U-M Research Reveals What Actually Keeps Detroit Homeowners in Their Homes

By Eric Shaw
Office of the Vice President of Research

Between 2005 and 2015, more than 120,000 residential properties in Detroit experienced at least one mortgage or tax foreclosure. The city shifted from majority-owner to majority-renter, and the ripple effects, including displacement, speculator activity and deteriorating housing stock, reshaped entire neighborhoods.

Against that backdrop, researchers at the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions have spent nearly a decade studying what actually helps Detroiters with low incomes achieve and maintain stable housing. Their approach treats housing instability as an ecosystem problem requiring multiple interventions, such as homeownership pathways, repair grants and consumer protection tools, and uses rigorous evaluation to identify what works and why.

The clearest example is the Make It Home program, which helps tenants living in houses facing tax foreclosure purchase those homes before they go to auction. The program, administered by the nonprofit United Community Housing Coalition (UCHC), uses Detroit’s Right of First Refusal—a policy allowing the city to acquire certain tax-foreclosed properties before public sale—and transfers them to occupants through zero-interest land contracts, a form of seller-financed agreement where buyers make payments over time. For the initial 2017 cohort, purchase prices ranged from roughly $2,000 to $5,600.

A Poverty Solutions evaluation, with external funding from Rocket Community Fund and in partnership with UCHC, tracked the first group of 80 renter households who purchased through Make It Home in 2017 and compared them to 154 similar households that UCHC tried to help purchase at the county’s tax auction.

Both groups had sought UCHC’s assistance, but only the Make It Home buyers had access to the structured program. Four years later, 68 of 80 Make It Home buyers, or 85%, 85 had sustained homeownership, a much higher percentage than expected based on housing research elsewhere in the country. Among the comparison group, about 42 households (27%) sustained ownership, and 15 % had landlords that threatened them with eviction.

“This is one of the most rigorous evaluations of a housing stability intervention we’ve been able to do,” said Roshanak Mehdipanah, associate professor at the U-M School of Public Health and a co-author of the evaluation. “The comparison group lets us see what happens without this kind of structured support, and the difference is substantial.”

The evaluation also revealed ongoing threats. Nearly one in three Make It Home purchasers faced imminent foreclosure due to overdue property taxes, often because they hadn’t enrolled in programs like Detroit’s Homeowners Property Exemption that reduces current-year taxes for households with very low incomes. That finding prompted the program to strengthen post-purchase support.

Detroit’s housing market doesn’t follow textbook assumptions about real estate. Homes can be affordable to purchase but expensive to repair and maintain. Buyers may have steady income but credit histories that don’t qualify for traditional mortgages. Many households have very low incomes which means that housing that seems inexpensive to people who live elsewhere is still unaffordable for many Detroiters. And much of the housing stock has been through decades of disinvestment.

“Programs that work here have to address those realities together. You can’t just open a path to ownership and assume the rest will follow,” said Margaret Dewar, professor emerita of urban and regional planning and special advisor with Poverty Solutions. “The house itself needs major repairs to be livable, and people need support to stay in it due to continuing costs of taxes, utilities and repairs.”

Ownership alone doesn’t guarantee stability when the housing stock itself is deteriorated. Detroit’s homes are old, with a majority built before lead paint was banned in 1978, and many new homeowners lack resources for urgent repairs like failing roofs or broken furnaces.

These findings led to the Make It Home Repair Program, which provides grants or loans to help pay for major repairs. A 2021 evaluation surveyed 218 of 288 participants and found that 92% reported improved housing conditions. But the data also showed the scale of need: 79% of respondents were cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of household income on housing, and 54% were severely cost-burdened, spending more than half. Participants reported these improvements in housing conditions themselves, which means the findings are important signals rather than definitive proof of impact.

Beyond evaluating programs, Poverty Solutions has built practical tools that translate research into resources. The Detroit Home Repair Resource Guide, maintained since 2019 and updated annually, compiles local, state and federal repair programs in a single directory. The 2025 edition, redesigned with the city’s Home Repair Task Force, added lead-safe resources and translations in Spanish, Arabic and Bengali.

“Poverty Solutions’ Home Repair Resource Guide is a resource universally referred to among home repair providers,” said Heather Zygmontowicz, senior housing advisor for the City of Detroit. “In a space where funding and programs are constantly changing, the research they’ve done has been incredibly helpful to reference as a point-in-time comparison and as work to build from.”

The team has also tackled land contracts, a path to homeownership that’s attractive to people who don’t qualify for a traditional mortgage but comes with risks. In a land contract, buyers often don’t secure equity until the contract is paid off, and the buyer can lose the home entirely if the seller hasn’t paid underlying taxes or mortgages or if the buyer misses even one payment. Working with the City of Detroit and Enterprise Community Partners, researchers developed a Land Contract Buyer Guide with checklists to help buyers protect themselves. Poverty Solutions also proposed policy changes that would better regulate land contracts and prevent predatory agreements.

Meanwhile, citywide trends suggest the broader context is shifting. A 2025 working paper estimates the net value of owner-occupied homes in Detroit—home value minus mortgage debt—increased from $4.2 billion in 2014 to $8.8 billion in 2023. The estimated net housing value held by Black homeowners grew from $3.4 billion to $6.6 billion over the same period.

These are estimates, not realized gains, and rising values can increase tax burdens even as they build wealth. Recovery has also been uneven across neighborhoods. But Poverty Solutions’ evaluations and tools suggest that targeted interventions, backed by evidence and embedded in ongoing research, can help support efforts to stabilize a housing market.

As of October 2025, Make It Home has helped more than 1,700 families become homeowners since 2017.