Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

The US saw similar efforts in Detroit and other Rust Belt cities. That mostly just resulted in asset flippers hoarding houses and letting them fall into further disrepair. I wonder what steps Japan is taking to mitigate that possibility.

View on HN

It's not easy to asset flip in Japan. I have no idea about this program. I live in Japan and I haven't heard about it, so I'm not sure what the deal is. However, people in Japan don't buy used houses. Due to the large number of earthquakes, etc, older houses are felt to be unsafe. A house on a property is actually a liability because the new owner will have to knock down the house in order to build a new one.

I'm absolutely certain that the abandoned houses are abandoned because they are literally not saleable. Even perfectly good houses that were built in the last 20 or 30 years sit on the housing market in my area for years before they even get a single offer. Houses that cost $300K end up selling for around half that price, even after waiting for years to sell it. That's how non-existent the used housing market is in Japan.

And this is not to say that housing is flat. Empty lots sell relatively quickly. Nobody wants a used house. That's the reality of the market.

I don't know exactly what this programme is, but I would venture to guess that they will give you the house/land as long as you knock down the existing house and build a new one. This will cost you the aforementioned $300K, at which point you can flip it for $150K. That's how they mitigate that possibility :-)

What reasons do people have for not wanting a perfectly good 20-30 year old house for half the price of a new one?

Earthquakes are commonplace in Japan. You don't want an older house which may be structurally compromised.

I think that is the main reason. But also, people buy houses at different times of life in Japan. Often it's people nearing retirement, buying the "dream house". They want exactly what they want. It's a bit of a vicious circle, but people don't/can't do "starter homes" because you can't sell them.

Another common practice is to inherit your parent's or grandparent's house, knock it down and build a new one. So the same family will live in the same location for many generations, but they will rebuild the house in order to adapt to changing needs. I think this reflects the rapid rise in wealth in Japanese society. Before WWII, Japan was quite a poor country. From WWII onwards, Japan went from absolute poverty (where everything was flattened by the war) to the second largest economy on the planet (now, edged out by China for that honour). So every 20-30 years represented a major upgrade in housing.

I'm finding that in my area in the last 10 years used houses are getting slightly more popular. Certainly for me, when I eventually stop jetting back and forth between the UK and Japan I will buy a used house. A 20 year old house is still rated for a level 7 earthquake and I think they are perfectly good. I would say that at least 30% of my neighbours are over 60, so housing is going to be extremely easy to acquire (though still not a good investment).

People pay half a million dollars for 60 year old homes all the time in California, just as bad of an earthquake zone, yet these houses aren't worth half a million yen. Culture is a much bigger factor here -- I've never heard the phrase "used house" in the US. What I do hear is mid-century modern, arts and crafts, ranch-style.

> just as bad of an earthquake zone

As much as people living in California would like to believe that, it's not true. I was born in Chile, a place that's actually as equally-prone to earthquakes than Japan, and I've been living in California for about 8 years now. In here, I almost forgot what is like to feel an earthquake. In Chile/Japan is common to feel at least a magnitude 5 earthquake a couple of times a year (they are actually called "tremors"). California is in an unstable zone, but nothing compared to Chile/Japan.

Anecdotally, right before moving to SF, we had the 2010 earthquake[0] (8.8), I'm pretty sure with an earthquake like that in SF, there would be no city left behind.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake

I must agree with your subductive logic. But magnitude isn't the right measure here for effect on structures, we'd want the Mercalli scale: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale

CA quakes range under M7. while japan over M8 is relatively common.

also japan have snow and hot+humid summers. CA is mostly dry warm weather year around. timber will decay much, much faster in the former. if japan had low quality housing materials like used in CA, the houses would need to be redone every 10 years or less.

Comparing to California, which also has earthquakes, and nobody thinks twice about buying a used house. And it's not like they are built to be super-resilient either - it's mostly wooden planks, particle boards, sheet rock and stucco...

I lived in an old wooden house in Sanjo, in Niigata prefecture, for a while back in the 80s. It was a pre World War 2 house and didn't have any indoor plumbing, though it did have a nice smelling campground-style toilet on the first floor. You could stand outside and shake the corner of the house and hear all the windows rattling. It seemed pretty junky, but it withstood at least eight decades of earthquakes without falling down.

