The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is a membership organization of the Chicago region’s 275 cities, towns and villages. Founded in 1997 by then Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and leading Mayors from nine suburban municipal groups, the Mayors Caucus pushes past geographical boundaries and local interests to work on public policy issues. The Caucus provides a forum for metropolitan Chicago’s chief elected officials to collaborate on common problems and work toward a common goal of improving the quality of life for the millions of people who call the region home.
Summary
Please fill out this Expression of Interest form if your municipality is interested in receiving assistance for local housing planning assistance via the Homes for a Changing Region program. Homes helps municipalities identify solutions to their most pressing housing challenges, create a balanced mix of housing types, and serve the needs of multiple generations of residents and workers. Homes is a partnership between the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus and Brick Partners.
About Homes for a Changing Region
Homes for a Changing Region helps municipalities understand the state of their market using data, regional expertise, and case studies from peer communities to identify solutions to their housing challenges.
Homes has been designed to provide a fast-moving technical assistance process to help municipalities identify housing issues and move quickly to readily implementable action steps. This occurs via a three to four meeting process, which will include the following components:
- A housing needs assessment: This data analysis will identify key housing trends in the community. The Homes team will use it to facilitate a kickoff meeting of key stakeholders, such as elected officials and staff, to identify 2-4 short term housing challenges to address.
- Focus group meeting: A focus group meeting will bring together community members, such as local commissioners, developers, realtors, nonprofits, and landlords, to further discuss needs and challenges.
- A community survey: This survey will directly contact residents and determine key housing issues they face. This survey will help municipalities understand their market in real time and will be managed by IHDA.
- An expert panel: This event will bring in expert panelists to address the key issues identified in the assessment and survey and recommend targeted steps to address them.
- A housing action plan: This final action plan will summarize the findings of the data assessment, survey, and expert panel and identify 2 to 4 steps that the municipality can take, including through existing grant programs via IHDA and other entities. The action plan will be briefly summarized in a presentation to elected officials.
Guidelines and Deadline to Apply
Due to generous funding from IHDA, the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus has the ability to offer local housing planning to municipalities between February of 2025 and February of 2026. Assistance is free and slots are limited. Assistance is available to any municipality within northeastern Illinois. Communities that have previously participated in Homes are not eligible for assistance.
Interested municipalities may fill out this short form to express interest. You will need to create an account in Submittable to register. All assistance is provided through the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus and Brick Partners, and funded via the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
Please complete this form by Friday, February 28th to be considered for this free assistance. For more information, please contact Ben Schnelle at bschnelle@mayorscaucus.org.
The Caucus will be loaning out two different energy efficiency games for municipalities’ upcoming events. There are four energy efficiency challenge wheels available for municipalities to borrow for Earth Day and other events. There are two energy efficiency toss games. For details and pictures of these games, go to: https://mayorscaucus.org/energy-efficiency-games/
**Because the grant funding for this project ended on June 30, 2023, we do not have the funds to ship the games. If you would like to borrow a game after June 30th, then you will need to pick it up from one of our game locations or from the municipality that last borrowed the game for an event, and then drop it off to us or the next municipality that is having an event. Another option is to provide us with your UPS or FedEx account number, if you would like to pay for the games to be shipped to you.**
These games will be loaned out on a first-come, first-served basis. Please complete this form if you have an upcoming event and would like to ensure that your community can borrow it on that day.
These games and prizes for municipalities were made possible through the generous support of the Illinois Science & Energy Innovation Foundation (ISEIF).
If you are interested in joining the waitlist for our EV Readiness Program and receiving updates about the program, when available, then please fill out this form. We just kicked off the third cohort in early November and expect that they will finish the program by the spring of 2025. After they finish the program and an award ceremony is held in the summer, we will ask waitlisted communities if they would like to join the fourth cohort.
For background information on the EV Readiness Program, go to https://mayorscaucus.org/initiatives/environment/becoming-ev-ready/.
The CS2 Residential Program allows municipalities to extend fair and transparent community solar subscription terms to their residents and small businesses. Local governments provide a trusted voice to citizens to let them know that a community solar offer is credible. The CS2 Residential Program can provide subscribers with a guaranteed minimum 10% savings of the community solar credits they receive on their bill. The program also provides equitable access to community solar by seeking projects that do not require credit checks.
To express interest in participating in the Community Solar Clearinghouse Solution (CS2) Program for Residents, then please fill out this form. Filling out this form is the first step in the process.
This site will also allow you to upload documents later in the process, like the approved municipal resolution and required marketing designation documentation.
For information on the next steps of the process, go to our CS2 webpage at https://mayorscaucus.org/initiatives/environment/community-solar-clearinghouse-solution-program-cs2program/.
The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is proud to partner with ComEd to administer the Powering Safe Communities Grant Program. The Powering Safe Communities Grant Program will continue to provide grants of up to $10,000 for local public safety and electrification projects. Recognizing that electrification can reduce carbon emissions, improve public health outcomes, and advance community resiliency, there will be a special focus on electrification projects this year.
Please refer to the 2025 ComEd Powering Safe Communities Guidelines prior to submitting an application.
For any questions, please contact Ben Schnelle at bschnelle@mayorscaucus.org.
Key Dates
Grant application opens: January 17, 2025, 9:00 a.m. Central Time
Grant application deadline: March 28, 2025, 5:00 p.m. Central Time