Check this out: Amiga tech. support job in 2011!

[Ilwrath]

Yeah....  Sounds really flaky to me.  And, while $19/hr is well above minimum wage in the US, it's not a very good wage for a very unique technician.
At best, it might be a ploy by some group to try to find some veteran IT folks who are hard up for cash.  But, more likely, it's probably a complete scam.  I'm tempted to drop them an email about the remote support position they mentioned, and see what I get back.  

[Ilwrath]

I have seen that. Even $20 is expensive for SOME houses in Detroit. You have to ask why they are vacant even at that price though.

Its a shame.

I got the cash in my pocket to buy 60 right now, but whats the catch

There's no catch at all.  Other than the fact the houses are in Detroit.... And the worst areas of Detroit, at that.  Which is to say they're in one of the parts of Detroit that is completely unlivable.  No police coverage, minimal fire coverage, emergency medical response is typically measured in hours, open crime, any reputable insurance company will instantly deny you any coverage based on your zip code, no nearby grocery stores, no trash pickup... Power outages often measured in weeks... And the list goes on.  Hell, you can't even order a Pizza delivery in some neighborhoods.  Provided you found a functional phone line or cell coverage to make the call in the first place.  

If you picked up that house and moved it 10 miles north, into Oakland County, it'd be worth $150,000.  20 miles west, into Washtenaw County, it's worth $120,000.  10 miles south, into Downriver Wayne County, it's worth $80,000.  (10 miles East?  I'm not real sure -- it'd be in Canada!)  But in a bad area of Detroit?  Completely worthless.  You'd have to pay me an awful lot of money to even attempt to live there.  (I bought an $80,000 house Downriver, rather than a $10 house 10 miles north of me.)  That really puts it in perspective just how much people who know DON'T want to live there.

[Ilwrath]

Nice bit of exaggeration Ilwrath. I am sure it is very bad in some areas of Detroit (I was born in Pontiac, Michigan and still have relatives around the state of Michigan, some of them in, or very close to Detroit), but your description could easily mislead many that are unfamiliar with the city of Detroit to an inaccurate conception of the area.

Not really.  Large portions of commercial areas are great!  Detroit's theater / stadium district is awesome.  The Fox, The State (err Fillmore, now I guess it's called?), Comerica Park, Ford Field.  All stunningly beautiful.  Hart Plaza, Hockeytown, the Ren Cen...  People travel into Detroit for these things all the time.  

Ah, but there's the rub, right?  People travel in....  Hardly anyone who has a choice lives in the City of Detroit.  Like I said, almost all the neighborhoods surrounding Detroit are fine.  And even a few neighborhoods like the west side up by East Dearborn or old north by Indian Village are still ok.  But they're a very small percent of the residential area of the original city.  The City of Detroit's population once topped 3 million people.  Now there's less than 800,000.  That's a LOT of empty residential land area.

And those are the areas where there are practically free houses...  But you don't want to live there.  You basically CAN'T live in those areas, for all the reasons I specified, plus many more I didn't bother to mention (like public schools that have the worst dropout rates in the country, public transportation that is largely useless when it shows up at all, etc.)  

I could have gotten a house for basically nothing.  But I spent $80,000 on a house 15 miles away so I wouldn't have to put up with the headaches of the City of Detroit.  So did the other 4 million+ people who live in the greater Suburban Detroit area surrounding the city.  

If you want to spin it to another thread, I can back up every claim I made with links to the Detroit News/Free Press articles about each problem.  It's not an unfair view.  A lot of Detroit's residential areas are F'd up.  Big time.