Here Comes the Neighborhood
How a new model for local investment has Chicago’s South Side on the move.
Photographed for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Aaron Mallory, 30, remembers driving back from college at Southern Illinois University and seeing blocks filled with abandoned and boarded up homes, blighted by poverty, gangs and violence on the city’s south and west sides.
“It always bothered me,” Mallory said, especially what he saw in Roseland, the far South Side neighborhood where he was born.
With 33 murders in the past 365 days in Roseland alone, according to Chicago Police’s Clear Map, Mallory says it is like a tale of “two different cities,” when comparing Roseland to Chicago’s downtown Loop.
So, he set out to change that.
Mallory is focusing his efforts on rehabilitating affordable housing units through GRO Community, a nonprofit he started in 2012 that offers mentoring and life skills, including workforce and entrepreneurial training, to at-risk high school boys. That includes teaching them construction and real estate investment.