Our Partners: Co-Investors
The Eleanor Foundation expands the resources available to working women by partnering with government agencies, business, donors and other foundations. Together, we provide more working women the tools they need to build their economic self-sufficiency.
The Challenge
In Chicago, nearly 300,000 working women and children live in households where the mother is the sole breadwinner and earns no more than $30,000 a year. But to raise two children in the city, a single parent needs more than $40,000 to cover the basics. So it's not uncommon for single working mothers to pay more than half their income for rent.
Co-Investor: Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund
In 2007, the Trust Fund and Eleanor Foundation launched a partnership to stabilize housing for Chicago's working women we help through our Self-Sufficiency Initiative. The Trust Fund awarded the Foundation $822,000 in annual rental subsidies that provide women access to affordable housing while they work toward better-paying jobs and economic independence.
| "We see housing as an opportunity to build stability," said Thomas J. McNulty, the Trust Fund's President. "When the money you're bringing in isn't enough, it's hard to work on anything else but surviving. Our linkage with Eleanor Foundation and its social service providers really ensures women have the stepping stones to economic self-sufficiency." |
Working with our grantee partners, the Eleanor Foundation qualified landlords to provide 42 affordable apartments throughout the city. Through the partnership, landlords regularly receive a portion of rent from the Trust Fund and women get some relief in making ends meet. With a rental subsidy averaging $621 a month—combined with the Foundation's funded employment, childcare, financial management and other housing services—the innovative partnership helped women like Kamilyn Baskerville find solid ground.
"The Eleanor Foundation helped me to get where I am now: working, a better place, living in a better area," said Baskerville, a single working mom served by The Cara Program, an Eleanor Foundation grantee partner. "I'm even doing better at my job because you know, I was a little stressed, a little frustrated. It seemed like a whole load on me lifted off."
Nationally recognized for its rental subsidy program, the Trust Fund honored the Eleanor Foundation with its 2008 Partnership Award. According to McNulty, bringing in quality social service providers is really a gift that the Eleanor Foundation brings to Chicago's working women and their families. Thanks to this partnership, more working women are taking big steps in the right direction—toward economic self-sufficiency.
