our vision for the future

Race Equity Action Plan

“The striking racial disparities we see in homelessness and healthcare are not accidental – they are the result of systemic racism. As an organization committed to racial justice, CHH has a responsibility to examine both our own policies and practices and those driving the systems in which we operate. These principles are at the heart of our Racial Equity Action Plan.”

-Peter Toepfer

Race Equity Action Plan

Alongside AIDS Foundation Chicago and Morten Group LLC, we worked to develop intentional strategies for three main goals that comprise our plan. To achieve racial equity and justice in our work, CHH will:

• foster an intentional organizational culture of inclusion and belonging for all staff and board members
• embed racial equity into all administrative and organizational practices, and
• embed racial equity within our programs, services, and policy priorities, while remaining transparent and honest about our progress toward achieving racial equity.

As an organization that tackles issues contributing to homelessness and health inequities in Chicagoland, it is impossible for CHH to ignore the intersectionality between these challenges and racial equity.

In 2023, CHH worked to achieve racial equity by increasing contracts with Black-led organizations by 22%, to $879,000. This represents 28% of all funding going out to community partners. In addition, the organization increased the number of BIPOC-identified staff by 33%, and BIPOC staff now represent 56% of leadership postitions at CHH.

Read the full Racial Equity Action Plan here. Access the glossary for language regarding the plan here.

Why Racial Equity?

Racism has long affected access to housing in Chicagoland.  The practice of redlining, for example, restricted residency and homeownership to certain areas of the city for Black, Brown, and poor Chicagoans, by reducing opportunities to obtain mortgage loans, earn home equity, or other community investments. Redlining in Chicago created a concentration of Black and Brown communities on the South and West sides, that furthered racial segregation in the city with wide-ranging impacts including racial disparities in education and employment opportunities.  These disparities, as well as biased practices in housing and lending, persist to this day.

As a result, homelessness disproportionately impacts Black and Latine Chicagoans.  According to the City of Chicago’s 2023 Point In Time Survey Report on people experiencing homelessness in the city, “[w]hile about one-third of Chicago’s total population is Non-Latino/a/x Black/African American, 69 percent of Non-Asylum Seekers experiencing homelessness are Black/African American.”

Center for Housing and Health clients are representative of the city’s population of people experiencing homelessness, not including asylum seekers.  Our client demographics mirror the city’s statistics.  Please compare the City of Chicago’s report with our annual report.  

Because the majority of our participants identify as Black or Latine/Latino/Latinx, we need to ensure our workforce is itself diverse, that our workforce is trained in cultural competence, and that we prioritize contracts with organizations based in these historically redlined communities on the South and West sides of Chicago, among other important initiatives as outlined in our Race Equity Action Plan.

Our mission honors every person’s right to a home and health care, by bridging the housing and health care systems, to improve the lives of Chicagoans experiencing homelessness.  Our vision states that every person has a place to call home that helps them reach their full potential.  If every person has a right to a home, we must level the playing field, and that means dismantling the systems like structural racism that fuel homelessness.  Working to address structural racism and the inextricable connection between racism and homelessness means we must support racial equity and justice both internally and externally.