HUD Gives Grant for $1.5B Plan Continuation

CHICAGO-The US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday a $20 million grant for the Chicago Housing Authority, for a project that is part of the $1.5 billion “Plan for Transformation” to rebuild the city’s public housing projects. The grant will support the second of four phases of the authority’s rehabilitation of the former Stateway Gardens development to create more than 1,300 housing opportunities to be known as Park Boulevard, between 35th and Pershing Road on the west side of Bronzeville. This is the ninth HOPE VI Revitalization grant the CHA has received since the grant program was started in 1992 to provide money for public housing authorities to improve distressed public housing into mixed-income communities.

“This is a very competitive grant program,” a HUD spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. “Applicants have to have an outstanding redevelopment plan and be able to demonstrate that they have the ability to do what they say they want to do. There are complexities when you talk about rehabbing distressed public housing, and this is about revitalizing an entire public housing development.” The spokesman declined to release a budget or timeline for the project, and CHA representatives did not return calls for comment.

The spokesman says complexities include relocating the families which occupied the original housing, and transitioning them into a voucher program. The spokesman says Chicago’s plan has been very successful in doing that in the development process so far. The spokesman says the old Stateway has already been demolished and the CHA will now begin the second phase of the project and new construction at the planned mixed-income community.