Also, I went to Sadogashima earlier this year. While there, we visited an entire town that was built in the 1600s. A couple of the homes had been turned into museums, but people were living in the rest of them, so there must be something to the way they build those old homes in Japan. I don't know if the same would be true of more modern houses though.

old code (pre-1980s) houses have poor resistance to MAJOR earthquakes. Their heavy roof tiles make them liable to collapse in major earthquakes (Kobe), which is a pretty nasty way to die

The most commonly cited reason is earthquake safety: the standards for construction are constantly increasing, and old homes are perceived as unsafe.

That said, the entire housing industry in Japan has formed around the idea that homes are disposable. Unless they're very old (e.g. traditional/antique machiya and farmhouses) or apartments in large complexes, they're not built to last. Detached houses built since WWII, in particular, are more expensive to repair than to rebuild. This is probably the real reason that used homes are viewed negatively.

"Raze, rebuild, repeat: why Japan knocks down its houses after 30 years": https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...

tl;dr it's a historical accident that has become a self-perpetuating cultural phenomenon

This doesn't explain similar phenomena, though, like the Japanese replacing their cars frequently: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/12/world/why-the-cars-in-jap... https://www.picknbuy24.com/column_146.html It makes me wonder if a deeper cultural factor is at work here.

Japanese replace their cars frequently because taxes are structured so that after a few years it becomes worthwhile to buy a new car.

Yes, I agree that this is the factual reason why. But doesn't it seem odd that these are coincidental? I think it might not be a coincidence.

A couple reasons that don't get much attention are that a.) newly-constructed houses are relatively cheap and b.) mortgage rates are very good.

A normal, custom-built house in the suburbs of Tokyo can be constructed for somewhere between $120,000 and $250,000 (source: I'm shopping for a house now) which, at the current Japanese mortgage rates for a 35-year loan, translates into a $400-$800 monthly payment for the home construction.

This is on top of what you have to pay for the value of the land itself, of course. But if you're already paying $300k-$500k for the lot, then why not just knock down the old building and put up your own, perfect-for-your-family, architect-designed, house?

Ha ha. Where I live a lot is about $50K, so I sometimes find it a bit strange that people build a $2-300K house instead of living in the one that was there.

But you are also right about the mortgages. Rates are super low and you can get 20 or 30 year terms. So for example even for a 25 year term, Shinsei bank is offering less than 2%: https://www.shinseibank.com/english/housing/loan_kinri.pdf

It's completely insane. I keep telling my wife we need buy a house just to lock into the nearly free money. On the other hand, if the bank thinks this is a good deal for them, they must be forseeing some pretty bad economy in the future...

Nearly free? 58k interest on 240k borrowed over 25 years is not exactly nothing.

It is if you believe that interest rates will be above 2% in 5 to 10 years.

The price is for the land, which can be quite expensive and can go up. The cost of demolition and building a new home is about USD200-300k for a very nice three bedroom home in a typical urban area. Credit is very cheap too. Also, people prefer new things in Japan. If you see a car that is more than a few years old, it will most likely be a mint-condition collectors item.

I'm in Kyushu. Seikisui houses cost 150-300k here on average. The house I personally want (saw at house demo place) is 750k. It's really nice!! In California that might buy a 3br in the outskirts of LA buy it won't be nice. The house I saw, in California would probably go for 1.5-3 mil in southern parts and much higher in SF.

$750k in Kyushu must be a mansion! Those home showcases are great aren’t they? Would you build wood or steel frame?

The 750k model I saw was steel frame modular home, soon theory you could re-arrange it if you got bored of the layout - though I suspect that comes with a hefty cost.

Could you explain one of the home showcases? Sounds like an interesting idea.

It’s basically a large lot where all the major home builders set up their model homes and have detailed sales walkthroughs. Home builders in Japan are at an industrial scale with lots of economies of scale and modular parts, yet a surprising amount of customization is possible. Companies like Toyota and Mitsubishi have home divisions.

Whenever I hear about the used housing market (or lack thereof) in Japan I wonder if there's an opportunity to find some amazing deals. Properties that could be purchased way under value and re-purposed. Either on a personal level (foreigner wants to buy a house) or as a cheap way of setting up a hotel or AirBnB kind of business.

