Detroit: From Motor City to Housing Incubator<br />As with any new program, the couple said, there were “growing pains.”<br />The Detroit Home Mortgage project is now looking to get banks to provide low-interest loans directly<br />to local contractors, so they can renovate more homes and get them into move-in-ready condition<br />The land bank owns some 25,000 vacant homes in various stages of disrepair, another 4,200 occupied homes<br />and 65,000 grass-covered lots where homes once stood before the city tore them down in an effort to fight blight.<br />“DHM wants to be an ambassador for lending in the city,” said Alex DeCamp, the mortgage community development<br />manager for Chemical Bank, a local lender that has funded 15 loans through the program.<br />So far this year, the bank has issued 23 mortgages in Detroit — up from 18 in 2016 — and has increased the number of loan officers in the city.<br />Mr. Leenhouts, 59, said, “I have no idea where I would be living if I was not chosen for a tiny house.”<br />That said, a cluster of tiny homes hardly seems scalable in a city as big as Detroit.<br />So, guess how many home mortgage loans these two enormous banks made last year in this city of 637,000 people.<br />Yet as home prices soar across the United States — particularly on the coasts — Detroit<br />remains a poster child for the economic crisis and housing collapse of a decade ago.
