Friday, 24 May 2002

CHICAGO, Ill.

Another week has gone by. I’ll be going out to our farm this morning to check on progress there. From what I’ve heard, it’s been a very good week. Our trainees have planted more crops, and started work on the demonstration garden. This garden is the size of an urban lot, and helps prepare people to work in urban agriculture, showing them how much can be achieved on a small plot of land.

Growing Home has accomplished a lot during the past year, but its history is a story in and of itself. The best person to tell that history is Les Brown, our board president, so in this final diary entry for the week, I’m going to let him speak for himself:

Les Brown.

By way of introduction, I am Les Brown, director of policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, founder of Growing Home, and its current board president.

Growing Home has an interesting and somewhat unusual history. In 1992 the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless was alerted to the fact that a small piece of federal surplus property located smack in the middle of the newly developing Navy Pier site was available via an application to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. A federal law passed in the 1980s gave organizations working with or on behalf of homeless people the right of first refusal for such land. CCH submitted an application to the Department of Health and Human Services, but truly doubted that it would be approved, given the value of the property and its vital importance to Chicago.

Much to our surprise, the application was approved. The city, meanwhile, was aghast to learn that a greenhouse, gardens, and job training program for homeless people would be located on this site, and submitted its own application for the property to the U.S. Park Service. This application was also approved. I’ve yet to understand how two applications for the same property could have been approved, but it certainly smacked of political machinations. The federal General Service Administration, which arbitrates such disputes, requested that the city of Chicago and CCH negotiate a resolution to the problem.

The truth is that CCH had no real plans to create a job training program for homeless people; we wanted to use our claim to the land to demand other concessions from the city to ensure ongoing revenue streams to help support the development of affordable low-income housing. For example, we proposed that a percentage of revenue generated from cars parked in the huge planned Navy Pier parking lot be allocated to the Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund, which provides funding for the subsidization and development of low-income housing. After much press and advocacy on CCH’s part, it became clear that we would not win this fight. Other demands were equally frustrated.

As the process dragged on, I began to think that a job training program for homeless people operating within the context of an organic garden with greenhouses sounded more and more appealing. Thousands of homeless people in Chicago needed training and access to decent jobs. It was clear, however, that if we ultimately got the Navy Pier land, the city would have frustrated all our efforts to implement the program, for example by blocking building permits. Therefore, we decided to negotiate for an alternative site and additional resources.

In May, 1998 the negotiations were concluded. The City of Chicago agreed to give CCH an acre of city-owned property, free access to all city farmers markets, a $50,000 grant, and a rent-free stall on Navy Pier from which to sell our produce and value-added products. In exchange, CCH relinquished its claim to the Navy Pier site.

Also in 1998, Growing Home acquired 10 acres of surplus government land in LaSalle County, about 70 miles outside of Chicago.

Given that job training and organic gardening did not fall within CCH’s mission, we created Growing Home as a separate organization and began to incubate this program. The process seems to have taken forever, but Growing Home is now up and running under the capable direction of Harry Rhodes.

Now, our organic farm is being developed, people are being trained, and the organization is developing into a model program for nonprofit social entrepreneurism combined with employment training for homeless and low-income people.