot pay a money bond.
As more people are diverted from the jail, CCBF is increasing our focus on what is happening to those individuals who previously would have been incarcerated. Through our work posting bond for people who cannot afford it themselves and observing Central Bond Court, CCBF has consistently observed conditions of pretrial release that operate as a form of pretrial punishment. Since 2015, CCBF has posted bond to free 98 people. Of these people, more than one in four were subjected to punitive pretrial conditions, including electronic monitoring, overnight or 24-hour curfews, monthly check-ins with a Pretrial Services officer, and drug testing—all after we posted their significant monetary bonds. These conditions are ordered by the court, most often by judges in bond court, and overseen by either the Pretrial Services Division or the Sheriff's Office.
Under the guise of helping accused people come back to court and avoid re-arrest, pretrial conditions restrict the liberty of innocent people and even mimic the same harms as pretrial incarceration, causing loss of jobs, housing, access to medical care and putting severe strain on social support networks and family members. Pretrial conditions such as curfews actually place more severe restrictions on freedom than sentences received after conviction, such as probation, supervision, and conditional discharge. Furthermore, punitive pretrial conditions coerce people to plead guilty, undermining accused people's rights and recreating the negative impacts of incarceration in jail. These pretrial conditions violate the presumption of innocence that seeks to prevent punishment before conviction.
The current punitive approach of the Pretrial Services Division plays a key role in driving this troubling trend. Over the last six months, CCBF has repeatedly seen Pretrial Services impose punitive conditions on individuals for whom CCBF has posted bond. Through their observations of Central Bond Court from August to October 2017, volunteer courtwatchers with the Coalition to End Money Bond also documented regular imposition of onerous pretrial conditions such as curfews, as well as electronic monitoring operated by the Sheriff's Office. The full extent and impact of these punishments are not transparent: Advocates and the public are unable to access the most basic information about Pretrial Service's systemic impact because it is housed under the Office of the Chief Judge and thus not subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
2017-08-22
Urban Institute;
Across the United States, policymakers, practitioners, and communities are seeking ways to reduce the lethal violence highly concentrated in a relatively small number of urban neighborhoods. With funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) collaborated with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and other city stakeholders to implement the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy (VRS), beginning in 2009. Chicago VRS identifies and targets street groups disproportionately responsible for gun violence and works to deter additional violence using a three-pronged strategy: criminal justice sanctions, community moral suasion, and social services provision. The intervention includes call-in meetings in the targeted police districts, during which identified group members are put on notice by VRS partners—including top leadership from CPD, federal and state prosecutors, and credible community messengers—that although they are valued community members, gun violence must stop, and that street groups represented in the meeting that continue to be involved in shootings will be the target of coordinated enforcement actions. Researchers at the Urban Institute and Yale University, in partnership with NNSC, conducted a comprehensive, mixed-methods, quasi-experimental outcome and impact evaluation of Chicago VRS funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The evaluation began in November 2011, seeking to determine whether and how Chicago VRS affected group member–involved violence and how the intervention may have been related to perceptions of group members, community residents, and police officers.
2017-07-01
Surdna Foundation;
This report summarizes the main findings of the recent research, revisiting the reasons why addressing diversity and equity issues in the cultural sector matters more than ever and reviewing six key findings related to national and local patterns of funding distribution, the demographics of people making funding decisions, and the distinct issues facing cultural organizations whose primary artistic mission is to serve communities of color or low-income communities. It concludes with suggestions for how to speed progress toward a more inclusive and equitable system of cultural philanthropy.
