Detroit, MI
Skilled trades, smart capital,stronger blocks in Detroit.
Detroit is Stepsmith's flagship market — mature CDFI infrastructure, deep subcontracting bench, and city buyers (Detroit Land Bank Authority, Michigan Rehabilitation Properties LLC) already contracting inner-city trades scopes. HVAC, electrical, plumbing, carpentry, and roofing trades build the cohort.
- HVAC
- Electrical
- Plumbing
- Carpentry
- Roofing
- MI anchor buyers
Local trade demand
What Detroit is actually buying.
Stepsmith anchors each market against named buyer institutions already contracting inner-city trades scopes — not a regional deck. These are the signals we're sizing the cohort against.
Detroit has a developed community-development-finance ecosystem — multiple CDFI allocatees already issuing QLICI loans in the inner-city service geography. Stepsmith layers on the apprenticeship-to-ownership pipeline those notes alone don’t fund.
The Detroit Land Bank Authority and Michigan Rehabilitation Properties LLC are anchor buyers actively contracting inner-city residential rehabs — the steady PO pipeline Stepsmith routes founder-apprentices into.
Detroit’s trades workforce is concentrated and experienced — the founder-apprentices walking into the Stepsmith pipeline are working journeymen with the trade license already in hand and a sub-bench ready to staff.
ICIC’s 2024 inner-city trade signal: 38% of Michigan’s inner-city jobs sit in skilled trades. The buyer demand is real; the gap is the equity-holding employer layer — exactly where Stepsmith operates.
The local program
How a Detroit cohort actually runs.
Detroit runs a rolling quarterly intake of 6–12 founder-apprentices per cohort, anchored to the 482xx ZIP band where the buyer pipeline lines up and the 60% local-hire pledge is enforceable. Same 12-week pipeline as the rest of Stepsmith — license verification, principal note, crew on payroll, anchor-buyer walk-throughs, first PO, equity grant.
Detroit cohort · at a glance
MI- Cohort cadence
- Rolling quarterly intakeAligned to Stepsmith's standing quarterly cadence — same pipeline in every market.
- Cohort size
- 6–12 founder-apprenticesPer cohort, per quarter. Capped so the journeyman mentor hours and the anchor walk-throughs hold up.
- Service geography
- 482xx ZIP bandWhere the 60% local-hire pledge is enforceable and the buyer pipeline lines up.
- Local-hire pledge
- 60% of crew from the same neighborhoodFiled at week 8 of the 12-week pipeline — operationally tough and externally cited.
- Active journeyman license (or in process) in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, carpentry, or roofing.
- 60% local-hire pledge countersigned at week 8 of the 12-week pipeline.
- Non-material record reviewed by the program lead — not auto-disqualified.
Pick your city in the intake form
Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis each run their own cohort off the same intake form. Pick your city inside the form — five fields, two regulated disclosures, reviewed within five business days.
Open the Detroit intakeStepsmith runs three markets
Other MI cities, and the rest of the program.
Detroit cohorts run alongside parallel intakes in the other two anchor markets. Same pipeline, same journeyman mentor discipline, same anchor-buyer walk-throughs — just a different city on the cap table.
Stepsmith market
Stepsmith market
Detroit · next cohort
Start the Detroitintake.
Five fields, two regulated disclosures, one paragraph on the trade you want to scale. Detroit cohorts run on a rolling quarterly cadence — every submission gets a five-business-day human review.
Apply
Trade, city, one paragraph — that's all the intake needs to start.
Buyer network, press, partnerships — same inbox. We route fast.