Detroit: a Housing Experiment

In 2016, Detroit had more than 700 mortgages issued. Currently, a variety of groups, foundations, banks, and local officials are slowly attempting to resuscitate the metro's mortgage market.

Reverend Faith Fowler, executive director of Cass Community Social Services, has initated a tiny home project where 400 square-foot homes are being built as housing for the homeless and physically disabled. The New York Times reports that the structures will be on a plot of vacant land purchased from the city.

Detroit’s population peaked in the 1950s at nearly 2 million and has been falling ever since. The financial crisis and the city’s bankruptcy filing in 2013 hollowed out what was left of its once large, middle-class African-American community. Over the past decade there have been more than 150,000 home foreclosures here.

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