Housing Michigan

Finally, Delores Strouse got fed up. The abandoned and decaying clapboard house at 15709 Chatham St. on Detroit's west side, which stood just two doors from her home, had become a haven for prostitution and drug trafficking. For nearly two years, Strouse and others in her working-class neighborhood had been complaining to city officials, pleading with them to tear the house down.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it has negotiated a record civil penalty and settlement against property owners accused of turning away blacks posing as renters in a government effort to root out housing discrimination. The $350,000 settlement with the owners of two Michigan apartment complexes is the first case to be resolved under a 4-year-old program authorizing the government to conduct random tests to detect discriminatory practices.

In an unprecedented attempt by government to aid first-time home buyers, Michigan Gov. James J. Blanchard on Tuesday proposed a state program that would guarantee that young families could save enough to make a down payment on a home. Under the plan, state residents would set aside funds by investing in tax-free state bonds that would pay no interest.

Finally, Delores Strouse got fed up. The abandoned and decaying clapboard house at 15709 Chatham St. on Detroit's west side, which stood just two doors from her home, had become a haven for prostitution and drug trafficking. For nearly two years, Strouse and others in her working-class neighborhood had been complaining to city officials, pleading with them to tear the house down.

Harry Sharrott isn't Ebenezer Scrooge; he's just a soft-spoken, white-haired, 52-year-old federal bureaucrat trying to put two kids through college at the same time. But during this holiday week, it seemed to many in this troubled city that Sharrott was tearing a page out of Scrooge's manual of business practices. Just after Christmas, Sharrott, the head of the Detroit office of the U.S.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it has negotiated a record civil penalty and settlement against property owners accused of turning away blacks posing as renters in a government effort to root out housing discrimination. The $350,000 settlement with the owners of two Michigan apartment complexes is the first case to be resolved under a 4-year-old program authorizing the government to conduct random tests to detect discriminatory practices.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - In 1963, an explosive year in the quest for civil rights, George Romney appeared unannounced in the mostly white suburb of Grosse Pointe and marched to the front of an anti-segregation demonstration to stand beside black leaders. Letters from startled constituents poured into the office of the first-term Michigan governor, whose son Mitt was then 16. Supporters who had helped the elder Romney win his narrow victory the previous November said his actions made him "a double-crosser" and a "Judas" to the people who voted for him. Their diatribes were sprinkled with warnings that they would work against him: "You are a 'dead duck' for 1964," one detractor typed above a newspaper photograph of a shirt-sleeved Romney walking shoulder to shoulder with civil rights activists.

In an unprecedented attempt by government to aid first-time home buyers, Michigan Gov. James J. Blanchard on Tuesday proposed a state program that would guarantee that young families could save enough to make a down payment on a home. Under the plan, state residents would set aside funds by investing in tax-free state bonds that would pay no interest.

Harry Sharrott isn't Ebenezer Scrooge; he's just a soft-spoken, white-haired, 52-year-old federal bureaucrat trying to put two kids through college at the same time. But during this holiday week, it seemed to many in this troubled city that Sharrott was tearing a page out of Scrooge's manual of business practices. Just after Christmas, Sharrott, the head of the Detroit office of the U.S.