DETROIT (AP) — Crews are starting to board up about 11,000 vacant houses across Detroit.
Mayor Mike Duggan said Thursday that the work is part of the city's blight eradication efforts that include demolitions and rehabbing homes that can be saved.
Boarding up and securing houses can preserve them for rehabilitation. The program is expected to take two years. Forty have been boarded up in recent days in one southwest Detroit neighborhood.
Duggan's office says there about 25,000 blighted, vacant houses in Detroit. Of that number, 9,000 are expected to be torn down. Another 5,000 will be fixed up and reoccupied through a land bank auction and nuisance abatement program.
About 12,000 houses have been razed and 3,000 rehabbed since January 2014.
