Five struggling communities to get help crafting crime solutions

Austin. Englewood. Humboldt Park. North Lawndale. Roseland.

Five of the city's most violence-prone neighborhoods will participate in an innovative project by the anti-violence business group Get In Chicago to see if communities can craft their own solutions to crime.

"Violence is a serious problem for Humboldt Park. We're ranked fifth among the city's 77 communities for violent crime, but violence happens in a context, not in a vacuum," said Lori Crowder, executive director of Humboldt Park's Alliance of Local Service Organizations.

"We know things like high-school dropout and expulsion rates, unemployment, and lack of civic engagement all lead to violence, and we expect to hear and address those themes as we engage the community on the CCRE project," Crowder said.

The Community Collaboration and Resident Empowerment initiative sought proposals that would partner established nonprofits with looser resident groups to identify community-specific issues impacting crime rates in phase one; then address them in phase two.

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