In 2009, states, counties, and cities across the country applied for approximately $3.9 billion from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to confront the problems of foreclosures and property abandonment. The Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) is the principal federal response to address the impact of foreclosed properties on neighborhoods. NSP provides...
Vacant Properties
Vacant and foreclosed properties exact potentially destabilizing costs on entire neighborhoods and communities by lowering property values, raising crime rates, and straining municipal resources.
High concentrations of vacant and foreclosed properties are clearly a problem in the Chicago region. Completed foreclosure auctions, which result in the lender gaining ownership of a property, increased in the region by 227 percent between 2006 and 2009. Demand for these homes, despite state and federal interventions designed to encourage home purchases, remains low.
New models must be developed to allow families to stay in their homes, perhaps as renters, so that communities remain stable, valuable housing stock is preserved, and municipalities and servicers do not have the added liability of maintaining and securing vacant property. Municipalities need more tools for purchasing, maintaining, and returning the recent influx of vacant and foreclosed properties to productive use.
This page details the efforts of the Regional Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (RHOPI) vacant and foreclosed properties task force to lead municipalities on maximizing the impact of limited vacant property resources; promote cross-jurisdictional collaboration, land banking, and regional strategy; and position the region for success in obtaining federal, state, and local resources to stabilize neighborhoods and mitigate the effects of vacant properties on communities.
Thousands of vacant homes in the City of Chicago are likely poorly maintained, lack clear ownership, and threaten to destabilize neighborhoods, says a report released by Woodstock Institute.
The foreclosure crisis has...
The foreclosure crisis is an opportunity to reorient housing strategies to focus on creating and supporting neighborhoods that offer residents an attractive place to live. The Building Resilient Regions Network, funded by the MacArthur Foundation through the University of California at Berkeley, is developing applied knowledge about how regions can be resilient in the face of significant...
Beginning in the Spring of 2009, the Lawyers' Committee for Better Housing's Tenants in Foreclosure Intervention Project began collecting and reviewing current data related to tenants in foreclosure in Chicago. We use this data to create weekly reports for 14 community areas in Chicago. These reports are designed to alert our community partners of issues in their neighborhoods and to...
Cook County Economic Development Bureau Chief Maria Saldana, IFF CEO Joe Neri, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle at the groundbreaking of the Maywood Apartments
When the South Suburban Housing Collaborative and the West Cook County Housing Collaborative...
Banks repossess nearly 2,800 homes in Cook County in the first quarter of 2011
Completed foreclosure auctions in Cook County increased substantially from the final quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, adding thousands of properties to the County’s vacant property inventory, say...
The “mission” of New Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, in Auburn Gresham, goes way beyond shouting distance of its physical facility on South Racine Avenue. The church’s community service organization is playing a major role in addressing the foreclosure issue that’s bedeviling Auburn Gresham and many other Chicago neighborhoods. Through the federal Neighborhood...
Learn how other states and localities are planning to use their NSP3 money
On September 8, 2010, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the allocation of $1 billion in Neighborhood Stabilization Program 3 (NSP3) grants to States and to Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) entitlement communities particularly hard hit by home...
Launched in 2008, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) provides localities with federal funding – about $7 billion to date – to help mitigate the negative spillover effects of foreclosed and distressed properties. Since this funding is small compared to the scale of the foreclosure crisis and the level of need, the program relies on a strategy of geographic targeting,...
By Tim Mack
Tim Mack has been a member of Will County’s Community Development Division since 2007, specializing in grant financial management for CDBG, HOME, and LEAD. He assumed the program management role for the county's Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) with its inception in 2008. He also has 10-plus years of personal experience in...