following the census money

Commissioner Cox has his focus trained on the smaller scale projects that Invest South/West intends to support, under the philosophy that incremental development is more efective and crucial for long-term, measured neighborhood support.

“I think that’s what the community is looking for, they’re looking for ‘fll in the gaps,’” Cox said on the Fran Spielman Show, with projects like greening vacant lots or rebuilding existing housing stock. In a perfect world, he said, incremental and monumental development eforts would inform each other. “Projects like the OPC are catalytic investments,” said Cox, but their efectiveness in boosting neighborhoods themselves relies on “position[ing] the rest of the neighborhood to beneft from that catalyst.”

“Development is going to come,” said Alderman Jeanette Taylor, whose 20th Ward includes Woodlawn and part of Englewood. In anticipation of the OPC, a coalition of neighborhood stakeholders in Woodlawn and Washington Park came together to push for a Community Benefts Agreement, proposed to City Council in 2019, with the intention of guaranteeing jobs and housing for longtime residents. Put forward by Alderman Taylor and 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston, the CBA was at frst mostly ignored by Mayor Lightfoot’s Woodlawn Housing Ordinance, announced in February of this year. Earlier this week, the CBA organizers reached a compromise with the city when the mayor’s ofce and Woodlawn community groups announced an amended ordinance aimed at better protecting low-income renters. “People who don’t live in our community will want to come in here,” Taylor said. “So yeah come in our community, but you’ve got to hire us, you gotta make sure that we have a seat at the table when it comes to your development.”

Herein lies NOF’s potential promise. If neighborhood corridors are properly invested in before monumental development starts, then they will be in a position to harness the increased activity that something like the OPC will bring. Te city leadership pushing Invest South/West is hoping that direct fnancial support of small businesses will be a step toward empowering these corridors.

At NOF recipient CBQ Facial Beauty Bar in Bronzeville, Nichole Doss plans to use her $37,500 grant to expand into a larger space as well as hire more estheticians. In Brighton Park, grant awardee Xavier Lebron received $68,000 to improve his bar, Xavier’s Club. He not only wants to upgrade his space, but to “change the area.” Lebron said, “We want to put a patio outside. Tere’s a lot of areas in Chicago that have already done that, and I want to be the frst in Brighton Park.”

Free Street Teater, the only performing arts organization to receive NOF funding, plans to renovate their Back of the Yards theater space. But since COVID-19 has halted live performance, Free Street is “also thinking about how that space can currently be in direct service to the community,” according to executive director Karla Estela Rivera. Tis summer, for example Free Street has set up a “grab and go pantry” to provide non-perishable hygiene products, masks, and art kits to residents. To Rivera, being a part of the Back of the Yards community means being a responsive advocate for it—and while the NOF grant is a boon, money from the city is welcomed with some reservations. “Tere’s a lack of trust when it comes to agencies that come in and are not grassroots-level,” said Rivera.

Butler, of R.A.G.E., echoed Rivera’s concerns about top-down, city-controlled development. “[Te] community has very little input, and the input we do have, there’s always a circle we need to go around in,” she said. Her frustrations stem from outside entities believing they know what’s best for her neighborhood. “Tey could be better listeners,” she says. “Tey could really work alongside us, and not think they’re doing something for us. It’s with us.” ¬

Jonathan Dale is a freelance journalist focusing on issues related to the urban built environment. He is a Chicago native; this is his frst piece for the Weekly.

ILLUSTRATION BY DENA SPRINGER

BY JIM DALEY

Last summer, Governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) made $20 million available to organizations across the state to bolster Census outreach, and—after hiccups early this year—the money was distributed to thirty “regional intermediary” organizations. Roughly $11.6 million of it went to nine intermediaries in Chicago.

Each of these regional intermediaries spent a portion of the funding they received on internal operations and outreach, and passed on the rest to dozens of smaller community organizations. Te goal of this arrangement was to ensure outreach money reached organizers who were closest to socalled hard-to-count populations—groups of people the U.S. Census Bureau ofcially recognizes as at risk of being undercounted due to economic and demographic factors, such as language barriers, housing instability, or an undocumented status.

Te Weekly interviewed representatives from each of the city’s nine intermediary organizations about how they used the money internally and to how many partner organizations each one had given grants.

HSI serves communities on the South and West Sides, primarily Austin, West Garfeld Park, North Lawndale, and Englewood. HSI’s CEO, Donald Dew, said the organization’s focus from the start has been on the “fundamental issue of the social determinants of health.” When COVID-19 hit and HSI began distributing personal protective equipment, they included information packets about the Census with the packages.

ICIRR has three contracts with the state, which cover its operations in Chicago, the suburbs, and the collar counties, respectively; in total, IDHS allocated $4,839,000 to ICIRR across these three regions. ICIRR organized car caravans and phone-banking events that resulted in a fve percent increase in Census response rates over a single week in Little Village alone, said Maria Fitzsimmons, ICIRR’s Census campaign director.

ILLUSTRATION BY JASMINE MITHANI AND PETER MEYER REIMER

Rincon Family Services provides mental health and substance use treatment to communities on the Northwest Side. Rincon’s Census project director, Ruben Feliciano, said that with the advent of COVID-19, the organization combined its Census outreach with distributing personal protective equipment to community and essential workers. “We have sought to think outside of the box...with the intent of engaging and encouraging as many people to complete their Census,” he said.

CAP provides job placement to unemployed and at-risk populations in twenty communities in Chicago and seventeen south suburban areas. CAP’s CEO, Sheryl Holman, said the organization was “very strategic” about how they distributed funding and closely supervised how partner organizations spent the outreach money allocated to them. “Tere are a lot more people out there than we thought” who are hard to count, Holman said.

Te YWCA concentrated on reaching the LGBTQ+ community and those experiencing homelessness. Te organization’s chief equity ofcer Martina Hone said that when the pandemic hit, YWCA “redirected funds to support Streetwise staf and especially vendors who had no market for their newspapers during the COVID-19 crisis.” (YWCA acquired Streetwise earlier this year.) “We were able to pay them stipends to serve as Census ambassadors to those experiencing homelessness.”

Illinois Action for Children supports access to early care and childhood education. IAC focused on making sure children ages zero to fve—a population that was undercounted in the last Census—are counted in this one, said Choua Vue, the organization’s vice president for community impact.

Te Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Humboldt Park hired four part-time Census outreach navigators and a full-time Census program director. Jessica Gutiérrez, PRCC’s director of advocacy, policy, and community outreach, said “it was vital...to have community-based organizations there to provide comfort and understanding and empathy to communities that look like them and trust them as the main communicators of our Census count.”

Researchers at the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Afairs provided data analysis, data visualization, and program evaluation services to help other regional intermediaries track and focus their outreach eforts. Kathleen Yang-Clayton, a clinical assistant professor of public administration and one of the project’s principal investigators, said researchers developed an online reporting platform and worked with the regional intermediaries “to make sure they had a balanced approach.”

Te Pilsen Wellness Center serves ten predominantly Latinx community areas in Chicago and four in the south and west suburbs. Paul Naranjo, the corporate compliance director at Pilsen Wellness Center, said the money kept in-house went to outreach, marketing, and hiring a fulltime Census outreach project manager. ¬

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last reported on Census outreach by Chicago Cares.