As housing affordability challenges continue to impact first-time buyers across Chicagoland, Taylor Johnson recently secured a guest appearance for client Baird & Warner on WGN Radio’s “Wintrust Business Lunch” to showcase how Chicago’s oldest and largest independent family-owned brokerage is expanding access to homeownership. During the broadcast segment, Lucy Baird, the firm’s company historian and director of community impact for its Good Will Works philanthropic arm, discussed Baird & Warner’s partnerships with local nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity, Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, Spanish Coalition for Housing and YWCA. These partners provide affordable housing investments, multilingual homeownership classes, credit-building tools and financial empowerment programs to help first-time buyers succeed. The conversation highlighted how these efforts work together to build an “equitable housing ecosystem” that aims to address historic patterns of disinvestment, redlining and segregation while opening pathways to homeownership and strengthening Chicagoland neighborhoods.
