Zooming In On Detroit's Sweat Equity

Exploring the success of five years of housing rehab in Detroit's Midwest neighborhood

One of the 100+ homes in Midwest Detroit that have been rehabbed since the pandemic

The City of Detroit recently touted that $1B had been invested in affordable housing over the last five years generating 4,600 affordable housing units, and that another $1B would be needed over the next five years. As I detailed in a recent post, a Detroiter-led wave of vacant home rehabs that exploded amidst the pandemic is far outpacing those City figures: 17,000 Detroit homes that were vacant just before the pandemic are today re-occupied and, many, substantially rehabbed. (I’d guess their per unit costs are quite a bit lower, too.)

If we actually want housing that is affordable then the next $1B the City wants to invest should be invested in the Detroiters leading the way on the rehab of Detroit’s vacant housing stock.

Here, I want to discuss one particular neighborhood whose housing fate has turned on a dime since 2020, seemingly thanks to the efforts of one of Detroit’s immigrant enclaves. The area is found in the western corner of Detroit’s Midwest neighborhood, bounded by Tireman to the north, Livernois to the east, West Warren to the south, and the Joe Louis Greenway/Dearborn border to the west.

This portion of Midwest caught my attention while researching re-occupied homes due to the density of homes re-occupied since 2019 and because it sits directly on top of the greater Chadsey Condon neighborhood that was explored in depth in Global Detroit’s excellent 2021 report on the impacts of Detroit’s immigrant communities, Building Inclusive Cities: Immigration and Neighborhood Change in Detroit.

If you look at the heat map of re-occupied homes (you can explore in greater detail here) you’ll notice there are almost no re-occupied homes since 2019 below the Midwest area of detail called out above. That’s because nearly everything to the south has already been rehabbed in those immigrant enclave neighborhoods. The Global Detroit report found that 80% of homes in the Chadsey Condon neighborhood were in Good or Excellent condition (60% and 20%, respectively) as of 2019¹. I have no doubt those numbers have only improved in the last five years.

The incredible work and success of those immigrant communities now appears to have spilled north, across Warren Avenue, into this corner of the Midwest neighborhood.

Here are a few examples of the recent progress in Midwest:

In an attempt to capture and convey just how impressive the progress in Midwest is, I worked with a friend — Google Street View expert and Geoguessr streamer, Michael Hudson — to survey the condition of all ~1,000 homes in Midwest via the City of Detroit’s street view imagery published on Mapillary, and Google Street View.

Detroit’s street view program has collected citywide imagery each year since 2020, so we were able to capture the conditions in Midwest just prior to the pandemic (in 2019 via Google Street View) and then look for change each year from 2020 through August of 2024 via Mapillary (when the most recent imagery of Detroit was captured). This allowed us to not only capture changes from before the pandemic to today, but also to get a sense of the pace of change between 2019 and 2024.

Here’s what we found.

125 Homes Re-Occupied Since 2019 in Midwest

Homes that were vacant as of 2019 and are now re-occupied as of August 2024

To highlight the transformation in this part of the Midwest neighborhood over the past five years, consider these findings from our research:

• A Surge in Re-Occupied Homes: Over the past five years, 125 homes in the Midwest neighborhood have been re-occupied, increasing the number of occupied homes in the area by 22%. An additional 75–80 homes have undergone substantial rehab, though they remained occupied throughout the last five years.

• Vacancy Drops Dramatically: The number of vacant homes in the neighborhood has fallen by 70%—from 395 vacant homes in January 2020 to 121 as of August 2024—through a combination of rehabs and (likely overzealous) demolitions.

• Local Ownership Dominates: Looking at the ownership of re-occupied homes, only 16 out of 125 (13%) are owned by entities outside Detroit based on 2024 tax bill mailing address data. The rehab activity here appears to be very much a Detroiter-led phenomenon.

• Immigrant Enclaves Lead the Way: Among those homes owned outside the city, the majority appear to be owned by residents of Hamtramck or Dearborn, both immigrant enclaves themselves. The re-occupied homes in Midwest owned in Detroit but outside the neighborhood largely have their tax bills mailed to addresses in Chadsey Condon, Springwells Village, or Davison—again, all immigrant enclaves. This pattern reinforces my sense that the revitalization in this neighborhood is driven by immigrant-led efforts.

• Detroit Land Bank as a Key Source of Inventory: Much of the inventory for rehab here seems to have been supplied by Detroit Land Bank sales: 77 of 125 re-occupied homes were owned by the DLBA circa 2019. These homes are much cheaper and more accessible than those held by private actors, especially those who may want to charge higher prices as they see increased investment in the neighborhood around their speculatively held properties.

• Two-Family Homes Throughout the Area: At least 30 of the rehabbed homes in the area appear to be two-family homes. Structure data doesn’t always capture two-family vs. single family usage in Detroit accurately, so it’s hard to tell just how many two-family flats are amongst the rehabs, but it’s likely the 125 re-occupied structures represent something more like 150 housing units.

Pace of Change Since 2019

Based on Mapillary imagery, we also attempted to identify the year, between 2020 and 2024, that vacant homes first appeared to have been re-occupied. We found it was really only in 2022 that rehabs in this corner of Midwest started to take off:

As of August 2024, the last time imagery in the neighborhood was collected, five more homes appeared to have been re-occupied and another 16 were under active rehab.

If there is a recent drop off in rehab activity I doubt it is due to waning interest in the neighborhood. Instead, it could be an indication that the supply of homes that can be rehabbed is nearing exhaustion — only 20-25 Detroit Land Bank-owned homes remain in the neighborhood.

How Did This Turnaround Happen?

While I can provide insight into what has been happening in the Midwest neighborhood, I'm no expert on how the immigrant communities active in this region are achieving these outcomes. I haven't conducted interviews with residents, and I don't want to speculate.

