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Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)

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LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) today to announce that the state will be supporting revitalization projects to bring new housing, economic growth and vibrancy to three neighborhoods in Detroit. The projects are expected to generate a total capital investment of $33 million.

"These revitalization projects demonstrate our ongoing efforts to meet the housing needs of Michiganders and build a foundation for long-term economic opportunity in Michigan," said Governor Whitmer. "Today's investment is helping us put Michiganders first, creating good-paying jobs, and reinforcing Detroit neighborhoods as attractive places to live, work, and play by transforming underutilized properties into productive spaces."

The Brush 8 Townhomes project will include the construction of a three-story multifamily building on two vacant sites in the Brush Park neighborhood of Detroit. When completed, the building will consist of eight for-sale residential townhomes and will feature a rooftop terrace, penthouse, garden, and alleyway improvements. The project also includes public infrastructure improvements including curbs, gutters and paving the public alleyway.

The project is expected to generate a total capital investment of $4.8 million and will reactivate vacant property into a contextually appropriate building that will provide needed housing in the neighborhood.

The City of Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority has received MSF approval of $29,220 in state tax capture for the reimbursement of brownfield remediation activities. The city is supporting the project through the approval of the local tax capture, valued at $201,145. The development team is also seeking a Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax abatement that would apply to future residents of the property. The city of Detroit is engaged with MEDC's Redevelopment Ready Communities program.

"The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation is committed to supporting Detroit-based and minority-owned development firms. We're excited to support City Growth Partners, and its Brush 8 Townhomes development," said Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Executive Vice President of Economic Development & Investment Services Kenyetta Bridges. "The project will redevelop vacant and previously contaminated land to provide new, high-quality and design-forward residential opportunities for Detroit's Brush Park neighborhood."

The 1727 Merrick Redevelopment Project will include the construction of three three-story townhome buildings in the Woodbridge neighborhood near downtown Detroit. When completed, the project will consist of 23 for-sale townhomes and public infrastructure improvements including sidewalks, a public pocket park, bike infrastructure, and onsite underground stormwater management system.

The project is expected to generate a total capital investment of $7.1 million. In addition to bringing affordable housing options to the area, the project will transform unused land into a development that will drive economic activity and contribute to the vitality and density of the neighborhood. It will also move tax-reverted Detroit Land Bank property back to productive use that generates tax base for the community.

The City of Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority has received MSF approval of $81,739 in state tax capture for the reimbursement of brownfield remediation activities. Local support for the project includes approval of the local tax capture valued at $652,180 and a potential Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax abatement that is anticipated to have a value of $2 million, helping to reduce property tax burdens for future homeowners.

"The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation is proud to support the redevelopment of the vacant 1727 Merrick site in Detroit's Woodbridge neighborhood," Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Executive Vice President of Economic Development & Investment Services Kenyetta Bridges said. "The new construction will provide attainable homeownership opportunities for Detroit residents and families, which aligns with DEGC's mission to provide inclusive economic opportunities within the communities we serve."

The 3700 Trumbull Redevelopment Project will include the construction of 65 new, for-sale market-rate townhomes on 11 parcels in the Woodbridge area of Detroit. The project will include public improvements such as storm water management features, installation of streetlights, sidewalks, landscaping, and creation of a community commons area connecting Scripps Park and Rose Dog Park that will be accessible to the public.

The project is expected to generate a total capital investment of $20.9 million. It will also provide needed workforce housing options immediately adjacent to an employment center and serve as a catalyst for further economic growth in the surrounding commercial district. The project is expected to generate a total capital investment of $20.9 million. This project is another example of MEDC's partnership with the Detroit Land Bank Authority in returning property owned by the Land Bank to productive use within the community.

The City of Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority has received MSF approval of $192,481 in state tax capture for the reimbursement of eligible activities. The city of Detroit is supporting the project through the approval of local tax capture, and it is anticipated that the city will approve a Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax abatement valued at $6.4 million.

"Reactivating blighted, vacant property is at the core of the Detroit Land Bank Authority's mission and we work directly with residents and developers alike to make that happen," said Detroit Land Bank Authority Interim Executive Director Tammy Daniels. "Projects like these aren't just pretty to look at-they take vacant land and turn it into new, mixed-income housing opportunities for Detroiters and increase property values for neighbors."

The Detroit Land Bank Authority's mission is to return the city's blighted and vacant properties to productive use, utilizing a variety of sales programs to make homeownership and land purchases accessible to Detroiters. The Detroit Land Bank Authority works directly with individual buyers, as well as community partner organizations and developers for projects.

