The Ford Foundation is getting ready to open its first office in Detroit since leaving the city in 1953 as it ramps up an initiative to invest in affordable housing in Detroit.
Crain's Detroit Business reports that Foundation President Darren Walker is expected to detail the decision in a speech Thursday at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference.
Walker says the international foundation has hired a new program officer who will be based in the city later this year.
The decision to put an employee in Detroit is the latest effort Walker's made to build the foundation's ties to the city, where its endowment was first created from the estates of auto baron Henry Ford and his son Edsel, who took on the foundation in 1936.
