Detroit Teachers To Get 50 Percent Housing Discount

(WWJ) In an effort to retain and recruit more teachers and other school employees, the city of Detroit is offering a 50 percent discount on homes purchased through Land Bank auction.

About 50 percent of Detroit Public Schools teachers live in Detroit.

"This is obviously an opportunity to have more of those teachers move back to Detroit or to Detroit, but it's also an incentive to try and recruit new teachers into the district," said Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

The program is open to all full-time school employees as well as full-time contractors. In fact, Vitti himself recently purchased his first home in the city's Sherwood Forest neighborhood.

"If we're able to possibly reduce the cost of a house we're more likely to maybe bring over a teacher from a suburban district or someone who is thinking about teaching because of the housing incentive. It's a combination of a recruitment and a retention tool. And then, beyond that on an educational level we want to go back to the days where students lived in the same neighborhood as their teacher."

The land bank offers homes on an auction basis in its effort to return Detroit's vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed property to productive use. Whatever the winning bid is, Detroit teachers are eligible for a 50 percent discount at the time of closing.

"We want to bring our educators back in," Mayor Mike Duggan said.

Details can be found on the city's Land Bank website, BuildingDetroit.org.