The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration

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Abstract

The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration is an innovative initiative designed to meet the challenges of serving the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA) "hard to house"; residents. It involves a unique partnership of city agencies, service providers, researchers, and private foundations, all with a deep commitment to finding solutions for the most vulnerable families affected by the CHA's Plan for Transformation. The rigorous evaluation allows for continuous learning and mid-course corrections, and helped the team develop a validated model that other housing authorities can use. This report highlights the lessons learned during the first year implementation of the Demonstration.

Introduction

The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration is an innovative initiative designed to meet the challenges of serving the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA) “hard to house” residents. It involves a unique partnership of city agencies, service providers, researchers, and private foundations, all with a deep commitment to finding solutions for the most vulnerable families affected by the CHA's transformation of its distressed public housing developments. The Demonstration puts the CHA and its partner agency, the Chicago Department of Human Services (CDHS) in the vanguard of efforts to meet the needs of the nation's most vulnerable public housing residents. The rigorous evaluation design allows for continuous learning and mid-course corrections, and will help the team develop a validated model that other housing authorities grappling with similar challenges can use.

The Demonstration serves residents from two CHA developments—Wells/Madden Park and Dearborn Homes—and provides these “hard to house” families with intensive family case management services, long-term support, enhanced relocation services, workforce strategies for those who have barriers to employment, and financial literacy training. The ultimate goal of these services is to help these families maintain safe and stable housing, whether in traditional CHA public housing, in the private market with a voucher, or potentially, in new, mixed-income developments. The Demonstration is supported by a consortium of public agencies and foundations (see figure 2 in next section). This report describes the design and development of the Demonstration, provides an overview of the first year of implementation, and presents baseline findings from a comprehensive resident survey.

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The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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