With grants of $1 million from the Builders Initiative and Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundations, and a Community Development Grant through the Chicago Recovery Plan, the National Public Housing Museum has reached its $14.5 million Power of Place Campaign goal. It will be able to break ground on its long-anticipated physical home, adaptive reuse of the last remaining building of the former Jane Addams Homes at 1322-24 W. Taylor St., this fall.
Dedicated to the belief that all people have the right to a home, NPHM is the nation’s first cultural institution founded to preserve and interpret the role of public housing in advancing this essential yet unfulfilled aspiration. Using oral histories, art and material culture, the museum will archive and share stories of hope, achievement, struggle, resistance, resilience and entrepreneurship from a diverse group of former and current public housing residents. By doing so, knowledge gained from the public housing experience can be used to shape and inform innovative public policy reform to reimagine our future communities and society, and the places we call home.
“Housing insecurity is one of the preeminent issues of our time. When people lose their homes, their lives, families, health and finances are disrupted. This cuts across class, race and location. And while public housing has had an enormous and often controversial impact on our nation’s history, it has also shaped the way we look at what’s essential for the public good,” NPHM Executive Director Lisa Yun Lee, Ph.D., explained.
“The Museum draws on the power of place and memory to preserve, promote and propel the right of all people to have a place where they can live and prosper—a place to call home. This mission is grounded in social justice and human rights, and we are tackling it with a multifaceted approach that encompasses culture, activism and entrepreneurship. It’s a groundbreaking undertaking, and we wouldn’t be here or able to undertake it without our visionary founders and funders.”