Economy
Why the Feds Agreed to Spend TARP Money on Demolishing Michigan's Empty Buildings
There's admittedly a certain irony in tearing down houses with funds marked to keep people in houses.
A steady rise in housing prices nationwide has made analysts and investors hopeful about the future of the U.S. housing market overall. But in Michigan, one of the states most battered by the financial downturn, officials are still grappling with the grim remains of years of unemployment, population loss, and plunging property values.
Those remains are not figurative. They can be seen in the form of abandoned houses — tens of thousands of them — in neighborhoods around the state. Detroit alone has more than 30,000 such buildings.