Discussion
Make Detroit Home
seanw444: Does it come with a private security detail?
whalesalad: Not needed! All that hyperbole around Detroit is way overblown.
qmarchi: I'll get asked where I identify as "from" since I've moved around a lot as a kid, and without fail I'll respond 'Detroit'.There's so much history and culture to explore; along with tons of huge parks.If I had to leave Tokyo, would definitely be up there.
bpt3: So an average of about $1600 to move to a place with a historically corrupt and incompetent local government, high crime, poor schools, dated infrastructure, and limited higher education access?They'd need to add at least 2 zeroes to the end of that number to have any impact.
bryanrasmussen: the future is already in Detroit, and it's been there for a while. It's getting distributed to the rest of the U.S now. It might be that going through the collapse to the other side is the quickest way forward, if so Detroit is already further along than the rest.although it may also be that I am just a cynic.
jen20: I can second that. I spend a lot of time in Detroit and its suburbs (though don't live there) and have yet to feel unsafe despite dire warnings from all kinds of people. There are definitely areas to avoid, but that is equally true of New York City or San Francisco.
rattlesnakedave: $1000 to move to Detroit is an incredible lowball.
jen20: Why? It's a fine city to live in, if you can deal with the cold a few months a year.
ninkendo: > limited higher education accessMichigan has some of the best universities in the country, dunno what you’re talking about. University of Michigan is 45 minutes away and it’s ranked #23 in the world according to https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
throwawayk7h: do they mean move "to" detroit...?
bobomonkey: Be really careful about cheap Detroit homes as they can come with a backlog of property taxes.
t-3: And occasionally squatters.
jm4: $1000 doesn’t cover the cost of a moving truck to get your stuff from one end of a small town to the other. In terms of moving costs to relocate from another state, it’s less than negligible. It wouldn’t influence my decision at all and wouldn’t put Detroit on my list of places to consider. If they want to attract talent and entrepreneurs they need to do better.
bpt3: Yes UM is a good school, but it's not in the city. It's one of the many reasons the suburbs or Ann Arbor itself are much more appealing.And that's one world class university in the entire region. Compare that to Boston, SF, LA, DC, Chicago, Pittsburgh and others.
mklyachman: Pittsburgh mentioned
whalesalad: I used to live at 8th and Mission in SF. 10000x sketchier than Detroit.
twostorytower: $1,000? They can't be serious?
toomuchtodo: https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/cost-to-move-across-the...
ninkendo: I mean if you’re going to say the university has to be literally within city limits, then I don’t see how Boston counts either (Harvard and MIT are in Cambridge) or SF (Stanford is a longer drive than Ann Arbor is from Detroit), or LA (UCLA is a nightmare of a drive from downtown). Are we really going to split hairs and say Ann Arbor doesn’t count as nearby Detroit but Stanford counts as nearby SF? Come on.The Detroit metropolitan area includes Ann Arbor, it’s in the same commute range. Yes if your main goal is to attend a university, you should live closer than the nearby metropolis, regardless of which university you choose. It doesn’t mean Detroit has “limited higher education access”.And there’s plenty of other quality universities nearby. Michigan has a lot of faults but lack of quality universities isn’t one of them. Unless your standards are “it’s not Stanford or Harvard”, in which case you’re just being unreasonable.
lostlogin: It’s $1000 more than any other city is offering. Of have I missed something?
rattlesnakedave: Many cities are offering more. Evansville, IN is offering 3k cash + other non cash incentives. Other Indiana cities give you up to 12k downpayment assiatance on a house.https://www.makemymove.com/get-paid/evansville-indiana
t-3: Wayne State is just downtown too, it's not bad at all.
jm4: It is and that’s great. I guess it counts for something if Detroit is already on my list, but it’s not what puts Detroit on my list in the first place. A multi-year break on property taxes or incentives like low rate SBA loans or tax credits to move my business would be more interesting.
panny: And your kitchen gets stolen four times,https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVZZhyvZMBQ
mbg721: I would want to know exactly where I was, but downtown Detroit is like other big city places.
Nifty3929: Can we add the word "to" to the title?Or how about "program to incent people to move to Detroit"
saghm: Based on the domain, I expected this to be about literally moving Detroit somehow, either figuratively by relocating things or literally by physically moving the land (like Marble Hill but at a much larger scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Hill,_Manhattan)
throw-the-towel: The Swedish city of Kiruna has been moving for quite some years now. Here they're shown moving the church: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L71HKb8U-Y0
rattlesnakedave: $1000 to move ANYWHERE is already a lowball. Much less to a city that consistently ranks among the top 5 most dangerous large US cities by violent crime, has brutal winters, and a blight problem.
wenc: I recommend visiting Detroit to update your priors. I first visited in 2000 and it was blighted. I visited again in 2025 and it’s actually nice (downtown Detroit and surrounding). There’s even a Microsoft office there.
SilverElfin: One surprising thing is how quickly it got blighted. Felt like just a few years. I wonder why that is
analogpixel: Robocop and ed209 have really cleaned the place up.
loloquwowndueo: Brutal winters. Hahaha. Meanwhile in Canada.
nkrisc: Detroit is nearly in Canada.
