DETROIT—The CBD here has gotten a great deal of recent notice as demand for its office space soars and new residents fill up multifamily developments located near downtown. But the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust has decided that its time to put some money into the surrounding neighborhoods. It will invest up to $30 million of pension money in the Detroit Neighborhood Home Repair Program and partner with a group of civic and community organizations to renovate up to 300 single-family homes that have suffered decades of blight.
"It is wonderful to see the AFL-CIO, an organization that played such an important role in building Detroit, investing to help build Detroit again," says Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. "This will create jobs and training opportunities to Detroit residents, and will do so much to strengthen our neighborhoods."
The trust will help acquire, finance and repair abandoned homes in the Detroit Land Bank Authority inventory utilizing union labor over the next three to five years. The overall goal is to design a sustainable model that others could replicate. In addition to the authority, its partners include the City of Detroit, the city council, Michigan Building Trades, Jim Jenkins, Jenkins Construction, as well as Building Detroit Futures and Southwest Housing Solutions.
"Union workers using union pension money to rebuild homes for working families is the right formula for rebuilding Detroit," adds AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.
The HIT does similar work all around the country. As reported in GlobeSt.com, in 2014 the group provided $33 million of pension capital funding for the construction of Five 15 on the Park, a 259-unit apartment complex in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood near downtown Minneapolis. In the past 30 years, the HIT has invested nearly $8.5 billion in current dollars to finance more than 100,000 units of housing nationwide.
Initially, the Detroit program will focus on the Bagley, Shultz, Crary/St. Mary's, and East English Village neighborhoods, but will expand over time. Trust officials add that union apprentice programs will provide construction jobs for Detroit residents, especially minorities and women.
"In addition to providing an investment that will lead to the creating of more workforce housing, this project will provide employment opportunities for residents of Detroit, while also revitalizing neighborhoods by giving life to vacant and abandoned properties," says Eric W. Price, HIT's executive vice president and chief executive officer of its subsidiary Building America CDE, Inc.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
