Executive Summary
The Chicago-Cook County Two-Generation Economic Mobility Project (“2Gen”) launched in May 2021, after more than six years of research and planning. 2Gen’s aim is to create family-centered research to enable effective service delivery and policy development that addresses the lived experiences of families utilizing Housing Choice Vouchers in the Chicago region. Involving hundreds of families, and with a focus on two generations (adults and youth), the robust learnings from 2Gen will be published over several years.
Housing Choice Vouchers have enabled some families with lower incomes to surmount the affordable housing barrier. Yet while the experiences of families receiving housing support services, the factors that cause families to remain in or move from their neighborhoods of choice, and the experiences of their children all drive efforts to build economic mobility pathways for families with lower incomes, they have not been gathered and understood. The 2Gen Project, with a focus on two generations (adults and youth), grew from a need to answer these questions.
