Houses in Detroit demolished with money intended to save them

2017-07-19T14:16:00-04:00

With a surplus of unused money, Michigan became the first state in 2013 to demolish homes using money intended to save them. The idea was that demolitions would revitalize neighborhoods by increasing the property values of surrounding houses, attracting new homeowners, and reducing crime rates.

Detroit's neediest homeowners were supposed to receive federal assistance to save their homes as part of the Treasury Department's seven-year-old Hardest Hit Fund. However, Michigan squandered its originally allotted $498 million by creating unnecessarily stringent requirements, according to a scathing audit issued in January by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

As a result, more than 80 percent of Detroiters making $30,000 or less a year were denied assistance to save their homes from tax or mortgage foreclosure. By contrast, the other 17 states with Hardest Hit Funds rejected 53 percent of homeowners making less than $30,000.

SIGTARP 2016 investigation found that demolition programs are "vulnerable to the risk of unfair competitive practices such as bid rigging, contract steering, and other closed door contracting processes" because the "Treasury conducts no oversight" and therefore cannot determine whether the cost of d...

Brutalism lovers rejoice: Plans for a new FBI headquarters are canceled

2017-07-11T14:40:00-04:00

The decision follows years of failed attempts by federal officials to persuade Congress to fully back a plan for a campus in the Washington suburbs paid for by trading away the Hoover Building to a real estate developer and putting up nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to cover the remaining cost. For years, FBI officials have raised alarms that the decrepit conditions at Hoover constitute serious security concerns.

Built in 1975 in Washington DC, at $126 million, J. Edgar Hoover Building was the most expensive federal building ever erected. While much loved by some architectural critics, the building has also been under intense criticism for its appearance and functionality ever since its construction.

J. Edgar Hoover Building from the street - taken in April 2007.

Some of its most distinctive features like its open courtyard, designed to allow visitors to walk freely into the inner courtyard, and its firing range equipped with a 162-seat auditorium, where visitors can sit and watch agents take shooting practice, have become obsolete over the years. The Stanislaw Gladych and Carter Manny-designed Brutalist icon was going to be demolished and replaced with a mixed-use condo building, but as of now, it's destiny is unclear.

According to the Washington Post, "Further retrofitting is prohibitively expensive; despite the Hoover building’s overall size of 2.4 million gross square feet only 53 perce...

Archinect - News

Houses in Detroit demolished with money intended to save them

Brutalism lovers rejoice: Plans for a new FBI headquarters are canceled