Detroit has had enough pity.
For decades, people have fretted over the blight caused by the hemorrhaging of jobs from a town that was once the toast of U.S. industrialism.
The gawking and hand-wringing worsened with the last recession, when Detroit lost hundreds of thousands more jobs and tipped into such dire territory that it began to resemble a developing country: Many streetlights and fire hydrants stopped working, police responses were slow, and trash pick-up was spotty.
Large swaths of housing, some of it long neglected, began to noticeably rot.
Even Detroit’s finest neighborhoods held scores of empty homes with lawns mowed by neighbors hoping for a better day.
For the first time in years, possibly decades, there is tangible hope that that day is coming — slowly, but finally coming.
Detroit has taken its medicine, including going through a bankruptcy that ended late last year. It’s also aggressively addressing the blight caused by tens of thousands of distressed homes that were given up to graffiti and squatters.
Although burned-out residences and fire-ravaged factories still plague the landscape, people are regaining their innate Detroit pride and enjoy showing off how far the city has come.
They have hope, which for many takes the shape of bulldozers.
“They tore down that house today. I am so happy,” effused Carole Hudson, a resident since 1968 of the Marygrove neighborhood, which Zillow visited during the Detroit stop of its Housing Roadmap tour.
Empty spaces beat falling-apart flop houses, explained Hudson, who worried about the people who slept in abandoned homes on her block. She was thrilled to watch bulldozers flatten seven or eight of the houses.
Houses are being razed all over the city, but it will take months and possibly years for Detroit to topple all the homes that need it.
The Detroit Land Bank Authority orders the demolitions as part of its quest to either turn around or bulldoze more than 80,000 distressed homes, which are dragging down home values and keeping neighborhoods from rebounding.
The Land Bank, a quasi-governmental organization, has sued some 2,000 homeowners to force them to fix their properties or give them up, and it’s auctioning off abandoned homes that can be saved.
The auctioned homes start at $1,000, and mansions can be had for a song — but the cost of rehabbing them cannot.
Drextel Amy, president of Liberty Bank’s Michigan region, figures the average rehab in Detroit these days costs some $50,000, and closer to $100,000 or $150,000 if it’s a historic home.
There are stories of much higher-cost renovations, and many people who would like to buy a fixer-upper have had trouble getting mortgages. Only 529 Detroit homes were bought with a mortgage in all of 2013.
A scourge of low appraisals and no appraisals hurts the chances that someone who won a home at auction can get a loan to fix it up.
Even homeowners with no intention of moving spend time closely monitoring their home values as a proxy for how well or poorly their neighborhood is faring.
Bill Barlage, president of the East English Village Neighborhood Association, lives in a neatly manicured community that has banded together to mow lawns and otherwise ensure that empty homes remain presentable. Neighbors also follow HOA-like rules about the way their streets look — including monitoring the presence of garbage bins, commercial vehicles and car maintenance — in an effort to keep the area looking good.
“We hit such an incredible low, it’s terrifying,” Barlage explained.
East English Village residents Maureen Dritsan, Roland Leggett, Willie Bell (Detroit Police Commission Chair), Kathy Roddie and Bill Barlage
The last thing Barlage and his neighbors need is for lenders or appraisers to misunderstand the difference between their well-kept streets and rundown places nearby.
Neighborhood boundaries are a big deal in this housing environment, as are windows.
Nothing says a home is occupied like windows, even if it’s not. Some communities have replaced windows on distressed homes to keep up neighborhood appearances, a Land Bank official said.
It hasn’t come to that for Lola Holton, a 40-year Marygrove resident and president of the Fitzgerald Community Coalition. But she does look forward to the day when she won’t have to pay to mow the lawns of several vacant homes in her area.
Her quintessential Detroit pride mixes with its newfound hope: “I want it back like it was, and that’s how it’s going to be — nothing less.”
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