Tom Commings needed a job. Over the past summer, the 35-year old resident of Dearborn Homes, a wornout, public-housing complex on Chicago’s South Side, was laid off from a factory job. Relief came this September in the form of a $28.2-million infusion of federal stimulus funds aimed at upgrading three of Dearborn’s 16 brick apartment buildings. Commings now is working as a laborers’ union Local 4 apprentice steps away from his front door. “It’s hard work, but it’s good work,” says Commings. “It’s a great opportunity.”

Built in 1950, Dearborn’s monolithic brick buildings originally were designed to contain 800 units. Decades later, the development had joined the city’s many failed housing projects. By the early 1980s, drug dealing and other criminal activity had infested the community, which was fraught with gang violence and blight. “It was hard to stay out of trouble,” says Commings.