New Funds will Let Detroit Take a Bigger Bite out of Blight
Detroit gets $42 million more to fight blight, while feds subpoena records about the spiraling cost of demolition.
Detroit is receiving a new infusion of funding to help tear down blighted buildings in the city.
Detroit now has $42 million dollars in new funding to target blight.
The funds were granted by the U.S. Treasury Department last month, then approved by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority last week.
Detroit officials say the action by the state means the new funding can be used to tear down roughly 1,200 blighted homes that the city could not originally use federal monies to demolish.
That’s because the properties were not in neighborhoods that qualified for the federal government’s Hardest Hit Fund.
The funding approval comes on the heels of a subpoena from federal investigators for documents involving Detroit’s demolition program.
Critics have questioned why the cost of demolitions in Detroit appears to have increased significantly in recent years.
