Teens and young adults discuss with federal, state and local officials the correlation between the city’s violence and the lack of youth employment opportunities. This program was recorded by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).
Students tour South Chicago as part of a competition to envision how a neighborhood can revitalize itself. Photo by Andrew Mateja.
Nearly 60 students from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture are taking part in a competition to help revitalize the South Chicago neighborhood by planning recreational and open spaces on land under the Chicago Skyway.
The South Chicago Underline Project is a competition designed to tap into ideas generated by the 56 graduate and undergraduate architecture students as part of the competition. The UIC School of Architecture, in conjunction with the UIC Great Cities Institute and the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce, are partners in the project.
The effort is part of a larger revitalization initiative that began when the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce approached the Great Cities Institute for assistance in improving the area, said Meghan Funk, competition coordinator.
Governments and nonprofit organizations everywhere have compassionately invested billions in social services, yet, wherever we look we still face stubborn challenges in education, health care poverty, unemployment, and the environment. Many social entrepreneurs train and employ the disadvantaged and disabled. Others are disruptive innovators helping those populations access products and services previously unavailable to them. While traditional businesses remain committed to their commercial imperative, more than ever, they, too, are intent on generating a demonstrable social or environmental impact. Together, mission-driven ventures and traditional business concerns are learning how to reach and sustain scaled social solutions.
Marc J. Lane is a nationally recognized business and tax attorney and financial adviser, and practices law at The Law Offices of Marc J. Lane, P.C. in Chicago. He is an expert on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance, and an influential advocate of best corporate governance practices. He is an innovator in helping corporations, social enterprises, foundations, investors, lenders and philanthropists leverage capital to maximize financial results while driving positive social change. By appointment of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, he chaired the state’s Task Force on Social Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Enterprise; and by appointment of Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, now serves as Vice Chairperson of the Cook County Commission on Social Innovation.
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For disability accommodations please contact Christiana Kinder, (312) 996-8700 or christia@uic.edu.
Teens and young adults discuss with federal, state and local officials the correlation between the city’s violence and the lack of youth employment opportunities. This program was recorded by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).
On January 30, 2017, we had the great honor to present our report on youth joblessness at a hearing organized by Alternative Schools Network (ASN) and held at the Chicago Urban League. Co-sponsors of the forum included Chicago Area Project, Youth Connection Charter School, Westside Health Authority and Black United Fund of IL, National Youth Advocate Program, La Casa Norte, Lawrence Hall, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Heartland Alliance, and Metropolitan Family Services. Among the elected officials that were present, and in some cases spoke, at the hearing were U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and several members of the Illinois State Assembly, Cook County Commission and Chicago City Council. Also in attendance was Andrea Zopp, Deputy Mayor, Chief Neighborhood Development Officer and Chicago City Clerk, Anna Valencia.
Most critical to the hearing, was the large presence of young people, several of whom participated in a panel discussion moderated by Susan Richardson of the Chicago Reporter. Shari Runner, CEO of Chicago Urban League welcomed everyone and Jack Wuest, ASN, facilitated the movement through the various segments of the hearing, which was titled, More Jobs, Less Violence: Connecting Youth to a Brighter Future.
The Great Cities Institute 2017 report, Abandoned in their Neighborhoods: Youth Joblessness amidst the Flight of Industry and Opportunity, supplements the voices of young people who have come forward at previous ASN hearings to speak about their appreciation for opportunities to work and the value they place in having a job. They have also repeatedly made the connection between conditions of joblessness and violence and that an answer to stop violence is to “get us off the streets and into some work clothes, and you will see the change.”
In our 2016 reports, Lost: The Crisis of Jobless and Out of School Teens and Young Adults in Chicago, Illinois and the U.S. and A Lost Generation: The Disappearance of Teens and Young Adults from the Job Market in Cook County, we brought attention to the issue of joblessness among 16 to 24 year olds by examining employment to population ratios, joblessness and out of work/out of school rates comparing whites (non-Hispanic), Hispanics or Latinos and Blacks (non-Hispanic) within Chicago and between Chicago, Illinois, the U.S., Los Angeles and New York. The figure that nearly half of black 20 to 24 year old men in Chicago were neither working, nor in school, sent shock waves about the severity of the joblessness problem that our GIS generated maps showed were most severe in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of blacks, and then Latinos. In our conclusions, we asserted that the joblessness problem could not be understood without understanding the conditions of the neighborhoods themselves.
In our 2017 report, we wanted to investigate further our conclusion that joblessness was chronic and concentrated and we wanted to know more about the conditions of the neighborhoods. Based on our data, we conclude:
We learned from the report that “many neighborhoods in Chicago are economically abandoned sectors with a dramatic loss of industry and opportunity for employment. These neighborhoods have been abandoned, along with the people that live there.”
