List of Eligible Neighborhoods
Chicago's Neighborhood Stabilization Program identified 28 eligible regions with high foreclosure rates and where many homeowners took out subprime mortgages. Those are the areas that will be eligible for NSP funds.
Download a map showing the communities.
Auburn Gresham
Auburn Gresham is a predominately African-American middle class community located nine miles from downtown Chicago. After two decades of residential flight and commercial disinvestment along the 79th Street retail strip, the community began to see a rebound in the late 1990s through the efforts of a new alderman, alliance of community organizations and investment from the city. Today's neighborhood has many strong block clubs, well-maintained homes and new businesses along 79th Street.
Austin
The largest neighborhood in Chicago with a 2005 estimated population of 116,000, Austin has been a primarily African-American community since the late 1970s. The housing stock is a diverse mix of single-family homes, two flats, six flats and large apartment buildings, with more than 19,000 rental units and 15,000 owner-occupied units. Private and non-profit developers have been rehabilitating Austin housing for decades and commercial revitalization efforts are underway on West Madison Street and Chicago Avenue.
Burnside
Burnside is a distinctive triangular area bounded by three railroads on the far South Side. Home to Chicago State University, Burnside once provided plentiful factory employment through Burnside Shops, Pullman Company, and Burnside Steel Mill, but many of those jobs left starting in the 1960s. The area changed from nearly all-white to all-African American between 1960 and 1990. The area features middle-class single-family homes, plenty of parkland, and a public swimming pool.
Chatham
Attractive bungalows and apartment buildings have made Chatham a community of choice for Chicago's middle class African-American population since the 1950s. Strong community organizations and steady reinvestment by residents have kept housing values high and attracted African-American businesses and shoppers to the commercial district on East 87th Street.
Chicago Lawn
Chicago Lawn, on the city’s Southwest Side, is a multi-ethnic working class community determined to stop the downward spiral of disinvestment and urban decay, and to create an attractive, safe and inviting place to live for families from many backgrounds. Today, African-Americans and people of Mexican and Arab descent are purchasing homes in the area, becoming a part of existing institutions and supporting new types of organizations and businesses.
East Garfield Park
East Garfield Park is a mostly low-income, African-American community that sits outside the immediate radius of high-energy gentrification — at least for now. Located two to three miles west of the Loop on the “El” Green Line, the community’s business sector was devastated and significant amounts of its population fled after the 1968 riots, and the neighborhood has never fully recovered.
Englewood
Once home to the city's second busiest shopping districts at the transit-served corner of 63rd and Halsted Streets, the Englewood neighborhood in recent decades has struggled to reverse a long decline in population and economic health. Englewood’s population fell 17 percent in the 1990s to 40,222, from a peak of 97,000 in 1960. Housing was 31.5 percent owner occupied, up slightly, but the population below the poverty level stood at 43.8 percent. With more than 10,000 housing units lost over the decades, the neighborhood has many vacant lots and large areas ready for redevelopment. New development has begun to breathe life into the neighborhood and large public investments suggest a stronger future.
Fuller Park
Fuller Park, just south of U.S. Cellular Field between the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Rock Island Railroad Metra lines to the east and the Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad to the west, is one of Chicago's smallest community areas. The community derives its name from the small park named for Melville W. Fuller, Chicago attorney and U.S. chief justice.
Grand Boulevard
This neighborhood is undergoing massive redevelopment as new mixed-income housing is built on the former sites of the Robert Taylor Homes public housing high-rises. After many years of population decline — from 80,000 residents to 1970 to an estimated 26,000 in 2005 – the community is experiencing a resurgence of new housing and retail development. Grand Boulevard and its major commercial strips on 43rd and 47th Streets is well served by CTA's Green and Red Lines.
Greater Grand Crossing
Greater Grand Crossing is a largely African-American community of 38,400 residents located near the junction of the Chicago Skyway and Dan Ryan Expressway. Its housing stock is a mix of single-family homes, two-flats and small apartment buildings. New housing has been built recently in the area around Paul Revere School, east of South Chicago Avenue. Revere is the focal point of a comprehensive redevelopment effort funded in part by Gary Comer, founder of Lands End, who grew up in Grand Crossing.
Humboldt Park
Humboldt Park is a low- to middle-income, mixed African-American and Hispanic neighborhood that has begun to show significant signs of gentrification on its eastern end, east of Humboldt Park itself — although that may have slowed in the past few years as the housing market has cooled.
New City
New City, on the Southwest Side, comprises Irish Americans Canaryville, Mexican-Americans in Back Of The Yards, and African-Americans south of 49th Street. The area was home the Union Stock Yards until they closed in 1971. Back of the Yards is an industrial and residential neighborhood so named because it was near the stock yards.The area was once an Eastern European, predominantly Polish, neighborhood with many Polish churches, bakeries, taverns, and small stores. After the 1970s, the population changed to predominantly Mexican-Americans. Canaryville, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, is predominantly Irish American.
North Lawndale
A working class neighborhood once centered around the world headquarters of Sears, Roebuck and Co., North Lawndale is recovering from a long period of population decline and disinvestment. Now home to 42,000 residents, down from 125,000 in 1960, the neighborhood has attracted significant new development over the past 20 years, including a grocery store on Roosevelt Road, several housing developments, and the creation of the Homan Square Community Center in the former Sears complex.