Hotels are already cheap in Japan ($60 a night will get you quite a nice business hotel with hot spring in most places I've been) and Airbnb is subject to local restrictions (federal law passed recently allows local governments to place restrictions on Airbnb - you have to get a permission letter from your city Hall to be allowed to list on airbnb - and they can deny you for any reason eg neighbour complaints). Personal use would be a possibility for sure.

$60 a night is not cheap. I traveled (cycling) for 3 months in South East Asia and my average hotel bill was $8, some of them brand new hotels.

You can’t possibly expect a highly developed nation to have comparable prices against south east Asia.

My point is that there are many young Vietnamese hoteliers who would love to move to Japan and operate some of these abandoned houses as hotels. They will have to do all the renovations, cleaning etc. themselves, but they will earn much more money.

The largest obstacle will be Japanese regulation.

SE Asia is a completely different economy though. Japan is a first world country, and the third largest economy in the world. Its not going to cost the same as someplace in SEA.

In addition to what everyone else said about it not being a useful comparison to look at SE Asia, I also wasn't looking at the cheapest options. Capsule hotels would generally be available for half that ($30) and sleeping in a manga cafe would be $10-$20 depending

My wife is in this business although she buys quite expensive old homes and buildings in cities. You will probably have trouble with sellers (and certainly with banks) if you’re a foreigner. Also, the short term rental legalities are a liability in most places unless you can get registered as a proper hotel. Some communities will outright ban short term rentals because they don’t like the turnover of visitors. It can be done though.

I outright bought and fully owned a newly-built house in the outskirts of Koriyama City (Tobu New Town), Fukushima prefecture, in 2008.

After the M9 quake, I mamaged to sell that house for basically the price I bought it for. Why? Because people were looking for houses located in areas which weren't dusted with the radioactive cloud from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant which went FOOM! at the time. My house just happened to be located in an area where the weather conditions had diverted most of said cloud, and it was a young family who bought the place.

I then skedaddled out of Japan back to my native Scotland, bringing my sona dn Japanese wife with me.

Point being, there will be certain factors involved in which used houses can be sold on and not suffer much depreciation. Admittedly, my house was only about 3 years old, and we had a professional cleaning team go right through the place before the new owners moved in.

It's a lot more complex than that. Usually these deals have tax liabilities and liens that aren't chargeable unless the city agrees to it. Anyone can tell you, there is nothing more expensive than a free house/boat/car.

Why don't they sell it at a discount, then?

They do, but you still have to pay the back taxes, which in a lot of cases are more than what you paid for the property.

These are usually handled through city property auctions. Bidding usually starts at a few dollars. But you have to read the fine print. They will usually have city, county, state, federal, and private liens on them.

For example a federal treasury auction will discharge IRS tax liens but not state, county, and city charges. I've seen $1mm beach-side homes auctioned for <$100k. But then have $500k+ in state liens on them.

A savvy buyer will get the titles and try to get the liens discharged by negotiating with the other agencies or pay them off. This is factored into the offer they will make on the property. If you think you've stumbled into a method to get rich quick you're sadly mistaken.

St. Louis is the market I’m most familiar with, but I’m sure it’s the same everywhere: it’s not just taxes and liens; it’s that most of the properties are worth less than the cost of making them habitable. Every municipality has occupancy requirements and building codes. Any house you can buy for $100 in Detroit is going to cost roughly the same (or more) as new construction to meet these codes. In St. Louis, for example, you’re required to present construction plans and hard timelines as a condition for purchasing abandoned property. They aren’t going to accept your optimistic DIY dreams. They have to be real plans at market rates. And if you don’t meet the agreed-to dates, you lose the property.

A lot of these properties literally have a negative value; it would cost more to renovate them and complete environmental mitigations on them than is profitable. When you see a property for $100, you almost certainly wouldn’t want it unless you were paid to take it.

Use common sense; there’s a reason these properties were completely abandoned by their previous owners.

Detroit: If you have a credit card and a want to own an apartment building, it is the place to be. Just needs some elbow grease. There MUST BE opportunity at $5 USD per square foot -- but it is hard to visualize.

https://www.point2homes.com/US/Multi-Family-For-Sale/MI/Detr...

