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One of DOH’s most important functions is to invest in housing where the private market has failed to provide capital for the upkeep of safe, comfortable homes. Historically and currently, this lack of private investment has most affected Chicago’s majorityBlack and majority Latine neighborhoods, creating significant racial equity concerns and affecting the quality of life of many Chicago residents. Code issues and abandonment affect not only the residents of the buildings themselves, but neighbors and the entire community. Studies have linked vacancy with public safety and other quality of life concerns, and many Chicagoans directly speak to their experiences with vacant or unsafe buildings on their blocks or in their neighborhoods. Bond funds would allow DOH to invest in several programs that address this issue, including the Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild Program, the Troubled Buildings Initiative TBI , and the CondoCoop Preservation Fund the Fund. The Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild program aims to rehabilitate vacant homes and place chronically unemployed adults and atrisk youth in employment and training opportunities. The initiative includes partnerships with Cook County Land Bank Authority, Chicago Community Loan Fund, Community Investment Corporation, Safer Foundation, CARA Program, Firehouse Community Arts Center and One City United. The Programs’ wealthbuilding component provides local BIPOC developers with technical assistance and gap financing to enable them to acquire and rehabilitate vacant homes and lots across the South and West sides of the City. Rebuild has been funded in the past through various sources, and recently received a large grant from IHDA to continue. Moving forward, Rebuild 2.0 will implement an aggregation strategy with the goal of assembling enough properties in a localized manner to support the increase of values and encourage private investment. Bond funds could support the program once IHDA grant funds are entirely allocated. The Troubled Buildings Initiative is a program to help reclaim troubled and abandoned buildings that create dangerous and hazardous conditions for residents, neighbors, and first responders. TBI works with existing owners and lien holders, primarily through the housing court process with the use of receivers and by the acquisition of distressed notes and liens, to prevent these buildings from deteriorating into a state of disrepair which may lead to displacement, the loss of affordable housing, and unnecessary demolition. TBI uses a coordinated approach from multiple municipal agencies, departments, community partners, and delegate agencies to help restore atrisk buildings to viable status and prevent them from becoming abandoned. The program is overseen by the Department of Housing and implemented through delegate agency contracts through a citywide Request for Proposals RFP process. 23 The CondoCoop Preservation Fund, piloted in South Shore, provides owneroccupant grants to individual owners and a lowinterest, long term loangrant product to homeowner associations HOAs for needed repairs and deferred maintenance to ensure that longtime homeowners, many of them older and on fixed incomes, can remain affordably housed. The Fund coordinates with TBI to not only physically improve buildings but improve the financial condition of the bodies governing these buildings for greater longterm stability. By strengthening these associations, condominiums will continue to provide homeownership opportunities to those who want the benefits of owning a home without the responsibility of exterior maintenance associated with singlefamily ownership.