Organizations in North Corktown tackle housing shortage with quickly built, cheaper homes

NORTH CORKTOWN, Mich. (FOX 2) - It is an innovative way to tackle a national housing shortage with affordable houses that are built in a matter of weeks and priced well below the current market. 

In North Corktown just a couple blocks from the old train station and Motor City Casino, seven brand-new houses were put on the market, and they are listed at $100,000 below the market value, and it was all made possible because of a creative way to use a land trust,

 If you take a drive down 16th Street in North Corktown you can see the transformation yourself. Several new houses were built in a factory off site, and were dropped off and set in place. From design to installation, the process took a few weeks.

"I saw them drop the green house across the street, and they lifted it up on a crane and spun it. It took four minutes to set that house," said Darnell Adams.

It was all the brains of Adams and Tricia Talley, who is the executive director of Corktown Neighborhood Association, and Adams is the VP of community initiatives with the Gilbert Family Foundation, who saw an opportunity for an experimental solution to a larger problem.

"I was venting to him that i thought it was unsettling that people are expected to pay $1200 to $1800 per month for an apartment, but they could not get approved for a mortgage," she said. 

"It’s pretty impressive that you can see a whole block go from nothing to something in a matter of months," Adams said. "Which is a really unique opportunity for both neighborhoods, municipalities which are experiencing a housing crisis which the entire nation is."

The houses were built with the input of the 650 existing neighbors to ensure what comes to the neighborhood matches what the community wants.

"This technology has really grown up over the years," Adams said. "They are no longer the mobile home or RV type of space. These are houses that are energy efficient and built, if not stronger than a brick-and-mortar house."

According to the neighborhood association, the average cost of a home in this area is anywhere from $460,000 to $500,000. These seven homes, however, are priced considerably less.

The target they said was to always be under $300,000. They can keep the price low because a potential buyer would enter into a community land trust.

"It allows for the homeowner to purchase the structure and the land actually goes into a community land trust and the homeowner leases the land for a small amount, like $50 a month, for 99 years," Talley said. "We will be the first community land trust in Detroit to sell homes."

The Gilbert Family Foundation says if this can work here, it may help solve a national problem.

"We are 3.9 million housing units short across the entire country," Adams said. "We need some solutions like factory-built housing to help solve that."

If there is a demand for this type of housing, it could also bring jobs to the area by way of housing factories.

"Delivery is a substantial cost, so having the factory right in the city, or in the region, it would make housing a little cheaper to build," he said. 

If you would like to learn more about this new land trust initiative, you can vist NorthCorktown.org.