Transforming CHA: Making Connections
byThe Chicago Housing Authority recently put out a large contract to the City Department of Human Services to run the Service Connector program, which is supposed to start this summer.
I spoke with one resident who was with the AmeriCorps program. She had applied to work with the Service Connector program. She was trained at one of the City Human Services Department centers. She felt she would have been qualified to really benefit residents at the end of their training. But she left before the end of the training because she felt she was lied to.
She was told at the beginning of the program that she would be paid $750 every other week. But during the training, she was only given $391 twice monthly and a $4,800 scholarship at the end of the program. Now I understand the program is about to get off the ground. If it works the way it is proposed, the Service Connector program will coordinate services, help residents with economic and self-sufficiency, lease compliance, employment, and family stability.
These are just a few of the services that will be available for residents under the provisions of the CHA transformation. As well as these services, there will be case managers and resident service advocates and service coordinators for each development. Let’s hope this will better prepare residents for the new change.
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