[I think you can talk this guy down to $10k].

If they’d throw in a working visa I’d be intrigued

Starting a construction / rehab company might work.

This is how you build "new cities" [1]; pair startups with working visas and tie it together with funding and resource commitments (cough cough PlanGrid et el) to bring dilapidated housing back into inventory. Inexpensive corporate housing with you bootstrapping the culture and the community core.

[1] https://cities.ycr.org/

If you could pull that off, sounds like an incredible program to me. I don't think anything could revitalize Detroit like large amounts of immigrants would.

And Detroit already has a large immigrant population, so it's not that much of a culture shock.

From Wikipedia looks like they are below the national average, but I'd posit that means the upside is that much larger.

My favorite example of this process is booming South Florida, where more than half of adults are foreign born. Houston is another great one, with 23% foreign born.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Detroit#... > 5% of people within the city of Detroit are immigrants, making the percentage of immigrants in Detroit the lowest such percentage out of those of the 25 largest cities in the United States. The national average is about 13%

The city itself has a very low immigrant population, but as is listed in your source, surrounding suburbs have very large immigrant populations. For instance Hamtranck has 43% born out of the country.

If you have the capital you can basically just buy an EB-5 investor visa.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...

All you need is to be a multimillionaire that wants to move to a nigh abandoned section of Detroit.

Actually Michigan's Governor proposed to then President Obama a special Detroit visa where immigrants with skills would get a green card in exchange for moving to Detroit for a minimum of five years. Sadly he never got an answer.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/detroit-save...

"Elbow grease" isn't going to fix major structural or infrastructural issues. I'm sure you were being funny, but most of those structures are tear downs.

Saying it's the place to be seems a bit an overreach. That building, as an example, is in a neighborhood that is just block after block of wasteland, with derelict abandoned houses falling to disrepair, and the empty lots where they removed them before. This particular building likely has no furnace, pipes were probably removed, and almost certainly requires many tens of thousands in upgrades.

It seems like illusory opportunity. There are areas of Detroit where some of the grand old homes are being resurrected and there have been opportunities, but this isn't one of them.

No furnace is not a big deal by itself, but likely no windows, no wiring, no plumbing, no fixtures. What remains likely has mold, lead paint, and other hazards. It's at best a gut-to-the-frame-and-rebuild. If severely weather damaged it might even be a tear-down.

And then you're on the hook for taxes and liens, and who knows what other encumbrances there are.

Maybe if you really, really wanted that land for some reason.

The Google Street view [1] shows it needs at least new doors and windows. Maybe even a new outer wall on the second floor (or the very least the ivy removed before it does more damage).

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/XmmdxPm45Q32

There's a Detroit entrepreneur who is trying to put together a pool of investors to rehab Detroit rental properties. He details every step he's taking on his blog which unfortunately is down right now.

Here's the under 2 minute where he shows off the 5 unit apartment building he bought on Craigslist for $13K and yes there are other opportunities out there just like that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bapcgs1v62Q&t=4s

I think initiatives like the guy this one is taking is incredible, and these types of initiatives are a necessary risk in piecing the city back together. However, there is so much external risk in throwing capital into projects like these. We need the federal government to be on board, we need the local gov to have their heads on straight and to be willing to fight for appropriate legislation that is going to be attractive enough to bring people to the city. So far, I think we haven't seen enough of either. My feelings are therefore mixed. I want to see these localities do well; a rising tide lifts all boats; but the people at the top have demonstrated an ineptitude in being able to create real incentives. You only really see it in the private sector with players like dan gilbert.

Guys like Dan Gilbert and Christopher Illitch can get tax incentives, smaller guys cannot. The little guys, even if they have a multi-year proven record of success often cannot even get the backing of banks.

In what looks like a terrible neighborhood, right across the street from a funeral home. I think gaining tenants will be a challenge.

Sometimes one guy can rehab an entire neighborhood one house at a time. Opportunities are still there in Detroit and the risks are a lot smaller than ten years ago. You could even be a determined BMW mechanic who backed into a new career supported by his neighbors capital. An only in Detroit story:

https://www.freep.com/story/money/real-estate/2018/04/14/vir...

