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June 18, 2014

Detroit fights blight by selling vacant homes in strong areas

  • Homeowners get $25,000 loans when they buy homes at auction. The loans are forgiven at the rate of $5,000 for each year the buyer lives in the house.
    • By COREY WILLIAMS
    Associated Press

    DETROIT — Anthony Brown keeps his home of 36 years in good shape, but it is an island of tranquility in a sea of blight in Detroit's Marygrove neighborhood. There is a vacant house next door, another across the street and still others farther down Wisconsin Street.

    “It was beautiful around here,” Brown, a 59-year-old Ford Motor Co. worker, said about how things once looked. “Everybody was in the houses. Everybody kept their lawns up. Everybody was planting flowers.”


     
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