Saving Our Homes: The Lessons of Community Struggles to Preserve Affordable Housing in Chicago's Uptown

In collaboration with Organization of the NorthEast (ONE) a community organizing group on Chicago's north side, CURL worked to produce a study of nine affordable housing buildings in Uptown and the tenants' and community organizations' efforts to keep the housing affordable. The research process included open-ended interviews with community leaders and close-ended resident surveys in eight sample blocks in Edgewater and Uptown along with less-structured interviews with additional residents on these blocks. The interviews touch on a wide variety of issues, but a primary focus was to gain an understanding of racial, ethnic, and social class conflict and cooperation in the two communities.

Housing Discrimination and Economic Opportunity in Chicago Region: A Report to the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago

While there have been improvements over the last thirty-five years in housing opportunities for people of color in the Chicago region, African- and Hispanic-Americans are still concentrated in neighborhoods of weak economic health. Continued racial and ethnic segregation has continuing implications for the social, political, cultural, and economic vitality of Chicago region. This report presented to the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago demonstrates the reality of such concentrations, and analyzes why they persist

Who is Listening to Local Communities? Connections Between Chicago Region Community-Based Organizations and Regional, State, and National Policy Initiatives

This report focuses on the role that community-level organizations have had, currently have, and could have in setting regional agendas. Data for the report come from a representative sample of 49 community-based organizations in the City of Chicago, the Illinois counties of Cook, DuPage, Will, and Lake, as well as the Indiana counties of Lake and Porter. We also completed eight case studies of regional initiatives to examine the different ways in which community-based organizations connect with regional and statewide issues. Research was guided by a working group comprised of university-based researchers, community-based organization leaders, and regional group representatives

Scaling Up to Increase Community-Based Organization Voice

In the initial phase of a case study of the merger of two already-effective decades-old community-based organizing groups in Chicago, we examine the extent to which the"scaling up"new organization is increasing its power at neighborhood-wide, citywide, regional, statewide, and nationwide levels. The combined geographic based of the new organization covers ten community areas containing 600,000 residents. At the same time, the organization has redoubled efforts to maintain strong grassroots member involvement in internal organizational deliberation and setting organizational priorities. The previous organizations had a history of working on a broad range of issues of importance to equity and the quality of life in local communities. These have included work on public education, affordable housing, mental health justice, violence reduction, mass incarceration, homeless and LGBT youth issues, youth engagement, as well as a stronger voice for the entire community in political decision making. Using more than 30 interviews with old and new organization staff and members along with observation of the new organization's councils, issue teams, and community actions over the past year, we determine the dimensions of power that leaders and members identify as being affected by the scaling up. As the larger project progresses, these dimensions will be used in measuring the impact of the merger on its power and influence. Both organizations had been known for both their confrontational tactics and effective coalition building. We use a community-based participatory research approach in examining the organization which seeks to promote equity in racially, ethnically, and economically diverse communities on Chicago's northside

Saving Our Homes: The Lessons of Community Struggles to Preserve Affordable Housing in Chicago\u27s Uptown

Over the past 25 years we have witnessed declining federal investment in affordable housing at the same time as there has been growth in low-income households. During this same quarter of a century we have seen a shift from a national War on Poverty to federal policies that treat poor adults and children as hopeless, undeserving citizens. In this new era of fiscal constraints there is no talk about meeting basic nutritional, housing, health care, and educational needs. A chorus of new conservative leaders claims to be speaking for the suffering middle class. The media increasingly talk of the haves and the have-nots. It is not easy to hear talk of helping the working poor over the din of politicians seeking to protect the family and traditional American values. This report is an effort to give voice to some of those working poor who have been struggling to preserve the affordable housing that is their road to self-sufficiency. It is the story about Uptown, a Chicago community which is about as American as it gets. Like the traditional urban communities in American cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s, our community is filled with immigrants who came to the United States, sometimes escaping persecution in their homelands and other times hoping to improve their quality of life through hard work in the land of opportunity. The names by the doorbells are not McGuire, Ianello, or Schmidt; they are Thu, Asoegwu, and Lopez