A 4,664 sqft house on .1 acres, and its across from an abandoned parking lot/store or gas station to boot.

Only in America!

If you want the lowdown on Detroit (and other regions of the country) check out https://makeloveland.com/ They focus on helping people keep their homes and away from the county auction.

Midwestern cities have large real estate taxes relative to younger parts of the country because there are so many legacy pension costs per worker. No free lunch.

Only a property in Detroit in the deserted areas could mean frequent meetings with muggings, violence, etc.

In Japan it will just be a regular house.

Actually if you look at what happened to the majority of homes that were rehabbed that's not the case. Most of them were in the downtown area and crime actually went down. Grant you there were urban pioneers that chose less than desirable areas but they were the exception.

In Detroit the formal program run by the city that gave away houses mandated that they be rehabbed and inhabited by the person receiving them for a minimum of five years.

Then there's the Land Bank that buys the houses, then rehabs them and sells them at auction. Know some people who've gotten really good buys, some houses sell below the Land Bank's cost.

https://buildingdetroit.org/?SID=kqj4u36nhvgh8e54pm6v434ai5

So, what if you purchased these with the express intent to tear them down and install pre-built tiny-homes on them.

So you effectively get a plot of land, with service-hookups and low property taxes. but you can install beautiful, yet-tiny home on it.

http://windrivertinyhomes.com has amazing units.

No need, there are thousands of acres of vacant land in Detroit. Complete with city water, sewer and brand new led powered street lamps. There are lots of experiments including a proposed hotel made entirely from shipping containers.

Last I checked you can buy a vacant lot for $100 and they'd probably give you a discount if you bought an entire city block.

I have lived in crappy neighborhoods[1][2]. Violence is not likely to be an issue as long as you don't inject yourselves into your neighbors' business it's really not the big deal the upper classes make it out to be with all their hand wringing. Violent crime doesn't really happen that often per capita (i.e. odds are it will never happen to you). Not getting involved with drugs is like 90% of the battle. If you do get unlucky and encounter crime it's probably going to take the form of someone stealing something from your yard.

I think you either need to already be comfortable living somewhere like that in order to do so stress free.

[1] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ma/fitchburg/crime

[2] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ma/new-bedford/crime

Edit: This reminds me of every time crappy minimum wage jobs come up. I have first hand experience with and offer my opinion but then get told that I have no idea what I'm talking about. The filter bubble is real.

You've clearly never lived in a shitty neighborhood.

Yes I have[1][2]. It's really not bad unless you drive yourself nuts worrying about things that will probably never happen to you. Yes, you see and hear the effects of crime everywhere but as long as your not know by your neighbors to be an ass, your house is harder to rob than most of the nearby ones and you don't associate with the wrong people you'll be fine. It's not like there's stray bullets coming through your walls once a week (if there are odds are it will be the police who fired them, not that it makes it any better). If you're the person who freaks out over some people in the street getting in a fight or a gunshot a few blocks over then yeah, it's gonna be bad.

[1] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ma/fitchburg/crime (this one is the "nicer" of the two by a long ways, has come a long way since the recession. I would have no problem raising a family here)

[2] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ma/new-bedford/crime (this one won the "award" of #1 crime rate in the state a few years back)

murder is rare. assault, robbery, and burglary are not.

I prefer those things not happen to me

People live their whole lives in these sorts of neighborhoods without ever personally being assaulted, robbed or burglarized.

I know this is a topic that tends to bring out hysteria instead of rational assessment of probability but seriously, it's not as bad as people think. That said, the upper class crowd should feel free to not move in. The added pressure from gentrification would probably not make things better if SF is any indication.

My point here is that you can live cheaply in these neighborhoods and while there are trade-offs the trad-off is not the "living in a war zone" that many people would have you believe.

I think the point of most other comments is that you greatly underestimate the issues in an area like the Detroit "Red Zone" aka the 48205 ZIP code.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/story-series/death-by-inst...

I have been to less worse areas in Detroit in 2015 and still decided not to be play early adopter and be "the guy with money" on the block. And I'm absolutely not upper class.

