Blog

We are excited to welcome Colin Cordes as a new LCBH Board Member. Colin brings years of experience in finance and healthcare to the organization. He is excited to use his robust business background to help LCBH to identify opportunities to expand. We recently sat down with Colin to learn what drew him to pursue board service with LCBH.

How were you connected with LCBH?
I found out about LCBH through an organization called Board Lead that matches people interested in community service with nonprofits that need additional board members. Board Lead teaches you how boards operate and prepares you for various responsibilities, roles and opportunities to lend your input. LCBH liked my profile. I talked with a few staff and board members and I was ready to join.

What have you done prior to working with LCBH?
My background is in business. I have bachelor’s degrees in finance and economics from Indiana University, and a master’s degree in public health from University of Missouri. I’ve worked for four different companies in healthcare consulting, mainly working in IT. A lot of my work focused on providing and implementing best solutions and strategizing and sorting through financial touchpoints between patients and providers. I currently work for Olive AI, where automation is key. Our goal is to make healthcare cost effective and smoother for everyone involved.

April is Fair Housing Month

Interested in doing more to support Fair Housing and LCBH Alumnus Patricia Fron’s work?

LCBH and CAFHA are among the lead organizers in the Illinois Coalition for Fair Housing, formed to add "Source of Income" as a type of discrimination to the Illinois Human Rights Act (HB 2755)(Ford). Prohibition against Source of Income discrimination protects tenants who pay their rent with funds from Social Security, child support, Veteran’s benefits, and Housing Choice Vouchers. This bill would assist approximately 99,000 Housing Choice Voucher participants and more than 575,000 households earning non-wage income such as SSI, SSDI, TANF, or child support in Illinois (outside of Cook County). The Housing Choice Voucher program (formerly known as "Section 8"), is HUD’s largest program to help tenants with low incomes pay their rent. Unlike other subsidized housing, the voucher program holds the promise of not just making housing affordable – it can be a tool for social and economic mobility for tenants. Unfortunately, discrimination against voucher-holders is rampant, denying the social mobility promise of the voucher program and sometimes even causing tenants to lose their vouchers. For more information and to help us get this bill passed, visit: https://www.housingchoicepartners.org/soi-campaign.

I can't believe a year has zipped past since LCBH's office closed to the public. The expression that parents often share, "the days are long, but the years fly by," acutely resonates with me as I try to work remotely and struggle to get much of anything done. I know I speak for many here at LCBH about how hard the year has been, especially for parents with small children. I keep reminding myself of how lucky we are at LCBH to be able to do our work remotely. Still, I am relieved that as legal aid providers, we qualify as Phase 1C Essential Workers and can now get in line to be vaccinated, a critical step to returning to the physical office.

April is Fair Housing month. While fair housing often conjures thoughts of eliminating discrimination in the context of purchasing a home— as well it should, given Chicago's history of redlining and deed restrictions— I am mindful of the racial disparities we see in eviction court daily, and how this also raises fair housing alarms. I often come back to this Matthew Desmond quote from his 2013 article, Evicting Children: "Policymakers interested in identifying and sanctioning discrimination … should focus not only on the front end of the housing process—the freedom to obtain housing anywhere—but also on the back end: the freedom to maintain housing anywhere."

In December, LCBH partnered with the Chicago Housing Justice League (CHJL) to submit a grant through the Chicago Racial Justice Pooled Fund (the Fund), a commitment from thirteen foundations to raise and move $3M to Chicago organizations building and sustaining movements for justice that center Black lives and address anti-Blackness. In January, LCBH and CHJL were notified that the application had been awarded. In 2021, LCBH will serve as the fiscal sponsor and the CHJL will be awarded $40,000 to continue their work of bringing multiple organizing and advocacy groups together to fight for real changes for housing and racial justice and support the adoption and implementation of people-first policies and programs that improve and stabilize majority Black or Latinx neighborhoods so families can thrive.

Since its inception, the League has been supported through in-kind contributions of time, meeting space, supplies and resources from its member organizations, with LCBH providing considerable voluntary contributions to its development and maintenance. The CHJL has been able to accomplish many things using this model, but the League and its members will benefit greatly from a dedicated Program Coordinator. This new funding will be put towards hiring a staffer to oversee the administrative and programmatic activities of CHJL, which will build the League’s capacity, create a sound leadership structure, and sustain its programmatic work.