Help end homelessness in Chciago

We’ve teamed up with Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), a non-profit that believes housing is a human right in our society. It is for this strong belief that they are fighting to put an end to homelessness in Chicago, and we get to help them out this month. For every bouquet sent in December, we’re donating a quarter of those profits directly to CCH. This money is used for creating various programs to provide access to shelters, jobs, and schools to those hurts by homelessness.

CCH has a long history, being founded in 1980 to now having achievements under their belt such as helping 7,000 homeless youth with healthcare, to awarding college scholarships to homeless high school seniors. CCH has analyzed that 125,848 Chicagoans were homeless this year. Of those, 20,205 were CPS students.

By addressing homelessness root causes – lack of affordable housing, lack of living-wage jobs, discrimination, and violence to name a few – CCH is able to zone in on those causes and create a plan to solve them to make a change. For instance, their studies show that an $18.75 hourly wage is needed to afford housing in Illinois. With the current minimum wage being $8.25, they speculate that two minimum wage earners working 91 hours a week total is needed to afford a $977 2-bedroom apartment. This is unrealistic, and for this reason, CCH has been pushing to raise the minimum wage to $15 for food and retail services.

It is these small goals and victories that all help end homelessness in Chicago, and they will continue to solve all problems until everyone can call someplace their home.