Even if you live there just for the amount of time it takes to renovate and flip the house, you will need to constantly guard your tools, materials etc. If the local community thinks you are not one of them, life gets hard. In the end I bought a fixer upper house in a solid working class neighborhood (in a different city) and life is great. But yes, a lot of people think you are only safe in the suburb, which is not true. There are safe pockets in most major cities, but you have to scout for a while until you know the area.

As someone who lives in a really shitty part of SF, crime will affect you. Your apartments garage will get broken into, your packages will be stolen. People you don’t know will brazenly ask to buzz in at all times. If you are female, you will be harassed. If you are male, you may be harassed. It’s tolerable and my landlord has all kinds of fantastic security measures but it’s no breeze. Fights on the street can get pretty heated and you never know when something bad will go down. I balance all that with an apartment large enough to run my company from and entertain my dog but I’m totally down to move once I have enough capital to get a proper office and a nice place.

According to the Wikipedia page for Fitchburg

>the median income for a family was $57,245. Males had a median income of $47,350 versus $37,921 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,972. About 14.6% of families and 19.4% of the population were below the poverty line

Compare this with an area like Greenspoint in Houston, where middle class office workers are regularly warned of muggings outside their office buildings

>nearly half of Greenspoint residents have an income of under $25,000 per year, well below the Houston median of over $44,000 per year

Respectfully, while you may not have been in a pristine gated community, I think you underestimate what it means to live in a truely shitty area, and I think your advice, while reasonable on the surface, does less than you think to prevent being a target of violent crime.

What are the income stats for all of Houston?

Fitchburg is an entire city (albeit a small one). Like Houston it has bad and good areas (I don't think there's any gated communities though). The nice areas are quite nice. The not nice areas are rows of boarded up houses that have been stripped of all the copper. Every rust belt city is like this. The ratios just vary.

I have. Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, New Jersey. Few problems.

Only in Menlo Park, CA did I hear automatic weapons fire on the weekends. That was before East Palo Alto closed down Whiskey Gulch, flattened the area, and put in a Four Seasons hotel and an office building full of lawyers.

You are out of your mind.

> i.e. odds are it will never happen to you

In the reality of the situation, odds are that it will eventually happen to you.

This is a single person thing (especially a single male thing)

as a single male, I can reliable predict that I can mind my own business and probably be fine

as a parent, I can't reliably predict that my kids will mind their own business and probably be fine

As an object level fact, Japan has a homogeneous culture centered around honor, which is much different from Detroit.

It's much less so today than it was when I first went to Japan back in the 80s. Still, the culture supports vending machines lining the streets and not a single little shit vandalizing them in sight.

In Kyoto the free, public bathroom, in the middle of the city, was cleaner than my own bathroom. Whereas in Seattle I won't use one for fear of syringes.

I agree! I lived in Bellevue for a while back in the 1990s. One day, I was taking my family to Snoqualmie Falls and my three-year-old had to go to the bathroom. We stopped at a gas station in Issaquah and when I opened the door, it looked like people had just pulled down their pants in the doorway and splatter-shot into the room. It was so disgusting. I don't know what it is about American culture that makes that OK. I've never seen anything like that in Japan.

Source? When I looked into buying an “abandoned” house, the city used a bizarre tax calculation that used historical values to value the house (and it’s tax liabilties) in a bizarre and costly way.

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-detroit-housing/cheap-de...

I was never talking about the taxes, just the sticker price for the house. Japan doesn't seem to be waiving property tax for these houses, either, so the comparison is still valid.

Japan is a peculiar country, I'd bet a few dollars that they won't abuse the system that much.

Houses depreciate quickly and I don't know that land appreciates at a very high rate, so there isn't much to abuse in the first place. And because japan's zoning is not completely stupid, redevelopment can be done piecemeal. So if you buy to flip, either you flip very quickly for little to no gain or you don't and the neighbourhood gets redeveloped around and without caring about your property, which will likely be too small for anyone to be much bothered. The exceptions could likely be significant plot of lands like old temple grounds and the like which could sustain an entire development on its own.

I've seen programs like these where you have to live in the house, which is a good solution.

I doubt that, I guess. I checked into the program in Detroit and you had to live in the property for a year. Now maybe people got around that somehow but that's not how the program was structured.

The layouts of those suburbs are terrible. State should have just tried at least to make some greenbelts of those areas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com