Now comes encouraging news of a Detroit program to take abandoned homes which can be saved into a land bank and then auction them off. The program is coupled with forgivable loans for repairs. — CNU
Detrroit is auctioning off vacant homes to "people who commit to fix them up and live in them." The implementation has supported Detroit's growing identity as a financially feasible place to "make a start with a home and a business."
8 Comments
Why is there no major effort to educate the unemployed about how to restore these homes?
There is also the hidden cost of the tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of back taxes that need to be paid after buying a cheap fixer upper.
How is that exactly? It would seem that if the city bought the homes, is auctioning them off, and offering grants, there'd be no tax burden, or the taxes have been wiped.
Property taxes are assessed by the county as well as city, so Detroit can't just waive Wayne county tax unless they willing to pay for it.
County taxes, really? What do you think that amounts to, I pay county taxes, it aint shit.
Plus the property tax rate is one of the highest in the country. So, after you have paid the back taxes and restored your home it gets accessed at a high value on which you pay the tax high rate. All so you can live in wonderful Detroit?
why would that be the case volunteer? You think the govt hasn't worked on this aspect of their attempt at recovery? Or you know this for a fact?
I was just in Detroit last month, checking out the urban farming and learning about the specific problems of the city. I don't know very much after such a short visit (only a week), but I would guess the main problem with this venture is that the population loss was so extreme and the job loss that caused it was so intense (leading to a drain of something like 2/3rds of the population, though I don't trust this number even as I write it) that recovery will only come with serious innovation and re-thinking the city.
Anand Giridharadas makes the very good point recently that innovation is not the same as progress, and that progress is threatened by the last decades of liberalization and focus on tech.
In which case we need to innovate with culture and opportunity. This kind of effort seems exactly the right thing to try. And if it fails nothing is lost because Detroit has gone as far down the path of loss for so long that a humble effort like this can only be a positive thing. Even if it fails completely it will be something to learn from.
Some people think government shouldn't experiment with society, that it should be left to the private market. But the private market is not organized for the greater good. Its set up for selfishness and greed. In which case it makes excellent sense to pursue both market led ideas as well as ones led by the government and learn from both. Maybe after a while Detroit will be better and do better. They sure as hell could not do much worse.
The only thing I can figure is that if the city writes off the back taxes on an abandoned property it will make their own financial situation that much worse. It has been widely reported that the back tax issue is one one of the main impediments of recovery. The high property rate is also the subject of numerous articles. The city government itself seems a roadblock to recovery.
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