U-SNAP-BAC completes renovations on 4 East Side homes

U-SNAP-BAC, a community organization committed to redevelopment, is looking to give four foreclosed houses on Detroit’s East Side new life. Two of the houses the organization received for a dollar from National City Bank, and two were purchased for $15,000.

“We’ve already put $65,000 into rehabbing one of the $15,000 houses,” U-SNAP-BAC executive director Linda Smith says. “The National City houses were move-in ready when they were donated to us.”

The last of the four, she says, still needs a lot of work but the funding is in place. “We’re making decisions on that one,” she says. “We want to have a buyer or renter before we move forward.”

Smith says that both of the National City houses have a buyer and a renter in place, respectively, and work is being done for the other two.

Smith says the idea is to build around these houses with the incoming neighborhood stabilization program funding, to make them an anchor for revitalization.

“The NSP funding will help out a lot,” she says. “We have a four-block-by-four-block radius of houses we’re looking at to apply the funding.”

She says that will be about 40 houses in all. Distribution of NSP funds hasn’t happened yet, and Smith said she isn’t sure exactly how much her organization will receive. She says whatever the amount, it will make a difference.

Source: Linda Smith, U SNAP BAC
Writer: Terry Parris Jr.