Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield stood before the city Tuesday and laid out a population agenda built around two things she says go hand in hand: keeping the Detroiters who are here and pulling back the ones who left.
The city counts roughly 645,000 residents right now. That number’s been shrinking for decades, and Sheffield wants to reverse it. Her vehicle is a pair of programs announced at her first State of the City address: the Make Detroit Home initiative, which sits under the broader Move Detroit effort, and a third round of the city’s Down Payment Assistance Program.
Make Detroit Home is where the new money is. Hilary Doe, president and CEO of Move Detroit, put the numbers plainly: $500,000 in total benefits going to 313 Detroiters, current residents and prospective ones alike. Each person can draw up to $15,000, whether that’s for a down payment, home renovation costs, or seeding a small business. The 313 figure isn’t arbitrary. That’s Detroit’s area code, and the whole point is that it should feel that way.
Sheffield’s Chief of Staff David Bowser didn’t dance around the central problem. “We have talked internally quite a bit about why people leave, and it’s lack of opportunity,” Bowser said. “So we want people to come back and we want people to stay. We have to provide those opportunities to do so.”
That’s an honest diagnosis. A lot of city revival plans spend most of their energy chasing newcomers with shiny incentives while the people who’ve been paying taxes on Gratiot and McNichols for thirty years get nothing. This one at least tries to work both directions. Though it’s worth saying plainly: $500,000 split across 313 households is real money for those families, but it’s a pilot program against a city of 645,000 people. Don’t confuse the gesture with the solution.
Still, the demand the Down Payment Assistance Program generated in its first two rounds suggests there’s genuine appetite out there. The program has already helped nearly 800 Detroiters become first-time homeowners. Round three launched this week.
Gail Gibson is what that program looks like on the ground. She’s 66, spent about ten years renting a house in the Mount Olivet neighborhood on the city’s east side, and then the assistance program gave her the chance to buy it. When WXYZ (7 Action News) asked her what ownership meant, she didn’t need a lot of words. “This is mine,” Gibson said.
That quote travels. Gibson’s got a friend out in Troy who was handing over $1,300 a month in rent. After hearing about Gibson’s situation, that friend called and said she was ready to apply and move back to Detroit. One person, one story. But neighborhoods don’t turn around from policy announcements; they turn around because somebody’s cousin called and said it was time to come home.
Not every potential buyer is a returning Detroiter. Mika Handelman grew up in California and was living in Tennessee before she landed on a house in the Morningside neighborhood on the east side. She found Detroit through research and liked what she found. “No. 1 is just gorgeous historic homes that are still affordable, so I’m trying to snatch before the market goes too crazy,” Handelman said.
She’s not wrong about the window. Morningside’s brick colonials and tudor-style homes along Worden and Balfour have been climbing in price. They’re not cheap by Detroit’s historical baseline anymore, but they’re still nowhere close to what comparable square footage would run in Cleveland or Columbus, let alone anything on the coasts. That won’t last forever.
Action News covered the Tuesday announcement as Sheffield’s opening statement on what kind of mayor she intends to be. Whether Make Detroit Home becomes something bigger than its initial $500,000 budget depends on what the city and state can build around it. Sheffield said she wants the city to grow. Bowser put it in plain terms. The Down Payment Assistance Program already has 800 success stories behind it heading into round three.
Gibson owns her house in Mount Olivet now. That’s the whole argument, right there.
