The City’s implementation of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) has increased investment in its areas of greatest need by $153 million in a very short period of time. Founded by the Housing & Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and strengthened by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, NSP was designed to help local government address the threat of vacancy and blight due to our nation’s foreclosure crisis. As a high-velocity “emergency” type of federal grant program, NSP challenged many municipalities to deal with the fast implementation requirements of NSP1. As a result, many local governments didn’t bother competing for NSP2 grants in 2009.

The City of Chicago was bold in its approach to managing NSP1 when it was pushed out to local governments based on formula allocation. Moving quickly and boldly with its non-profit partners, the City of Chicago successfully obligated its $55.1 million NSP1 grant (the 10th largest NSP1 allocation, and the largest to any municipality) within the required 18 months and applied for and received an additional $98 million under NSP2. The City relied upon a combination of public/non-profit partnerships, inter-departmental partnerships and new information technology tools to make this high-velocity community development intervention a success. And as an organization, the City itself improved in terms of cross-departmental collaboration, public involvement and a substantial increase in service delivery times due to the emergency nature of NSP.