Mayor Tisdahl, with a team of city staff, aldermen and Illinois lawmakers, worked hard to win the federal government’s $18.15 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 grant for Evanston. One component of the project is to rehab 100 foreclosed or abandoned houses, transforming them into affordable housing for low and moderate and middle-income households.

Another aim of the program is to put Evanstonians to work. The city planned to award 25 percent of subcontracts to minority-owned, woman-owned, or Evanston-based businesses. But in Evanston, NSP2 has exceeded that goal. Thirty-three percent of the contracts have gone to minority-owned businesses, 46% to woman-owned businesses, and 78% have gone to Evanston-based businesses.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin thinks Evanston’s progress is a model for other cities. “I wish I could bring some of my senate colleagues who go on the senate floor everyday and say the president’s stimulus was a failure,” Durbin said at an open house of one of Evanston’s NSP2 properties. “Thats what the stimulus was all about,” he added. “Come to Evanston, Illinois, if you want to see how it works.”