Gentrification creates ‘existential crisis’ for Pilsen nonprofit group

The Gads Hill Center has served Pilsen’s immigrant community for over a century, and it’s hoping to do the same in Brighton Park with a new $7 million facility it opened in late October.

The organization’s 18,000-square-foot building at 4255 S. Archer Ave. will be the nonprofit’s new flagship building providing early education, after-school programs, mental health services and comprehensive family support.

The organization also has small storefront offices in North Lawndale and Chicago Lawn.

The Gads Hill Center first opened in 1898 as a settlement house with a mission for providing educational and recreational opportunities for immigrant families. It still occupies its original building in Pilsen at 1919 W. Cullerton St.

The Brighton Park’s facility will replace the Pilsen building as the organization’s headquarters.

Maricela García, CEO of Gads Hill Center, said the new facility should be celebrated, as it will bring services to a community desperately in need. She said it’s only possible because gentrification in Pilsen has threatened the organization’s viability.

The number of people enrolling in its programs has dropped significantly in the last several years, a change from when the group had a waiting list for those needing to receive services in Pilsen. Now it’s actively recruiting people, something it never had to do in the past.

She blames families being displaced because of rising rents and the depletion of immigrant families.

Demographics shifting in Pilsen isn’t new, García said. Since Gads Hill Center began serving Pilsen over 120 years, it has seen the neighborhood change, from German immigrants to Eastern European immigrants - and later to Mexican immigrants.

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“All that time, Gads Hill Center has been able to be nimble, adjust to the changes and continue providing key programs for all those different groups of immigrants,” García said.

She said the new wave of people coming into Pilsen are no longer working-class immigrants but tend to be college educated and higher earners.

According the the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the median household income in Pilsen jumped from $33,927 in 2010 to $46,387 in 2017. The neighborhood’s college educated population jumped 10.15% from 2010 to 2017 — the fourth-highest in the city.

“This is the first time we are seeing our mission challenged,” García said.

The “existential crisis” triggered by gentrification forced the nonprofit to reexamine its mission. Would it revise what it’s done for over a century by serving a wealthier clientele — thus abandoning the class of people it traditionally tended to? Or would it double down by moving to where there is a greater need for their services?

The opening of the center’s Brighton Park facility indicates they are committed to providing resources where they’re most needed, García said. The nonprofit examined in-house data to determine where a large sum of their clients were moving to. By tracking ZIP codes they found most were moving to Brighton Park.

A 2017 community assessment of Brighton Park by Northwestern University and Gads Hill Center found the neighborhood seriously lacked child care, after-school programs and mental health services.

“We needed to start creating that transition, because the future of Pilsen is going to be like any other gentrified community that at some point you really have no place there,” García said. “We always talk about the people affected by gentrification, but we rarely talk about how it affects nonprofits.”

García said they have no intentions of ending services in Pilsen but she recognizes as long as the neighborhood’s demographics change, the nonprofit’s viability there will remain threatened.

Yennya Segura, 28, said she’s excited about a new facility opening closer to her. She lives in Marquette Park and has used Gads Hill Center’s services for years. The mother of three said the “early learning head-start program” significantly helped her son.

Gads Hill Center also helped Segura get her GED and provided pregnancy support.

“This place is important because it is providing a safe place for our kids, we get the help and support we need,” Segura said.

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Manny Ramos is a corps member of Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of Chicago’s South Side and West Side.