As he prepares to leave office, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is touting the results of one of his administration’s signature programs: getting rid of the city’s vacant homes.
In 2014, Detroit had around 47,000 publicly-owned abandoned homes in its land bank inventory. Now, that’s dwindled to less than 1,000.
In the past 12 years, the city said, it’s demolished about 27,000 vacant homes and sold about 19,000 more to rehabbers. Officials said they expect to clear the land bank’s inventory of homes at some point in 2026.
The entire program cost over $500 million. Around half of that came from federal Hardest Hit Funds, which went to states that were most affected by the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008, with the remainder covered by a voter-approved bond measure, Proposal N.
Duggan called it a “historically successful blight removal effort” that has reshaped many Detroit neighborhoods — in his view, for the better. He credited the program with helping reduce crime, and lifting property values for many longtime Detroit residents.
But the effort was sometimes controversial and dogged by several scandals.
One involved some contractors’ use of contaminated soil to backfill demolition sites. Duggan said the city has remediated every property where that happened, and sought punishment for the offending companies.
“As we have for the last 12 years, we will test every single site with suspected contaminated backfill, we will immediately remove any soil found unacceptable, and we will pursue reimbursement from the responsible contractor,” Duggan said. “We successfully closed out the Hardest Hit Fund program in this manner and Proposal N will be closed out the same way.”
Duggan is stepping down as mayor after three terms at the end of this month. He’s pursuing a bid for Michigan governor as an Independent.
