2000 Best Practice Awards

2000-1756 Ruth Shriman House
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Gladys L. Jordan (312) 850-9184

The Ruth Shriman House is an 83 unit building for low-income seniors, composed of 71 one bedrooms and 12 studio apartments. The project offers affordable housing. The facility offers a large multi-purpose room for group meetings, a library, as well as a health and wellness center. Additional feathers are coin operated laundry, a screened porch and garden area, individual resident storage lockers, secured entry system, and off street parking. Each apartment includes generous closet space, fully equipped kitchens, carpet and window treatment, individually controlled heating and cooling, heat included in the rent, and specially handicapped-equiped apartments. The Ruth Shriman House project will add 83 much needed housing units to an ever increasing demand for affordable housing.

2000-1164 Teen Town Talk
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Brenda Sue Shavers (312) 353-6236

Teen Town Talk provided HUD and the participating jurisdiction, The City of Aurora, with the opportunity to educate our future leaders regarding fair housing laws, their history and their future. It also provided students with an opportunity to engage in a discussion with diverse groups of students from area high schools including an interracial exploration of the impact of discrimination and of open housing on their opportunities for education, social life and employment. With an eye on the future and in furtherance of HUD's commitment to affirmatively further fair housing, the Chicago HUD Office in co-sponsorship with the City of Aurora Division of Neighborhood Redevelopment sponsored HUD's first Teen Town Talk. Participants included law students from The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic.

2000-2938 McHenry County Section 8 Outrreach
Woodstock, Illinois
Contact: Ellen Sontag (815) 338-7752

Local CBs partnered with McHenry County Housing Authority to recruit landlords to participate in the Section 8 program.

2000-1203 Illinois Regional Continuum of Care Roundtable
Wheaton, Illinois
Contact: Philip Smith (630) 682-6918

A Regional forum created for the purpose of discussing issues, methods, funding opportunities and strategies, and to undertake projects to improve the Continuum of Care process within each jurisdiction and across the region. The development of a common homeless needs assessment methodology, has been designated as the first formal project of this Regional Continuum of Care Roundtable.

2000-2338 Bridge Communities Transitional Housing Program
Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Contact: Mark Milligan (630) 545-0610

The Chicago HUD office partnered with a non-profit faith based organization, Bridge Communities, to provide transitional housing ministry to homeless families in DuPage County Illinois.

Bridge Communities recruited 20 local churches to participate in the program. Bridge Communities provides housing resources, educational programs and tutoring for children, mentor education and support, case management services and employment counseling. The local churches provide financial resources to pay for the housing, volunteer mentors to work with the families, furniture for the family if needed, and so on.

2000-2892 OK SHARE 39th Street Redevelopment Project
Fox River Grove, Illinois
Contact: Mary Lu Seidel (847) 639-7988

OK SHARE has successfully developed a single family rehab project in this underserved section of the Chicago North Kenwood-Oakland area and is continuing the project to develop 10 new 2-flats. New homeowners are being counseled about procedures and benefits of renting out the first floor to supplement the mortgage costs-- potential tenants that are being contacted are disabled individuals since the first floor of the buildings have been built to be fully accessible.

2000-37 Federal Employee Homeownership Outreach Initiative
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Judith J. Heaney (312) 353-6236

This initiative provides outreach/education to promote homeownership, FHA mortgages, and the sale of HUD-owned properties to the Federal employee population (over 58,000) in the Chicago metropolitan area. More than 165 Federal installations were contacted by the Federal Executive Board, which began the outreach process to the Federal/Postal employees. Agencies respond to the Community Builder single family team to arrange for customized training sessions for their employees.

Training sessions include information on securing a mortgage (including FHA) and a live demonstration on how to purchase HUD-owned properties. Participants can tailor the demonstrations to their interests by selecting a city in which to view available homes.

2000-868 2000 Community Development and Empowerment Series
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Kevin Jackson (312) 663-3936

A training and certification program for community-based housing development organizations which teaches participants technical development skills and strategies for community empowerment and reinvestment.

2000-1086 Subarea Residential Planning: A Demonstration Project In Intergovernmental Collaboration
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Michael A. McAfee (312) 353-6236

On February 11, 1998, eleven communities in Kane and McHenry counties came together to initiate a residential planning and demonstration project. The communities, joined together by their expectation of continued population, household and employment growth, undertook a planning process to identify their residential needs and their linkages to transportation, education, public finance and social infrastructure. Throughout 1998 and into early 1999, the Committee worked to: - identify the residential needs of the subarea's present and anticipated population; - identify programs and techniques available to increase the subarea's housing diversity; - identify ways to make financing more affordable for both the developer and buyer; and - mutually develop strategies for residential planning management, and leadership policies.

