For African Americans, the struggle to own property in Detroit is almost as old as the city itself – tactics like redlining, restrictive covenants, and mob violence were long used to prevent black Detroiters from purchasing homes. And while, the city enjoyed a higher-than-average black homeownership rate by 2000, the recent subprime mortgage and tax foreclosure crises have reduced the city's black homeownership rate to well below half.
