The Metro: Detroit vs Speculators: The lawsuit that never was
Detroit battles a new housing crisis: speculation and risky rent-to-own deals. What happened to efforts to hold speculators accountable?
Detroit's Fitzgerald neighborhood. Photo credit: Laura Herberg, WDET
For a long time, one of Detroit’s biggest challenges was blight. Generational disinvestment and residential flight left about 80,000 homes blighted by 2014. Since then, the city has removed or rehabbed thousands of properties. But blight and disinvestment have given way to a different problem: housing speculation.
To make quick profits, speculators, often from outside Detroit, buy homes cheaply, rent them out, and invest little to nothing in upkeep.
The City of Detroit once filed suit against several major speculators but dropped the cases more than a year ago, leaving many to wonder what happened and what harm remains. Will the city resume efforts to hold them accountable?
Today on The Metro, Aaron Mondry, senior reporter at Outlier Media, explores how rent-to-own housing agreements can be exploitative. These deals often lack legal protections and leave buyers vulnerable to eviction if payments are missed.
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