A delegation of 10 leaders and staff from the Sweet Home Chicago coalition, including CCH, left today for a two-day study trip in Cleveland.
We are there to study the Cleveland Housing Network, which runs an innovative program that provides very low-income families the opportunity to rent-to-own single family homes and two-flats. The program has also addressed foreclosures and to turn-around vacant buildings.
We headed to Cleveland armed with a long list of questions about how their program works, with an eye toward replicating that model here in Chicago. As our city continues to struggle with a huge stock of vacant and foreclosed homes, Sweet Home Chicago is looking for ways to bring innovative ideas and resources to bear on the foreclosure crisis in our city. In particular, the city of Chicago should begin to explore options for renting single family homes, because it has been struggling to sell its stock of rehabbed houses.
We have a packed agenda for our time in Cleveland. Our itinerary includes meetings with organizations and community development groups that run the housing network, Cleveland city officials, and participant homeowners. We’ll also take a driving tour that highlights the homes that have been rehabbed and made available.
We’re excited to learn more about this model program in Cleveland and bring that information back to Chicago. Our trip was made possible, in part, by a $2,000 study grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago, for which the Sweet Home Chicago coalition is most grateful.
– Eithne McMenamin, Associate Policy Director for City Affairs