Joblessness persists, is part of a long-term trend made worse by the recession, and is directly tied to the flight of industry from neighborhoods. Manufacturing was particularly important in Chicago and when it declined, Chicago workers were hard hit. As an example, in 1960, sixty percent of the 20 to 24 year-old Latino labor force was in manufacturing. By 2015, that number had dropped to ten percent. Joblessness, we conclude, is systemic and is directly related to structural changes in the economy.
Understanding that residential segregation and economic and occupational restructuring is the structural context for what is happening to our young people of color, is a pointed reminder that chronic and concentrated youth joblessness must be understood in terms of its structural roots and not as a function of individual attributes. Blaming young people for their plight does nothing to remedy their conditions. Providing structured opportunities for employment and capacity building does.
We conclude the report with four categories of strategies to tackle chronic and concentrated joblessness.
We came to this issue because we recognize the significant consequences of joblessness among young people. Throughout the process of producing and presenting this report, we have had the opportunity to meet young people, many that work with them and an array of elected, civic and community leaders. Without question, the young folks themselves are talented and intelligent and their mentors are dedicated and engaged in efforts that make a difference. With the many phone calls, conversations and invitations that we have received since we released last year’s and now this year’s reports, we are heartened to see so many express their concern and their efforts or willingness to be part of the solution. It is indeed an honor, to provide data and analysis that contributes to these efforts.
Both the Executive Summary and the Full Report are available. The full hearing can be viewed, thanks to CAN TV. In addition, you can also see the link to the various media that have covered the report.
Chicago Tribune: Report says youth unemployment chronic, concentrated and deeply rooted »
Chicago Tribune: Fix Chicago’s violence? Start by helping kids land jobs »
Crain’s: New report details huge unemployment among young blacks, Latinos in Chicago »
Toni Ross works at Food and Paper Supply Co. on Jan. 27, 2017, in Chicago’s Grand Crossing neighborhood. Ross has worked at the food service distributor for 27 years; she was hired through a youth program and is now store manager. The business’ co-owner is slated to speak at a forum on youth unemployment Jan. 30, 2017. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)
An article from the Chicago Tribune highlights a new report from Great Cities Institute and commissioned by Alternative Schools Network for a January 30, 2017 hearing on youth joblessness at the Chicago Urban League. The report finds that youth unemployment is chronic, concentrated and deeply rooted.
Chicago is making scant progress in its ongoing battle against rampant youth joblessness, new statistics show, though there is a modicum of good news.
The share of 20- to 24-year-old black men who were neither working nor in school declined modestly between 2014 and 2015, from a dismal 47 percent to a still-dismal 43 percent, according to a report set to be presented Monday at the Chicago Urban League’s annual forum on the youth unemployment crisis.
“More Jobs, Less Violence: Connecting Youth to a Brighter Future,” is the title of the 2017 Youth Employment Hearing sponsored by Alternative Schools Network and held at the Chicago Urban League on January 30, 2017. Other co-sponsors of the hearing include Chicago Area Project, Youth Connection Charter School, Westside Health Authority, Black United Fund of IL, National Youth Advocate Program, La Casa Norte, Lawrence Hall, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Heartland Alliance and Metropolitan Family Services. Each of these groups work directly with young people, providing mentorship and employment related opportunities. Elected officials from federal, state and local government attended to hear the data presented and the voices of young people who testified on their experiences related to employment. This report, produced by UIC’s Great Cities Institute, provides a supplement to the voices of the young people and those that work with them.
Teresa L. Córdova, Ph.D.
Matthew D. Wilson
(Photo by Max Herman)
Key Elementary School, located in the predominantly black Austin neighborhood, has stood empty since 2013 when it became one of 50 under-enrolled Chicago public schools shuttered to save money.
A report on school closures by Great Cities Institute Research Fellow and Professor of Urban Planning and Policy, Rachel Weber and fellow authors, Stephanie Farmer, Associate Professor, Sociology Department, Roosevelt University and Mary Donoghue, ULI-Trkla Scholar at the Great Cities Institute was highlighted in an article from The Chicago Reporter
The school closure issue, like so many issues in Chicago, is rooted in racial segregation and its consequences. A new study released by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago that looked at school closures and turnarounds between 2000 and 2013 found that race, not simply enrollment or academic performance, was a recurring factor. Schools that were predominantly black and located within six miles of the city’s center, where there is more redevelopment potential, were more likely to be turned around or closed.
Although the school district chose “race-neutral” metrics to justify the restructurings, the report argues that they interacted with “institutionalized racial inequities” and had outcomes that disproportionately affected black students.
The report states: “Legacies of racism—from the broader interactive effects between de jure and de facto residential segregation and labor market discrimination to prior CPS plans and practices like the fact that the district often built new schools rather than redraw boundaries that would put black and white students in the same schools—shape contemporary capital investment policies in Chicago.”