Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
It is only for Detroit public safety officers (police/fire) to get them to move back to the city since the state struck down the law that required them to live in the city where they worked. The properties offered ARE the typical Boston-Edison and E. Indian village homes but they are homes that are in foreclosure and, from what I understand, are typical foreclosure homes.. read: need a ton of work. What they really need to do is give them a break on the taxes and get them good insurance deals. Those are the things that made people leave in the first place.
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I've never looked into E. Indian Village but I did look at houses in Indian Village, Boston-Edison, Palmer Woods, and Sherwood Forest and none of the foreclosed houses I saw in those neighborhoods were city owned, they were all bank owned. Are they going to be acquiring these properties from the banks and then giving them away? Detroit has been struggling in recent years to figure out what to do with all the city held properties, so I just assumed that this program would be giving away the houses they currently owned.
You'll never find a good insurance rate in those neighborhoods because of the older housing stock. I'm naive when it comes to home owners insurance but what would happen if there was catastrophic damage to a B-E home? It would cost over a million dollars to replicate the craftsmanship of those houses so if there was a fire that took out a wing of the home then what? There wouldn't be a $20,000 fix, the insurance company would probably have to buy the house then tear it down. The also do get a tax break because these hoods(at least B-E) is subject to the NEZ tax break BUT I think that still leaves them at a mill rate of 56 which I still think is too high considering the lack of services and security you get living in Detroit. I'd like to see Detroit go down to a mill rate of 35-40. I might even consider buying a home in the city again if I ever make my way back there with those rates.