Oakland
Located on the near South Side and built in the late 19th Century to resemble an elegant, Victorian-style suburb, Oakland's surviving rowhouses and single-family residences feature such styles as Classical Revival, Queen Anne, and Richardsonian Romanesque. Due to its proximity to both the lakefront and downtown, the neighborhood experienced a building boom during the real estate run-up in the early 2000s, and a higher-income, more diverse population integrated what had been a low- to moderate-income, mostly African-American community.
Pullman
Pullman, on the South Side, includes the landmarked district of workers row houses and other buildings that were at the heart of the Pullman sleeper car manufacturing business. That area has been the object of significant attention and gentrification in recent years. But the surrounding blocks are characterized by poverty and disinvestment. The neighborhood is served by two Metra Electric Line stations.
Riverdale
Located southwest of Lake Calumet and adjacent Chicago Southeast Side, Riverdale is a suburban community of about 15,000 people incorporated in 1892 and currently led by Mayor Deyon L. Dean. The town, which changed from majority white (58.6%) in 1990 to overwhelmingly African American (86.4%) in 2000 while gaining population, also borders Dolton, Dixmoor, Harvey and Calumet Park. The area has a Metra station and ready access to Interstates 57 and 94.
Roseland
Roseland, on the far South Side, includes the neighborhoods of Fernwood, Princeton Park Lilydale, West Chesterfield, Rosemoor, Sheldon Heights and West Roseland. In the late 1800s, it was a multicultural, cosmopolitan commercial and residential community. Fortunes began to change in the 1960s when industry patterns led to economic decline. Steel mills to the east were shuttered. Pullman scaled back rail production and eventually closed for good in 1981. A period of rapid ethnic succession took place. Skyrocketing crime rates, gang violence and urban decay forced long time residents and businesses to move away. The area has struggled to recover since then.
South Chicago
South Chicago had been a proud working-class community for a century when the steel industry began a precipitous decline in the 1980s and early 1990s, leaving a shattered community of brownfields, empty stores and worn out housing. The population in 2000 was 38,596, with a mix of 68 percent African Americans and 27 percent Latinos. More than 40 percent of the modest wood-frame and brick houses were owner-occupied in 2000, but nearly 1,700 units were vacant. Today’s residents work in many industries and some commute downtown on a rebuilt South Shore Drive or the Metra Electric commuter line via a new station at 93rd Street.
South Deering
South Deering, on the far South Side, is the former home of the now defunct Wisconsin Steel Works. The area from 95th to 103rd and from Baltimore Avenue to Manistee is referred to as "Slag Valley", in reference to the slag (waste steel) from the former steel plants. Since the closing of the plant, the neighborhood has gone through an economic depression.
South Shore
South Shore is a largely is a largely middle-class African American community, with commercial strips on 71st and 75th streets and a shopping plaza at 71st and Jeffrey. Once a largely white community, made efforts at “managed integration” in the mid-20th century that were unsuccessful. Although residential and commercial decline did coincide with an increase in the African American population, it had more to do with real-estate “redlining” and commercial disinvestment.
Washington Park
Washington Park, on the South Side, includes the 372-acre park of the same name that stretches east-west from Cottage Grove Avenue to the Dan Ryan Expressway, and north-south from 63rd Street to 51st. Including the park, the community area hosts two listings on the National Register of Historic Places. The park is surrounded by small neighborhoods that have gone through notable and often turbulent racial transitions.
West Englewood
Originally settled along the rail lines after the Chicago Fire of 1871, West Englewood has seen its population decline from a peak of 62,000 in 1980 to 45,000 in 2000, shifting from 88 percent white in 1970 to 98 percent African American by 2000. The area has been hard hit by the loss of railroad and stockyard jobs as well as the closing of a CTA bus barn during that period of time. Many vacant homes were demolished during the 1980s, and agencies like the West Englewood United Organization have been working to revitalize the area.
West Garfield Park
Located five miles west of the Loop and directly west of lush, sprawling Garfield Park, this community saw massive white flight between 1960 and 1990 as its population fell nearly in half from 45,000 to 24,000 and flipped from 84 percent white to 99 percent African American. Agencies led by Bethel New Life are working to restore and rehabilitate the area's housing and physical infrastructure while undertaking an oral history project to capture the past.
West Pullman
Although not part of the official Pullman company town, West Pullman's fate has been inextricably tied to the heavy industry that surrounded it, with closed factories leading to high unemployment and environmentally related health issues. The community's population remained stable, increasing slightly from 35,000 to 39,000, even as it flipped like so many other surrounding neighborhoods from nearly all-white in 1960 to 94 percent African American in 1990. The area has access to Metra in Pullman proper as well as easy access to the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Woodlawn
Woodlawn is a predominately mixed-income African-American community on Chicago’s lakefront, eight miles from downtown. To the north is Hyde Park and the University of Chicago , and to Woodlawn’s east are the South Shore neighborhood and Jackson Park, one of the city’s premier parks and golf courses.