Known as Choice Neighborhoods, the costly enterprise is a centerpiece of the president’s interagency Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. This is described by the administration as collaboration between the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Education, Justice, Treasury and Health and Human Services (HHS) to support the ability of local leaders from the public and private sectors and attract the private investment needed to transform distressed neighborhoods.

Those who care to read between the lines may conclude that this requires big bucks. After all, transforming “distressed” (crime-infested) neighborhoods into desirable middle-class areas can’t be cheap. The proof is in the pudding, or rather the government’s own ledger. Since Obama launched his brilliant Choice Neighborhoods project, it has received north of $236 million, including $110 million in fiscal year 2012. Like many of the president’s initiatives, a chunk of the cash has gone to leftist nonprofits and community groups.  

Logic would lead most to conclude that the administration views Choice Neighborhoods as successful or it wouldn’t keep pouring huge sums of taxpayer dollars into it. So why dole out an additional half a million in research grants to study it? It’s unlikely that any of the grant recipients who will conduct the studies will determine that it’s a waste or a miserable failure, considering Uncle Sam is cutting the checks on both ends.

A high-ranking official at HUD, the agency doling out the cash to conduct the studies, says the grants demonstrate a “commitment to sound research to help gauge the program’s overall success and cultivate the most promising approaches to making the greatest possible impact.” This doesn’t sound all that convincing considering all the money that has already been allotted to the revitalization program.

Let’s check out some of the study recipients; a public university in Washington State will get close to $200,000 to develop an advanced administrative database that provides information about the residents of a Seattle public housing community and its surrounding neighborhood. Another public university in northern California will get $131,148 to research the challenges of brining healthy food options to poor neighborhoods and a Portland college will get close to $77,000 to collect data the characteristics of the neighborhoods being targeted for transformation in the first place.

Furthermore, Uncle Sam must keep doling out the cash for this noble cause, according to the government’s own findings. This seems to be a response to coming under fire for pouring huge sums of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of leftwing community groups that help minorities seeking a good home or struggling to keep one on the verge of foreclosure. In the last few months alone, the nonprofits have received $42 million.

Among them are hundreds of national, regional and local organizations like the powerful open borders group with close ties to the president, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Earlier this year the NCLR, whose federal funding has skyrocketed since one of its top officials got a job on the Obama White House, got nearly $2 million to help combat predatory lending, train poor Latinos about financial literacy and help them become homeowners.

The National Community Reinvestment Corporation, a famously liberal activist group that seeks to eliminate “discrimination” in housing and mortgage lending, and the equally leftist National Urban League, which advocates for social justice and claims voter identification laws are racist also got a chunk of change this year. The first group received $2.5 million from Uncle Sam and the second got $1.05 million.

The money couldn’t go to a better cause, according to a pair of studies financed by American taxpayers to justify the waste. The first is documented in a 197-page report titled “Foreclosure Counseling Outcome Study” and the second in a 91-page “Pre-Purchase Counseling Outcome Study.” Nearly 70% of those who received housing counseling were able to avoid foreclosure, according to the first report and pre-purchase counseling really helped a “diverse group of low- to moderate-income individuals obtain useful information” that led to home ownership.

In short, “housing counseling significantly improved the likelihood homeowners remained in their homes” according to a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) press release announcing the reports this month. The announcement is appropriately titled “HUD Studies Show Housing Counseling Helps Families Prepare for Home Ownership and Keep the Homes They Have.”

The key phrase comes via HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, Raphael Bostic: “These two studies underscore the need to continue supporting housing counseling programs across this country, especially during this period when families need these services the most.” He continues: “The evidence is clear, with a little investment on the front end, we can go a long way toward improving the chances families will buy a home they can afford and sustain their homes in the long run.”

It’s definitely a new era of government spending. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is allocating $20 million to “improve performance and boost the capacity of state and local governments to implement their federal block grant programs for housing and community development.” In this case the cash will support “technical assistance” projects that guide local governments trying to “stabilize” in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

The money will go to three types of “results-oriented technical assistance and capacity building,” according to HUD; comprehensive assistance to help grantees improve their basic program performance; limited assistance to grantees that have clearly identified program gaps; and innovative assistance to help grantees in restructuring their housing and community development programs to better meet the needs in their communities.

“These funds will help our partners work smarter and stretch federal investments for the greatest possible benefit to the people and places we serve,” said Mercedes Márquez, HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development.  “In today’s budget environment, we not only have to do more with less, we have to perform at a very high level to make certain limited taxpayer dollars have the real and lasting impact.”

Eligible applicants include state or local governments, public housing authorities, nonprofit community groups, educational institutions, Indian tribes, for-profit organizations, public or private organizations and other “intermediaries.” In other words, pretty much anyone can qualify for this particular grant.

That’s because the agency has made a “fundamental change” in the way its traditional “program-specific” technical assistance has been structured. It will be replaced with a new “cross-program” approach. What does this all mean? Nobody really knows since it’s purposely written in a mystic government lingo so regular people can’t truly understand it.

What we do know is that HUD has initiated a number of controversial programs under the Obama Administration. Last fall the agency launched a special initiative to help illegal immigrants nationwide and it intervened against Arizona’s strict immigration control law by warning that federal housing obligations prohibit “discrimination against protected class members.” HUD also deployed its assistance secretary to intercept a Fremont Nebraska measure banning illegal aliens from renting in its jurisdiction.

HUD has also been embroiled in a huge scandal surrounding federal grants awarded to the famously corrupt Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). In 2009 Judicial Watch sued the agency for the records and in 2010 a HUD Inspector General report revealed that ACORN embezzled millions of dollars for “housing counseling” in one year alone and destroyed the documents to hide the fraud.