“Just abruptly, we had to end up staying with relatives and friends,” said Ms. Sanders, a retired state worker who is black and who, at age 60, still has trouble recounting the ordeal without breaking into tears. “It was kind of devastating. My parents tried to protect us quite a bit, but I knew something was wrong.”  And something was. In 1971, a federal judge found that this old manufacturing town, five miles from downtown Detroit, had deliberately used urban renewal projects throughout the 1950s and ’60s to obliterate black areas from its two square miles, displacing hundreds of families.  Although the judge, Damon J. Keith, ordered a remedy, and Hamtramck agreed to build new housing, it did not. For decades.  Now, though, in a time of deep recession and a housing slump in one of the most economically depressed states in the country, Hamtramck (pronounced ham-TRAM-eck) is at last fulfilling its legal — and what officials now call moral — obligation to provide affordable housing to the mostly poor families who were dislodged generations ago.  And if the plaintiffs in the original class-action lawsuit are no longer living, as in Ms. Sanders’s case, children and grandchildren are eligible.  About 100 houses have been completed for rent or sale, and another 100 are on the way, paid for by a mix of local and state money.  In the last five years, the town began building the new houses, but the project stalled because of the recession. It is only now approaching the final stages of construction, thanks to a recent increase in federal stimulus money. The homes, mostly two- and three-bedroom models, cost $140,000 to $160,000, and subsidies can reduce the price to $100,000; most rentals are in the $400-a-month range, after government assistance.  But beyond the building, Hamtramck has changed in another way, too. According to the Census Bureau, it is now Michigan’s most international and diverse city, having evolved from a town that was 90 percent Polish just 40 years ago. With the changes came new attitudes about how to deal with the past.  Just weeks ago, Ms. Sanders moved into a new ranch-style house on the same street where her family once lived, and Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm personally handed over the keys. As a young lawyer, Ms. Granholm was a clerk to Judge Keith in the late 1980s.  “We went full circle, and it’s pretty wonderful,” said Ms. Sanders, whose parents, now dead, were among the 250 plaintiffs who sued the city. “To acknowledge that, O.K., they were wrong, that gives me a little satisfaction because my parents were mistreated so. I just wish they were here to see it.”  The home building is also what experts call a bittersweet finale to one of the longest-running housing discrimination suits to weave its way through court, having begun in the civil rights era. Beyond its age, the case is also distinctive in that it happened at all. While Hamtramck may be an extreme example, experts said housing discrimination against blacks in the mid-1900s was common, but class-action lawsuits were rare because of their expense and complexity.  Some contend that urban renewal projects were routinely used to demolish black areas, and that most of the housing was never replaced.  “This case is unusual in a good way,” said Victor Goode, a lawyer with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  Michael Barnhart, an expert on fair-housing law and the lead lawyer in the Hamtramck case, agreed. “This kind of discrimination happened all over the country,” Mr. Barnhart said, citing Chicago, Detroit and other cities.  Over the last 10 years, as the settlement appeared to be coming to fruition, Mr. Barnhart and a local minister, the Rev. Joseph R. Jordan, met with surviving plaintiffs and their families just about weekly, spending hours trying to work out the details of moving hundreds of families back to town, most from Detroit.  “We had tried several times over the years to get something started, but really couldn’t find the funding,” Mr. Barnhart said.  Judge Keith, who now sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, called the case “difficult” and “depressing” in an interview. But, he added: “I was there to see Sallie Sanders get the keys. It was meaningful to me as a human being.”  Charnita Monday, 64, is renting one of the new houses. She moved to Hamtramck from Bessemer, Ala., looking for factory work in the late 1960s. The home she bought was among those condemned.  “The judge just kept hammering on the case, and all those years, they wouldn’t let it go,” said Ms. Monday, who is black. “I think an injustice has been righted.”  “I had gotten physically tired, mentally tired and even tired of praying,” she said. “But now, it’s like you got a new life, you know?”
A Michigan city settled a discrimination suit by offering homes to descendants of residents forced off their land.