The Importance of Bring Chicago Home from a Workforce Perspective
Photo of the Chicago skyline by Raf Winterpacht on Unsplash
The Chicago Jobs Council envisions a new workforce system centered on equity for all workers and job seekers. One of our policy planks is Eliminating Barriers to Employment, and a significant barrier to employment is stable and affordable housing. Bring Chicago Home, a referendum on March 19th’s primary ballot, allows Chicagoans to advocate for housing security and resources to connect people to employment, training, and other supportive wraparound services.
Here’s what’s planned for the revenue that BCH would generate:
Funds will be dedicated to permanent affordable housing with supportive services for people living on the streets, in shelters, and doubled-up, as well as other programs that prevent homelessness. Housing will be created through housing vouchers, new housing, and rehabilitation to preserve existing housing. Participants will be connected to social services to ensure support is available to stay housed. Supportive services would include things like:
Educational opportunities and job training
Mental healthcare
Substance use counseling
Domestic violence resources
Why does Bring Chicago Home (BCH) matter to our work at CJC?
We’ve developed a vision for an Anti-Racist workforce system prioritizing every worker’s future financial stability, career pathway, and economic security. Employment and housing are intricately connected in our work. When a person is experiencing homelessness or lacks affordable housing, every aspect of their life can be adversely affected. The ripple effects can quickly become a tsunami across all areas of their life; employment and housing are often the first areas of impact and the most challenging to restabilize. As an organization, CJC helped to co-lead the Employment and Income Task Force, an affinity group of All Chicago Making Homelessness History.
Through All Chicago’s Employment Navigation Pilot, a two-year pilot program, people experiencing homelessness or exiting temporary shelters were connected to employment services and benefits assistance. While their housing intervention was short-term, most often 2-year housing support, the employment and benefits assistance were instrumental in helping people maintain housing after the two-year period ended.
A recent Chicago Sun-Times article cited research that nearly fifty percent of Chicago renters are cost-burdened, spending thirty percent of their income on rent and utilities. Individuals and families become unhoused as the gap widens between income and meeting a basic human need, such as housing. Maintaining a job is often unsustainable when a person is experiencing homelessness, and access to other employment options can be challenging to find as the person becomes more transient.
The coalition for Bring Chicago Home was formed six years ago, and it consists of longtime advocates, community organizations, and people with lived experience of homelessness. The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) convenes the coalition and has been working on this issue since 1980. This expertise and knowledge have informed and crafted the referendum.
It is uncommon to address a basic human need, like housing, while creating a revenue stream to fund it. In the policy world, we usually offer new policies or legislation to address past harms or try to hold the line against policies that create inequities or exacerbate disparities. Bring Chicago Home is solutions-oriented. It spurs systemic change and connectivity between housing, workforce development, and human service systems, generating revenue to fund its priorities. Chicago Jobs Council sees Bring Chicago Home as a win-win!