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Community services director warns HUD guidance will require DuPage County to set aside CDBG funds for Wheaton and Downers Grove
Summary
Mary Keegan told the Human Services Committee that new HUD guidance (CPD-26-08) may require DuPage County to set aside funding roughly commensurate with what Wheaton and Downers Grove would have received on their own, which could reduce competitive funding for other local infrastructure projects.
Mary Keegan, Community Services, told the DuPage County Human Services Committee on June 16 that recent guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will change how the county allocates Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to participating municipalities.
"HUD has now come up with sort of a new interpretation," Keegan said, describing an instruction (CPD-26-08) that she and staff discussed with HUD representatives. "We're expected to provide a relative amount of project funding commensurate to what they would have got on their own." Keegan said the guidance could require the county to set aside funds for Wheaton and, potentially, Downers Grove.
Keegan said Wheaton and Downers Grove are both large enough that they typically qualify for their own CDBG entitlement; Naperville similarly qualifies but runs its own program. Under the new interpretation, the county would have to identify eligible projects in those municipalities and ensure the municipalities receive funding that reflects what HUD expects they would have obtained as entitlement communities. Keegan and staff discussed possibly bundling two or three years of funding to make infrastructure projects viable; she suggested a working figure of roughly $150,000 to $200,000 per municipality as an initial planning estimate.
Committee members asked whether Downers Grove or Wheaton had recently applied for funding. Keegan said Downers Grove had not applied in many years and Wheaton’s past applications typically did not score as competitively as projects in other county communities. The committee discussed next steps: staff will contact the mayors and managers (the DMMC) and set up meetings to identify potential eligible projects and to explain the new HUD instructions.
Why it matters: the practical effect Keegan described is that more CDBG funds may be earmarked for projects in larger suburban jurisdictions that historically redirected entitlement-eligible funds to the county’s program, potentially reducing the pool available to projects in smaller communities that have relied on competitive scoring.
The committee approved the intergovernmental agreements with Downers Grove and Wheaton for federal fiscal years 2027–2029 with automatic renewal as allowed by the HUD instruction. Keegan said staff will report back with implementation details and recommended approaches for setting aside or bundling funds for eligible projects.
