Despite following the advice of Washington and clubbing together the suburban cites in the Chicago regions were denied their slice of the pie from the Neighborhood Stabilization Programme. At the time of application the governments had big plans about repairing, renovating, demolishing and developing estates but it all came to naught with the grant being given to Chicago only.
HUD declined to make any specific comment but said that if all the requests across the nation were attended to then the amount would come to $15 billion – seven times greater than the $2 billion set aside by the Congress for this purpose.
Chicago has been given $98 million. This amount is the fifth highest in the country and the second among the cities. Chicago’s amount ranks second to Los Angeles. The agent who supervises the housing programme on behalf of the Department of Community Development of Chicago Ellen Sahli, said that the city had made a name for itself by taking the help of local organizations having experience in building affordable residential units.
In trying to smooth out the troubles that relate to crossing of local jurisdictions, HUD has requested the adjacent counties as well as municipalities to jointly apply. HUD had also expected that the cities would take up the foreclosure challenge as a regional one and not be diverted by crisscrossing interests. The proposals put forward by HUD was in tune with what Obama wanted – promotion of local cooperation and tactical planning in the regions in the metro areas. These are the power kegs of the nation and are administered by a kaleidoscope of regional governments that are more interested in competition rather than development.

While evaluating the applications HUD did not give importance to collaborations. Lee Deuben of Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning who drafted the suburban suggestions said “We did submit a regional inter-jurisdictional proposal, but there was nothing their scoring criteria that rewarded that.
Pope of Village Park said, “It’s disappointing, but it’s not surprising. We’re getting a lot of happy talk and lip service out of the administration and HUD about working regionally. But up to this point, there hasn’t been a whole lot of there there.”

Without money from Washington the municipalities of the suburbs do not have the resources to tackle a problem of such gargantuan size. It started off from Chicago but has of late spread to the suburbs.

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