Chicago’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) has a goal of assisting the acquisition and renovation of 2,000 to 2,500 units over a 3- to 5-year period using funds from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD has allocated a total of $153 million to Chicago in two phases.
Neighborhoods eligible for NSP funds are those “with high foreclosure rates and where many homeowners took out subprime mortgages.” The Chicago NSP website has a list of the 29 eligible neighborhoods.
It’s hard to imagine how rehabbing a small number of homes in each of 29 neighborhoods will have a measurable positive impact on those neighborhoods, when much larger investments in the preceding years were accompanied by destabilization, decline and value destruction.
Have some Chicago neighborhoods become so unstable that they should be abandoned and cleared?