I am switching roles a bit at Michigan Radio. The change requires me to sell my lovely house in Grand Rapids to work out of Ann Arbor. I figured selling our home would be easy. But I did not expect to swallow such a queasy feeling that I made out like some kind of gentrifying bandit.
Now, fewer than 1 in 6 low-to-moderate income buyers are lucky enough to score a house for that price here. The money and people pouring into the city are transforming my neighborhood, the Baxter neighborhood.
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When I moved in, I counted at least a dozen houses in a two-block area that were boarded up. Now, there are rarely any vacancies at all. The plywood boards have vanished. Young, white college students are moving in. There used to be two houses on the property where my house in Grand Rapids sits now. Baxter is still a predominantly black neighborhood.
Census estimates. But on August 23, , a fire broke out at the home. She had just graduated from Ottawa Hills High School, enrolled in community college, and was working as an attendant at a city parking ramp. In , Inner City Christian Federation, a non-profit with a mission to provide affordable housing, bought these and other vacant properties in Baxter as part of a package deal.
The homes they build are simple, but very nice. Since then, he says ICCF has built or rehabbed more than single family homes. But he says construction costs have been much higher lately, and housing subsidies are low, causing the non-profit to pivot away from building. Most of them are black and African-American people who have lived here for decades. He says ICCF has more than people on a waiting list for an affordable place to live. The pressure is mounting on them and similar organizations to do something about the housing shortage.
