According to the city plan “Moving Detroit Forward” written in 1975, the city government heavily focused on revitalizing the city, coming up with a variety of programs dealing with housing, employment, industry, and so on. As indicated in the title “moving forward,” Detroit was in a state of economic downturn by the time this plan was written and even in the intro it says “survival is now the issue” .
In terms of housing, the city government itself realized the Detroit is a “special kind” of town in that they had had a fast growth in early 1900s and most of the housings are outdated, needs repair, and built in haste during industrial boom . The city government’s logic here is that they needed to build affordable housing to attract middle and upper class so that they can stay in Detroit and pay tax that will be used to revitalize the city .
Detroit’s city government had largely two direction of housing development. One was to take over housings in good condition and repair them to rent out to low and moderate income families, and the other way is to increase the number of workers to fix houses in bad condition so that low-income families can still get affordable housings . The city also speculates that this housing development program will generate about 9,160 new works locally, partly solving the issue of low employment rate.
- Young, C. A. (1975). Moving Detroit Forward: A Plan for Urban Economic Revitalization. Detroit, MI: Office of the Mayor.