However, the 2021 Global Detroit report I mentioned earlier, Building Inclusive Cities, offers valuable insights into home rehab activity in the Chadsey Condon neighborhood which is directly south of the Midwest area I’m discussing here. I suspect the findings from Chadsey Condon are useful in Midwest, too, given the proximity and overlap in property ownership between the two neighborhoods.

I want to share an excerpt from Building Inclusive Cities about home rehab in Chadsey Condon, and encourage you to explore the full report here (the excerpt below is found on page 53):

IMMIGRANTS OFTEN USE SWEAT EQUITY AS WELL AS FAMILY AND COMMUNITY NETWORKS TO REHABILITATE AND REPAIR THEIR HOMES.

Family and community networks assisted the Chadsey Condon homeowners not only to purchase their homes, but to rehabilitate and repair them after purchase. In 2018 Global Detroit and the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation conducted a focus group with 16 vacant house purchasers that the two organizations had assisted. Focus group participants were at different stages of rehabbing their homes. The homeowners stressed that they kept rehab costs affordable by doing the work themselves and by acquiring information, skills and tools from neighbors, friends and family.

One participant described how the “Cuban community” had made the necessary rehab repairs for her home. This community, as she described it, which was spread across the Detroit metro area, contained many skilled tradespeople and they looked out for each other. Cuban community members performed free labor on her home and/or traded for their services. A Dominican respondent described how a fellow Dominican had installed a furnace in his home and allowed him to repay over time without interest. Bangladeshi focus group members described the existence of a network of contractors within the Bangladeshi community who could be trusted to help with repairs.

While there are many success stories, immigrants also report serious challenges, particularly with the rehabilitation process. New homebuyers often lack information about the ins and outs of rehabilitation, particularly how to meet City of Detroit requirements. Many expressed concerns with Detroit Land Bank Authority policies requiring them to bring homes they had purchased from the Land Bank up to code within a year, particularly as long winters and freezing temperatures prevented them from doing the work themselves. Finally, focus group members, many without strong English language skills, found the city inspection process confusing to navigate and had no access to either translation or interpretation services. Many hoped to build stronger relationships with city inspectors to improve their understanding of code requirements and the permitting process.

Despite facing significant challenges—including language barriers, complex city regulations, and limited access to resources—these communities are succeeding in revitalizing their neighborhoods largely through their own determination and mutual support. This progress has often been achieved not because of extensive support from the City, but in spite of governmental obstacles. The experiences of these communities highlight the impact they can have on neighborhood revitalization, and suggest that with more supportive and accessible policies and investment, even greater progress could be made.

Further, whether the people that make up these immigrant enclaves stay in Detroit or use the success of their investments as a stepping-stone to the suburbs is an open question. I’ve written about this before. Right now, it seems likely Detroit may lose many of the immigrant community members behind this grassroots home rehab phenomenon. In the words of one focus group participant in the Global Detroit report:

“There is not one of us who doesn’t think about [moving to the suburbs] all of the time.”²

Demolitions Alone Are Ineffectual and Counterproductive

Between 2014 and 2020, the City of Detroit demolished 53 homes in the Midwest neighborhood, per City of Detroit Open Data Portal records. One might expect those efforts would reduce the number of vacant homes, but counterintuitively, the number of vacant homes actually increased during this period. Why?

At least part of the explanation lies in 250 tax foreclosures of occupied homes that took place between 2014 and 2019. Many residents were likely displaced due to tax foreclosure. This influx of newly vacant homes easily outpaced any gains made through demolition.

This pattern reflects a broader issue in the city's approach to addressing vacant properties that I have pointed out and criticized for years and years now (and warned about before the demolition program even started):

Demolition on its own does little to reduce the number of vacant homes when tax foreclosure policies, amongst other systems, continue to displace residents. In fact, demolition can be counterproductive, robbing the community of housing stock that could be rehabilitated and re-occupied.

Invest in What Works

The national discourse around immigration in the United States is mired in negativity and vilification, particularly around resources and housing scarcity. So, it might be worth noticing that, at least in Detroit, immigrant communities are putting neighborhoods on their backs and rehabbing their way out of housing scarcity and doing so with scant government support.

A question I’ve gotten a few times discussing this research is whether the Midwest neighborhood’s proximity to the Joe Louis Greenway might be a factor in the decision to invest in rehab there. Without talking to the people behind these home rehabs I can’t say for certain, but I would be surprised if that factored into the decision making much. There were some vague gestures toward the potential benefits of the Greenway for housing in the 2021 framework, but nothing I’ve seen that indicated an intentional plan to facilitate or foresee the scale of revitalization we're witnessing.

Meanwhile, again returning to the Building Inclusive Cities report, portions of the community seemingly responsible for this transformation have specifically stated that they expect little from local government:

In none of our conversations, however, was local government, or any public sector entity, seen as critical to their decisions to settle in a neighborhood, stay or leave that neighborhood, or achieve success in their efforts to pursue the American Dream. Immigrant respondents were largely disconnected from government and had extremely low expectations of what government could accomplish for them.

It seems unlikely that an investment of this scale would be made based on the perception that government actions would make it worthwhile. It seems much more plausible that the neighborhoods the community were in simply became full, and more housing stock was needed. This area had it, and was right next door.

The story of the Midwest neighborhood is a testament to what can happen when communities take the lead in revitalizing their own neighborhoods. It's a model that the City should not only acknowledge but actively support. Instead of funneling another $1 billion into traditional affordable housing initiatives, it's time for Detroit to invest directly in the people who have already demonstrated their commitment and ability to rebuild their communities.

1. Building Inclusive Cities, page 29

2. Building Inclusive Cities, page 58