Housing Discrimination and Economic Opportunity in the Chicago Region

In 1990, the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago was created in response to a publication called Report on Race, Ethnic and Religious Tensions in Chicago, released by the Chicago Community Trust Human Relations Task Force in 1989. The human relations task force released recommendations for the creation of a foundation to energize efforts to combat racism. The Human Relations Foundation of Chicago implements the recommendations of the task force\u27s report, targeting Chicago leadership by concentrating on issues related to, but not limited to, housing, education, religion, media, government and business. Continued racial and ethnic segregation has continuing implications for the social, political, cultural, and economic vitality of Chicago region. Not only does this segregation affect how and where residents of our communities interact with each other, but by limiting free access to housing, education, and jobs a significant portion of the region\u27s population is being held back from sharing in opportunities and from realizing their full potential social, economic, cultural, and political contributions to Chicago and its surrounding communities. This report demonstrates the reality of such concentrations, and analyzes why they persist. We are particularly interested in assessing the impact of housing discrimination on job and wealth opportunities for people of color. Findings and recommendations are drawn from reports on this subject written since the last series of reports commissioned by the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago in 1990

The Uptown Housing and Land Use Study

In the Fall of 2000, State Representative Larry McKeon, at the urging of local community groups and residents, commissioned Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) to provide an analysis of relevant data regarding housing and land use in the Uptown community. A Local Advisory Council (LAC) was created to review, evaluate, and advise the project staff as they collected and analyzed data sets. For the past two years, researchers at CURL have worked with Organization of the NorthEast (ONE), Representative McKeon, and the LAC to collect and analyze data from a variety of sources. The goal of this report is to provide to all stakeholders and parties engaged in the Uptown community a comprehensive and accurate profile of Uptown and the changes that have been occurring within the community over the past decade, based on data collected from a wide range of reliable sources. The community, thus informed, will be better able to address the issues and concerns of all its residents

The genetic overlap of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autistic-like traits: an investigation of individual symptom scales and cognitive markers

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) frequently co-occur. However, due to previous exclusionary diagnostic criteria, little is known about the underlying causes of this covariation. Twin studies assessing ADHD symptoms and autistic-like traits (ALTs) suggest substantial genetic overlap, but have largely failed to take into account the genetic heterogeneity of symptom subscales. This study aimed to clarify the phenotypic and genetic relations between ADHD and ASD by distinguishing between symptom subscales that characterise the two disorders. Moreover, we aimed to investigate whether ADHD-related cognitive impairments show a relationship with ALT symptom subscales; and whether potential shared cognitive impairments underlie the genetic risk shared between the ADHD and ALT symptoms. Multivariate structural equation modelling was conducted on a population-based sample of 1312 twins aged 7–10. Social-communication ALTs correlated moderately with both ADHD symptom domains (phenotypic correlations around 0.30) and showed substantial genetic overlap with both inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity (genetic correlation = 0.52 and 0.44, respectively). In addition to previously reported associations with ADHD traits, reaction time variability (RTV) showed significant phenotypic (0.18) and genetic (0.32) association with social-communication ALTs. RTV captured a significant proportion (24 %) of the genetic influences shared between inattention and social-communication ALTs. Our findings suggest that social-communication ALTs underlie the previously observed phenotypic and genetic covariation between ALTs and ADHD symptoms. RTV is not specific to ADHD symptoms, but is also associated with social-communication ALTs and can, in part, contribute to an explanation of the co-occurrence of ASD and ADHD

The Future of Grassroots America: Local Perspectives on Current and Emerging Issues Facing Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities

CURL worked with the National Neighborhood Coalition (a coalition of national and local organizations concerned with building the capacity of neighborhood-level organizations throughout the U.S.) to collect survey data and conduct focus groups that gave NNC an understanding of current and emerging policy issues at the local level