The net worth of the average white family in the United States in 2019 was eight times that of the Black family and five times that of the Latino family, according to The Urban Institute.
And for every $1 Chicago banks loan in white neighborhoods, they loan 12 cents to Black neighborhoods and 13 cents to Latino neighborhoods, according to a 2020 study by City Bureau and WBEZ.
West Side United, a collaboration between six hospitals on Chicago’s West Side, works to eliminate these wealth gaps, which cause health disparities between races.
On June 11, West Side United hosted an annual community convening to share its impact last year. At the Kehrein Center for the Arts, a panel then discussed how to build wealth to increase health in and around Austin.
“With long-term and sustained commitments to our people and our neighborhoods, we can close the wealth and health gaps that persist in our city so we can build a brighter future for those who are counting on us,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson during the panel’s opening remarks.
Though it’s a long journey to solving these disparities, West Side United’s work is already making a difference.
Since the organization was founded, its partners have hired more than 7,000 residents on Chicago’s West Side. Last year, West Side United partners spent more than $43 million with vendors on Chicago’s West Side, including 300 businesses. Also in 2023, West Side United launched West Side Healthy Parents and Babies and, since that July, has engaged over 50 families through the program.
“Let’s use this as an opportunity to not just simply bring people together,” Johnson said of the annual community convening, “but to achieve our collective goal, increasing the health and the public safety for all of our residents.”
How to close wealth and health gaps
West Side United has identified 37 metrics to help eliminate the life expectancy gap on the West Side, five of which are safety and community measures. Solutions include hiring West Side residents, expanding local businesses and access to healthcare, plus developing career pathways.
Joanna Trotter, the executive director and senior program officer for JPMorgan Chase and moderator of the panel, said she often hears from people that we can close the wealth gap by eliminating disparities in home ownership or business development.
“And yet, this is such a multifaceted issue,” Trotter said. There’s no singular solution.
“We all are in a challenge of trying to figure out how to close this gap. What that means is that the scale of this is large enough that it’s not a single thing,” said Dominic Williams, an associate partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
“I wish we could be a one-issue organization. It would make the work a whole lot easier,” said Cherita Ellens, president & CEO of Women Employed, which works to achieve equity for women in the workplace. “You do have to impact all these different levers to impact economic advancement.”
“Disparities in income, housing and all of those things don’t come from people not doing what they’re supposed to do,” said Karen Wilson-Freeman, president & CEO of the Chicago Urban League, which works toward equity for Black families and communities. “It comes from an orchestrated system.”
The vestiges of slavery, Wilson-Freeman added, caused many to think that people of color weren’t entitled to certain rights.
“That was a radical way to keep people down,” she said. “We have to talk about radical ways to lift people up.”
For Luis Gutierrez, founder & CEO of Latinos Progresando, this means finding a way to create more funding and resources for nonprofits like his.
“In a lot of our neighborhoods, the nonprofit sector is often the biggest employer,” said Gutierrez, who works in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. “I’m not expecting to be a millionaire, but I’m expecting that everybody who works in this sector can think about owning a home, sending their kids to school, going on vacation, and having at least one car that works well. That’s the dream.”
West Side United has funded nonprofits like Latinos Progresando in its effort to create wealth for Black and Brown communities. And the organization’s efforts are not without results.
In 2017, a year before West Side United launched, the gap in life expectancy between West Side neighborhoods and the Loop was about 16 years — according to Debra Wesley, president of the Sinai Community Institute out of the Sinai Health System, one of the West Side United hospitals, along with Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Ascension, Cook County Health, Rush University Medical Center, and the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System.
Today, West Side United works to eliminate a 14-year life expectancy gap between 10 neighborhoods on the West Side and the Loop — a reduction that could be, at least in part, because of its work on Chicago’s West Side.
“West Side United has given us a prototype that we can take all around the city,” Wilson-Freeman said. “That’s, I think, what we have as hope, as our North Star.”
