Founded in 1980, CCH is a non-profit organization that works with people hurt by homelessness. CCH seeks leaders among homeless and formerly homeless people to advocate for ways to end homelessness.

We focus our efforts on ending homelessness by addressing root causes, including the lack of affordable housing, the lack of living-wage jobs, the lack of health care, discrimination and violence.

CCH believes that homelessness is a solvable problem and has had many victories over the years. We will continue to fight until every person has a place to call home.

Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is the only organization in Chicago to run regular outreach to homeless families, unaccompanied youth, ex-offenders, prostitution survivors, and single adults. We offer this at emergency shelters, transitional housing, SRO and street programs – 30 across the city each month, reaching more than 3,500 people a year.

We are the only non-profit in Illinois dedicated to crafting public policies that curb – and one day, can end – the homelessness that hurts low- and middle-income families. CCH pursues initiatives to preserve a shelter safety net, to secure more affordable housing and rents, boost access to transitional job programs and support services, and create re-entry options and alternatives to incarceration. We train and empower homeless people to advocate on these issues.

Ours is the only law office in Illinois dedicated solely to serving homeless people, with focus on children and teens turned away by public schools or denied school services. The Law Project represented 263 clients in the city and suburbs in the fiscal year that ended in June 2009.

Also unique in Illinois, a youth attorney works full-time with homeless teens. Most clients are unaccompanied youth living on their own, without family to care for them. The mobile legal clinic runs street and school outreach, with weekly hours at Teen Living Programs, Center on Halsted, Broadway Youth Center, and a drop-in youth group.

To preserve its independent voice, CCH does not take government funding. Instead, when we advocate for public funds, it’s to create more housing, better services for those who are homeless or at-risk, and help support providers who serve the homeless.

CCH effectively pairs community organizing with advocacy. Just one example: homeless moms helped our housing campaign convince the state to create homeless prevention grants, one-time grants to help families avoid foreclosure or eviction. CCH advocates yearly for funds, and doubled state funding by 2007. In nine years, 79,000 Illinois families were helped ($800 on average in 2008); 86 percent remain housed 18 months later.