Imagine buying a house for only $25,000 in your 20s or 30s. It may sound like a dream that ended in the 1970s, but it’s happening today; the only catch is that it’s happening in the city America gave up on, Detroit.

Engineers Alessandra Carreon, 28, and Drew McUsic, 27, are two of the risk-takers who left a cozy but expensive city – Seattle – to buy a house in Detroit, hoping to put down roots in a city where they could carry out their dream of sustainable living. Carreon and McUsic paid only $25,000 for an early 20th century five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Detroit’s West Village area. Carreon says they expect to spend another $25,000 to $35,000 on renovations, including the cost of solar panels, which they will be installing this December.

Carreon and McUsic are not as exceptional as you might think. Go to a party with fellow millennials in Detroit’s central Corktown area and you may be surprised by the conversation. Clutching red plastic cups filled with hot cider, and dipping Weetabix crackers into homemade guacamole, young guests’ eyes are lighting up as they exchange stories of property prices and whether or not they should consider buying instead of renting.

While the population of Detroit continues to decline as a whole, the population in Detroit’s greater downtown area has actually been growing over the last decade. The city was at the top of a ranking released by real estate company Trulia this September, listing places where buying made more sense than renting. Trulia’s study indicates that buying in Detroit is 65% cheaper than renting.

Since 2011, through two programs named Live Midtown and Live Downtown, big businesses based in the area, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Quicken Loans, have been seeking to build on the trend by providing incentives to living in the city, instead of commuting from the suburbs. New renters are given $3,500 towards renting in their first year, while new buyers are given a $20,000 loan towards their purchase, forgivable after five years of permanent residence.

According to Elise Fields at Live Midtown Inc, the programs have so far supported the purchase of 118 homes in the greater downtown area and hundreds of rentals. Typical buyers range from young professionals to older workers whose children have flown the nest, she said.

For some adventurous millennials, Detroit is a testing ground. Young locals and newcomers, lured by the prospect of affordable housing, are taking a bet on a city that they hope they can lift by their investment.

It will be heavy lifting. Detroit is the largest American city to ever file for bankruptcy. The city feeds international “ruin porn” photo addiction, where an estimated 78,000 homes are abandoned, the 911 average response rate is 58 minutes, and homicide and violent crime rates are among the country’s worst. City services have suffered as the median household income is just $27,862 and over one-third of the population lives below the poverty line. Much of the city’s crumbling infrastructure and low-performing schools over the last few decades can be attributed to a fleeing tax base.

Nor is buying a house in Detroit an investment for those who don’t want to live there. Detroit, with its high crime rates, shuns absentee landlords. Houses left unattended are quickly stripped, their contents and structure sold for scrap.

Gaston Nash, a 30-year-old Detroit native who works as an electronics engineer for the Department of Defense, admits many of his contemporaries fled the city as soon as they could, and “never want to come back”.

But for Nash, the motivation to live in his native city is tied to witnessing the effects the 2008 financial crash had on people’s lives.

“I don’t want to be in a situation where I have to lose my house because I’ve lost my job. I’m trying to get everything paid off and this is the only opportunity to do that pretty much in America.”

Nash bought his current home in the University of Detroit Mercy area at the auction price of $500. Thanks to a loan from his college credit union, he was able to spend $30,000 bringing it up to livable conditions. He hopes to repay his debt by 2015.

Even so, there are challenges. Nash’s house was broken into just after he moved in, though he is committed to staying put. He recently led the creation of a block club to boost security in his neighborhood.

Attracting higher earners like Nash to the urban lifestyle is good news for Detroit and a positive step toward reversing the city’s decline, says Rajiv Sethi, professor of economics at Columbia University’s Barnard College.

Sethi, who teaches on the economics of group inequality, says, “At this point in Detroit’s history, what’s crucially important is to set in motion this expectation that the city will recover, for that expectation to take hold and for people to respond to it. Then the expectation of recovery may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Slowly, obstacles hindering newcomers from buying are beginning to fade. While applying for federal and traditional loans used to be unthinkable just a year or so ago, stories are emerging Detroit buyers who have successfully received loans.

Mike Smith, 36, director of baseball operations for the Detroit Tigers, just purchased a four-bedroom $107,000 home in the quaint Hubbard Farms area of Detroit with 5% down and a loan from his bank.

Smith, who is moving to the neighborhood with his fiancé, is “sincerely hopeful” they are settling in for the long term, tying the city’s fate to their own.