Detroit to cops: Buy a house for $1,000 down

Found this article through the YoChicago real estate news website. Today we're going to take another trip to that struggling all-American city of Detroit, Michigan.

In our Mayoral campaign one of the candidates proposed ending the city residency requirement of city workers such as firemen, police officers, or perhaps even streets and sanitation workers. The idea behind enforcing such an ordinance is hopes to keep middle class Chicagoans from leaving the city for the suburbs. That's the main thing other than being concerned that city workers won't be able to return to the city in a quick fashion if they were needed at all.

In any event Detroit wants to encourage their police officers to buy abandoned homes and giving them incentives to consider staying in the city where they work:

Bringing a blighted, crime-ridden neighborhood back to life is never easy. This challenge has been tackled in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and elsewhere, and now Detroit is in the spotlight for its dramatic urban-resurrection efforts.

Detroit Mayor David Bing this month unveiled a program aimed at enticing police officers to relocate from the suburbs to the city they serve. Dubbed Project 14, the program allows officers to buy vacant houses -- many of which were abandoned after foreclosures -- with down payments of only $1,000.

The historic homes being made available in Detroit’s Boston-Edison and East English Village neighborhoods are appraised at $40,000 to $80,000. Monthly mortgage payments, including principal, interest, taxes and insurance, are expected to fall in the $500 to $1,000 range.

A major benefit of the program, beyond the low payments, is that officers could be eligible for up to $150,000 in federal grant money to renovate the homes. Officials hope Project 14 will provide a double-whammy of recovery by fixing up houses that sorely need help and reducing crime because more police will be present within city limits.

Detroit is a place to keep an eye on. A city that has gone down so far in the past, there is no where else but up. Let's hope that there isn't much difficulty in going up as I really hope Detroit can go back up.