Saginaw Habitat Adds Demolition to Its Mission

“The problem is endemic throughout the Midwestern, older industrial towns,” said Darnell Earley, Saginaw’s city manager. “It’s going to be very difficult to catch up with it.”

On the city’s east side on a recent afternoon, a mail carrier stepped onto the porch of what appeared to be the only occupied house in sight and then drove off, past a whirring bulldozer demolishing the remains of a burned house and past every other house on the block, boarded and abandoned.