Hamtramck readies for needed housing development

For years, Hamtramck has been handcuffed from selling city-owned lots.
The lots had been tied up in a complicated and drawn-out housing discrimination lawsuit. That lawsuit has nearly ended, and the city now has “several dozen” – which is how it was phrased for the city council in this week’s council meeting agenda – ready for sale.
But this won’t be an ordinary sale.
The city will require buyers to develop the sites – ideally into housing.
This is an effort to meet the increasing demand for housing. It also makes sense dollar-wise.
Developing the lots into housing means more tax dollars for the city – something all cities are scrambling to get.
Hamtramck is fortunate. It has an abundance of lots ready to return to what they once were: places where houses once stood.
In the 1980s, a wave of fires swept through the southend, destroying one house after another.
It was suspected that it was largely the work of frustrated homeowners looking to cash in on insurance claims.
Go tour the southend and see for yourself. There are wide-open spaces all over.
Hamtramck had thriving neighborhoods there at one time, and now we are on a path to once again repopulating the city.
Posted Oct. 16, 2020