Is it still news when officials gather on a Detroit street to tout their plan to demolish abandoned homes?
The most recent gathering took place Monday afternoon when federal, state and local officials kicked off a campaign to remove thousands of blighted homes from Detroit’s neighborhoods.
Gov. Rick Snyder’s office called it part of the largest residential blight removal effort in state history.
According to Matt Helms of the Free Press, officials gathered on Turner Street off Puritan near Livernois to publicize the $52 million in federal funds the Obama administration is making available to Detroit to help stabilize its neighborhoods.
"It’s estimated that the city has as many as 78,000 vacant and abandoned buildings, and neighbors say the homes become magnets for crime, from drug dealing to thievery of copper piping and other materials inside, pushing down property values and making neighborhoods unsafe," Helms writes.
The $52 million in federal funds, through programs designed to help the communities hardest hit by the nation’s housing and foreclosure crisis, is expected to result in the removal of 4,000 blighted buildings in Detroit.
