Detroit offers home discount to city workers

The Detroit Free Press reports:

City of Detroit employees, retirees and their immediate families will receive half off homes sold in a city auction designed to save fixable homes in stable neighborhoods as part of a new incentive Mayor Mike Duggan's administration is to announce this morning.

Current city workers — those on the city payroll or working on contract with the city — and retirees will be eligible for 50% off the final auction price of homes put up to bid through the Detroit Land Bank, spokesman Craig Fahle told the Free Press.

Factoring in immediate relatives — which include siblings, children and parents of the city's current and retired work force — adds a potential pool of buyers far beyond the city's current workforce of about 9,000, along with 23,000 retirees.

The incentive is designed as both a reward to city workers, past and present, and as a way to lure more people back to the city through one of the Duggan administration's signature efforts to arrest blight.

Special privileges.