City of Chicago NSP helps woman find perfect home in Oakland

 
Crystal Kimbrough’s search for the perfect house began three years ago, when she met Rose Hughes, a realtor with a gentle smile who was relatively new to the world of real estate.
 

Kimbrough, who works from home, was looking for a house where she could be comfortable 24 hours a day. She wanted to live in a neighborhood where she could feel safe and in a house with enough room so that her three children wouldn’t feel overcrowded.
 
Hughes showed Kimbrough several houses and on two occasions they thought they’d found the right one. But contracts on both houses fell through and the two took a hiatus from working together.
 
Then Kimbrough’s brother, who lives in Atlanta, told her about the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) administered by the Regional HOPI partner the City of Chicago, a federal effort to help towns and cities tranform empty, foreclosed properties into attractive new residences.  Now Kimbrough, with Hughes at her side, has become the first Chicago-area homebuyer to purchase and move into a house that's been rehabbed through NSP. 
 
And this is where their journey has led them: A turn-of-the-century, Victorian-style row house in the city’s Oakland neighborhood. The house, on South Lake Park, is near the Metra train tracks, across the street from a quiet park, and just a few blocks from Lake Michigan. 
 
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(Photos courtesy of Bill Healy)