There’s one more reason it pays to work for the government.

Detroit is giving preferential treatment to city employees, retirees and their immediate family members by offering them half off city-owned homes that are up for auction.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

Current city workers — those on the city payroll or working on contract with the city — and retirees will be eligible for 50% off the final auction price of homes put up to bid through the Detroit Land Bank, spokesman Craig Fahle told the Free Press.

Factoring in immediate relatives — which include siblings, children and parents of the city’s current and retired work force — adds a potential pool of buyers far beyond the city’s current workforce of about 9,000, along with 23,000 retirees.

The program is designed to “reward” employees, current and retired.

“They’re some of our biggest boosters,” Fahle tells the paper.

The auction programs makes available “salvageable homes in stable neighborhoods.”

Homes in Detroit have been available for sale for as little as $1, according to Zillow.

“As soon as they know it’s empty, it’s like a gazelle limping in the Serengeti — they will take it down. You will see people pushing a wheelbarrow down the street, full of siding or copper. They take everything,” Ron French of the Detroit News told Zillow in 2008.

Detroit does not require its employees to live within city limits.

“The best you can do is to create reasons they want to live here, and this is a way to do that,” Fahle says.