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Here Comes the Neighborhood

How a new model for local investment has Chicago’s South Side on the move.

Photographed for JPMorgan Chase & Co.

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Text by Dawn Reiss

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.

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“People asked me why I was going back,” Mallory said of his return to his far South Side roots. “I wanted to get into real estate and incorporate my passion for working with young people.”

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“These young men understand that all of these vacant properties exist within their communities,” Mallory said. “It’s important for them to know that becoming an owner of these properties is possible. We want them to know they can become the change agent.”

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“I want to give people the opportunity to have a good quality home to live in,” Mallory said. “For a lot of people, their home might be the only asset that they ever have, and the only thing that they can pass down to their kids...I think everybody deserves that.”