Still, for some, the homes are perfect. One of the first tenants to move in this past summer is a former Methodist minister, David Leenhouts, who was forced to give up his ministry near Cleveland because of health issues that make it difficult for him to walk and talk.

Mr. Leenhouts, who grew up in the Detroit area, said his college-age son told him the small home, with a steepled ceiling, was all he needed because everything is within just a few steps. Mr. Leenhouts, 59, said, “I have no idea where I would be living if I was not chosen for a tiny house.”

That said, a cluster of tiny homes hardly seems scalable in a city as big as Detroit. And almost by definition, a tiny home isn’t a viable option for a family with children.

It’s also an example of why the long-term prognosis for Detroit’s housing market remains uncertain at best. Much of the work underway is taking place block-by-block — much like the tiny-home homeless experiment — and there are a lot of blocks in this 139-square-mile city.

“The pilot programs help some people, but they are on the margin,” said Gregory Markus, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan and executive director of Detroit Action Commonwealth, an advocacy group for low-income residents. “‘The root problem is that Detroit is the poorest big city in America.”’

The national poverty rate is 14 percent, and Detroit’s is 36 percent. Mr. Markus said that, without more jobs, home buying will remain a largely unattainable goal.

Detroit’s population peaked in the 1950s at nearly 2 million and has been falling ever since. The financial crisis and the city’s bankruptcy filing in 2013 hollowed out what was left of its once large, middle-class African-American community. Over the past decade there have been more than 150,000 home foreclosures here.