2000-1354 Hope Meadows
Rantoul, Illlinois
Contact: Brenda Krause Eheart, Ph.D. (217) 893-4673

Using former Chanute Air Force Base housing in Rantoul, IL, the program has the capacity to assemble, affordably, 13 foster families for hard-to-serve children with 47 older adult families. Within this intergenerational milieu, some 58 older adult residents currently render volunteer services to the 40 children in foster care at Hope Meadows. The heart of the community is a community center, where various programs are offered, and the children and seniors take computer classes, celebrate birthdays, participate in after-school programs and tutoring.

The project has received extensive national attention for its success in reaching two "throwaway" populations: children who are less likely to be adopted, and low-income elderly who are not on public assistance. They have been featured twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show (once to receive a $50,000 "Use Your Life Award") and on Nightline with Ted Koppel. The program credits its success to simple concepts of family and community, which are very different from most state foster care system.

2000-1658 Catholic Charities Housing Development Corporation of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: William G. D'Arcy (312) 655-7492

Catholic Charities Housing, since 1987 has built over 594 affordable apartments in 9 buildings for low-income seniors with 480 more currently under construction and more units being planned. They have creatively utilized the HUD Section 202 programs to create affordable housing and wellness services as well as a commercial kitchen and other facilites to provide service to the community. The specific project highlighted for this submittal is Bernadin Manor named after the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, Archbishop of Chicago. Bernadin Manor innovatively combined two separate Secton 202 grants to provide a total of 180 units. This allowed the project to be developed as one residential building eliminating a duplication of building systems.

2000-585 The Jane Addams Resource Corporation Metalworking Skills Training Program Assessment Test
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Anita Flores (773) 728-9769

The Jane Addams Resource Corporation (JARC) Metalworking Skills Training Program and Assessment test is a program that provides training to employed workers on site at factories in the Chicago area and to validated tests designed to evaluate both job knowledge and skill level of workers with limited experience in the Metalworking Industry. The program and testing are based on national standards and can be used to future develop training material.

2000-2958 Fiber Optics Training Program for Public Housing Residents
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Jean Butzen (773) 561-0900

Lakefront SRO, one of the nation's leading providers of supportive housing services for homeless and very low-income individuals, was asked by the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development to adapt its successful model to help longtime residents of public housing become financially independent. Lakefront was awarded a $1 million, two-year contract to provide job readiness and placement services to the residents of the Raymond M. Hilliard Center and the Harold L. Ickes Homes. Thus far, over 400 residents of the Hilliard and Ickes public housing developments have applied to the program, and 55 graduates have been placed in jobs.

2000-1043 Lyndale Place
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Nancy Kapp (773) 278-8448

A former drug and gang infested 67 unit apartment complex was transformed from a threat to public safety to quality housing for low and moderate income people. Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was at the ribbon cutting in late 1997, said, "brick by brick, block by block, we are rebuilding Chicago together. This was very true because without the community being involved with the renovation of this building, and without a developer and the City of Chicago willing to take a risk, this project would not have happened.

2000-2110 CHA Gift of Reading Book Drive
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Phillip Jackson (312) 791-8401

On November 27, 1999, the Chicago Housing Authority began its 'Gift of Reading' book drive with a story in the Chicago Defender Newspaper entitled 'CHA Boss Launches Book Drive'. The goal of the book drive was to provide at least three books for each of the 33,405 children who live in the CHA. CHA staff organized a marketing campaign to alert companies and individuals about the book drive, established over thirty drop-off locations throughout the city and suburbs and recruited volunteers and staff to sort and package books for distribution. Additionally, the CHA partnered with Windows of Opportunity, a CHA nonprofit affiliate, to ensure that all contributions were tax deductible.

2000-2452 Chicago Rents Right Collaboration
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: Elise Mann (312) 747-5706

Chicago Rents Right is a collaboration involving 10-15 organizations representing both tenants and landlords and other housing related groups. The collaboration was brought together to educate Chicago residents about the important of the landlord tenant relationship, to find common ground in creating programs to enhance the relationship, and to inform landlords and tenants about the rights and responsibilities of the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance.

2000-2896 Coalition for Housing Court Reform
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: John Bartlett (773) 292-4980

This collaboration of community based organizations has had significant and positive impact on city agencies dealing with building deterioration. Each community group works to identify problem buildings within their neighborhood and then organizes tenants and surrounding neighbors to target buildings with various interventions. Facing barriers imposed by the City’s system of code enforcement, the community groups formed an alliance to address these barriers. The coalition began meeting on a regular basis with city agencies and judges to obtain solutions.

2000-813 Golden Feather REO Inventory Reduction Initiative
Chicago, Illinois
Contact: (312) 251-1600

The REO inventory of single family properties in Illinois peaked at approximately 3,500 in September, 1999. Golden Feather replaced Intown Mgmt. as the HUD M & M contractor on 9/22/99. Golden Feather Realty Services faced a mounting inventory and a huge backlog of maintenance deficiencies on this inventory of 3,500 properties. Their objectives were to get properties maintained, listed and sold as quickly as possible to mitigate the deserved criticism that HUD locally was receiving due to our historically high inventory of vacant houses and our failure to be a "good neighbor" by maintaining our properties.

Content Archived: April 20, 2011