Our Mission

The origins of the Center for Housing and Health (CHH) are connected to the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP) program, which provided permanent supportive housing and intensive case management for people who were experiencing homelessness and hospitalized. The results generated from CHHP data inspired the creation of the Center in order to pursue more CHHP-type projects and other similar innovations to address the barriers that people experiencing chronic homelessness face. This pursuit evolved into the establishment of CHH as a separate 501(c)(3) supporting organization of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago in February 2010 to extend its work beyond HIV/AIDS by promoting effective housing options for people experiencing homelessness and living with a wide range of chronic illnesses.

Since then, CHH received its first grant from the Chicago Community Trust in 2011, which supported housing and outreach for the 100,000 Homes Campaign, and the organization went on to receive its largest grant to date in 2013 through HUD. In 2014, CHH established the Better Health through Housing (BHH) Collaborative, an alliance of 28 supportive housing agencies across Chicago and Cook County dedicated to bridging the gap between the housing and health care sectors. CHH was selected as the lead agency and convener for this new project, and, in 2015, CHH secured its first contract for The BHH Collaborative with the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System. By 2017, CHH grew to having a budget of $5 million from a $100,000 budget six years earlier, while continuing to support Chicago and Cook County residents experiencing homelessness to find better housing solutions.