Housing crisis: Do homes for $1 schemes work?


Housing crisis: Do homes for $1 schemes work?

07/10/2024 It was a regeneration idea that started half a century ago in the US, and has spread to other parts of the world. But do $1 homes reverse urban decay and who are the winners and losers? Judy Aleksalza’s house in the Pigtown area of Baltimore feels like a real-life version of the Tardis, Doctor Who’s famous time-travelling police box. It seems bigger on the inside than the outside. It’s part of a row of impeccably kept 19th Century terrace houses - there are freshly watered plant pots outside many of the front steps, and no litter or graffiti. Ms Aleksalza bought the then abandoned, derelict property back in the 1976 for the same price as her neighbours - $1 (77p). Since then she has spent tens of thousands of dollars, and much more in blood sweat and tears, transforming it. Poor weather, contractors who failed to do the work, it was, in Judy’s words – “a horror story”. “I came very close to declaring personal bankruptcy,” she says. “It’s kind of like childbirth, you know. It was horrible while it was going on. “But you know, after it was all over, I said ‘it is mine, it’s all mine’. And the stability of having your own home is everything.” Baltimore, 40 miles (64km) northeast of Washington DC, was one of the first cities in the US to try what it called “urban homesteading”. Vacant properties were sold off for just one dollar, allowing people to get on the housing ladder who might not otherwise be able to afford it. The scheme was run by Jay Brodie who at the time was a senior figure in the city’s housing department. “We picked names out of a hat and started meeting with them,” he remembers. “Once it was finished, it made the cover of the American Express magazine… and we said ‘we have something here’. “We're talking about something that you can see and touch. They were living examples of what could be done with Baltimore row houses.” The project came to a halt in 1988 after Mr Brodie left the department in the early 1980s. But some ideas never quite go away, and instead spread their wings.