Hope Center: Healing poverty with advice, jobs, houses

Chicago’s Roseland community is solving crime and poverty through a formula developed by the Hope Center: mentors, jobs and a home.

Since 2020, the Hope Center has helped address the root causes of poverty and crime in Roseland on Chicago’s far South Side by connecting hundreds of residents to employment training, mentorships and first-time homeownership.

Shenita Muse is the executive director of the Hope Center Foundation, which is a partner organization to the Illinois Policy Institute’s Center for Poverty Solutions.

Together, the groups are helping community wisdom build a path to reducing poverty and improving human dignity in Chicago’s neighborhoods. They are part of how Chicago can reduce a nearly 17% poverty rate that is roughly 6 percentage points above the national average.

“The first step is just making sure that people can take care of themselves and take care of their families,” Muse said. “That is the essential core of the work that we do.”

“The three main paths we have focused on to do that are economic development, workforce training and housing development in Roseland. We’re trying to think about how we ensure our residents are gainfully employed, building wealth and have access to the funds to sustain themselves.”

“The first priority is ensuring that individuals have the ability to support themselves and their families. That principle is at the core of our work.”

The Hope Center offers a suite of programs to residents, including youth mentorships, workforce training, financial literacy classes and support services for homeless and senior community members. She said the center keeps community trauma in mind with all it does.

“We’re providing them with the soft skills they need, and also the support services that are necessary to succeed,” Muse said. “I think that is important, because in neighborhoods that have a lot of crime, there is a lot of trauma and sometimes that leads to other issues.”

“What we have found is that people want a better life for themselves. But the emotional toll of what they’ve experienced living in these communities and not having a clear understanding of what resources they can take advantage of have held many of them back.”

The Hope Center is building new housing to offer long-time residents the opportunity to become first-time homeowners.

“There are over 10,000 vacant lots in Chicago, mainly concentrated on the South and the West sides of the city. We purchased 100 of those lots, and block by block, we are redeveloping it in the Kensington Park neighborhood of Roseland,” Muse said.

“We’re using that as our prototype and model of what community redevelopment looks like. We’re also working with the residents in the community. Not displacing or gentrifying them out but supporting them to become the homeowners.”

“I’m happy to say, 85% of our homeowners are people who have lived in the Roseland community for over 20 years and never owned a home. And we’re going to continue to build over the next five years.”

Muse said the Hope Center is also building up retail to serve the residents.

“We also focus on economic development. We partnered with Chicago neighborhood initiatives on the Pullman Gateway project where we brought the first Chick-fil-A to the Far South Side,” Muse said. “We just cut the ribbon on Dunkin’ Donuts and Jimmy John’s.”

“In 2026, we are looking forward to cutting the ribbon on Chipotle and a pizzeria called Slim and Huskies, which is African-American owned out of Memphis. What we know is that retail follows rooftops, so we’re developing both. We’re developing the retail and we’re developing the rooftops.”

“We’re also looking forward to the CTA Red Line extension. One of the major new stops is at 115th and Michigan and we are also a partner in that new development. It will be a grocery store and market hall on the lower level, and then we’ll have rental housing on the upper levels, with a parking lot that connects to the Red Line stop.”

Muse said the key to their work is breaking the cycle of poverty many Chicagoans are born into.

“We often talk about generational wealth, but we also have to acknowledge generational barriers,” Muse said. “I grew up in a middle-class household where higher education was an expected and supported pathway. That expectation alone creates momentum across generations.”

“When families have faced long-term disinvestment, limited educational access and constrained economic opportunity, those conditions can persist across generations. The question we are focused on is how to interrupt those patterns by expanding access to education, stable employment and wealth-building opportunities so entire families – and future generations – can thrive.”

“Our goal is to be a leading community-based organization on the Far South Side. We want to be recognized as a trusted resource, and as we enter our sixth year, we will continue to expand the scope and impact of our work.”

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