Agency in Arlington Heights Barely Makes Cut for HUD Grant

Faith Community Homes is the embodiment of Arlington Heights’s slogan, The City of Good Neighbors.

The agency, founded in 2003 by the Arlington Heights Ministerial Association, helps low-income families living and working in the village by providing two years of mentoring and support. That assistance includes contributing toward rent and other support, Executive Director Charles Warner said.

Faith Community Homes is serving a group of families, the working poor, who do not otherwise get help, Warner said. Being poor does not guarantee you qualify for help, he said. Even if there is assistance available, it is becoming harder to get, he added.

“The problem now is jobs out there don’t pay enough for a family to survive,” Warner said, adding many of the agency's clients are single parents.

The Arlington Heights-based agency is one of 19 seeking Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), this year.

But Faith Community was at risk of not receiving the $400 CDBG it requested, because HUD wants the village to cut out small grants based on its belief smaller amounts do not have a significant impact on the community.

“In a way I’m not too surprised HUD looks at things like that,” Warner said. “Money is so tight and they are tightening up.”

A $400 grant may not seem like a lot, but it is for Faith Community Homes. “The best way to put it is we are a small organization to start with and every penny counts,” Warner said. “It would help pay for someone’s rent for a month or more.”

The village board does not want to cut funding for Faith Community Homes and another agency, Northwest CASA, but the final decision will be up to HUD.

“We are a small organization we can only handle seven families at a time,” Warner told the village board this week.  But 90 percent of the families Faith Community has helped have become self-sufficient, he said.

It costs the agency about $15,000 a year to help each family, he said.

The $400 CDBG is combined with a lot of other smaller financial gifts, he said. The average donation is $100 to $150, he said.

“It does add up,” Warner said. “It’s part of a larger picture. Without it (the CDBG grant) we would keep doing what we do, it is just that much more difficult.”

Faith Community Homes has been applying for the CDBG grant through Arlington Heights for the last few years. The grant has helped the charity gain validity in the community, and you can’t put a dollar amount on that, Warner said.

Warner is one the board of directors for Suburban Alliance to End Homelessness, which oversees HUD grants in Cook County for the homeless. The Alliance has run into the same problem as Arlington Heights, trying to decide how to divide up money, he said.

“The problem is there is less and less money,” Warner said. “ It’s very difficult to figure out how to maximize the use and hopefully keep programs.”

In addition to Faith Community Homes, the following agencies applied for grants. The village is moving forward with a plan to fund their programs:

• Township District 214 Community Education
• Northwest CASA
• Children’s Advocacy Center
• WINGS
• Resources for Community Living
• Escorted Transportation Services
• Suburban Primary Health Care Center
• CEDA Northwest (Day Care Assistance)
• Journeys the Road Home
• Arlington Heights Park District CAP