"These three development projects reflect our continued focus on supporting innovative placemaking efforts in communities throughout the state that lays the foundation for long-term economic wins and greater opportunity for Michiganders," said Quentin L. Messer, Jr., CEO of MEDC and President and Chair of the MSF Board. "By focusing on traditional neighborhoods and increasing much-needed housing options, we are working with our local partners in Detroit to establish vibrant, unique places that residents and visitors will enjoy."
About Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)
The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is the state's marketing arm and lead advocate for business development, job awareness and community development with the focus on growing Michigan's economy. For more information on the MEDC and our initiatives, visit www.MichiganBusiness.org. For Pure Michigan® tourism information, your trip begins at www.michigan.org. Join the conversation on: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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Gov. Whitmer Announces New Housing Development, Economic Investments for Three Detroit Neighborhoods | Michigan Business

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LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) today to announce that the state will be supporting revitalization projects to bring new housing, economic growth and vibrancy to three neighborhoods in Detroit. The projects are expected to generate a total capital investment of $33 million.

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https://www.homego.com/blog/how-do-abandoned-houses-affect-my-property-value/

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Abandoned houses can be found across the nation in both rural and urban communities of all sizes. In a report released in late 2018 by ATTOM Data Solutions, almost 1.5 million vacant properties could be found nationwide.

Vacant and abandoned houses can have a negative impact on neighborhoods and on the value of your property.

Abandoned Versus Vacant House

A vacant house differs from one that is truly abandoned. In general, vacant properties still belong to an owner but the home/building isn't occupied.

It also may suffer from neglect as the owner lives out of the area and/or may be experiencing financial difficulties such as bankruptcy and foreclosure. After several months, the vacant house may be considered abandoned.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD) states,

"In general, a vacant property becomes a problem when the property owner abandons the basic responsibilities of ownership, such as routine maintenance or mortgage and property tax payments."

The owner of a vacant house still has legal responsibility for the property, but often has no plans to return or maintain it. The owner of an abandoned house typically has forfeited their ownership and rights, and has no intentions to reclaim the property.

How Abandoned Houses Affect Property Value

Generally, the ugliest house on the block is the last one to sell. In many neighborhoods that ugly house is abandoned.

Vacant properties or abandoned houses typically are eyesores and for aesthetic reasons alone, they can lower the property values of neighboring homes. In a report compiled for the city of Topeka, Kansas, researchers found that houses located on blocks without any abandoned properties were valued seven percent higher than those found on blocks with abandoned houses.

Negative Effects Abandoned Houses Have on a Neighborhood

A neighborhood can suffer in several ways if it has vacant or abandoned houses. At the most basic, a home that's abandoned likely is unsightly.

Its lawn is not mowed, there may be junk in the yard or on the porch, and the house may be in need of obvious exterior repairs. These homes can become problems for the community.

Residents may see an increase in crime with abandoned houses in the neighborhood. It can be common to see higher rates of:

Trespassing, that can lead to squatters

Vandalism ranging from graffiti to broken windows

Theft

Arson

The Abandoned Building Project report from IAAI/USFA states,

"Vacant and abandoned structures are unsightly, attract criminal activity, and are a threat to public safety wherever they exist. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimates that more than twenty civilians die and 6,000 firefighters are injured while fighting fires in these properties every year."

When crime rates rise and public safety decreases in a community, it becomes more difficult for owners to sell their homes.

What Can I Do About Abandoned Houses in My Neighborhood?

Homeowners with vacant or abandoned houses in the neighborhood don't have many options. Because many of these homes are in need of serious repair, it can be too costly and take a long time for renovations. The owner may not be able to fund these repairs and often, the property is in foreclosure.

It's not uncommon for the government to eventually seize the property when it falls into violations of various federal laws. When this happens, a home auction typically is the solution.

In a home auction of this type, the property may sell well below its estimated value making it attractive to investors and individuals or companies who "flip" homes for sale.

If there's an abandoned house in your neighborhood and you're worried about property value decline, you can check with the County Clerk's office to access property ownership records. If there's no owner, you may be able to locate the mortgage lender via a public records search.

A foreclosed property, now bank-owned, may become part of a real estate home auction. The latter offers the best potential to get the property sold and begin the often lengthy process of renovation.

Abandoned houses can be negative for homeowners and, unfortunately, there is not much you can do to get rid of them. If you're ready to get away from these eyesores, look to HomeGo to sell your home minus the hard work and headaches. You won't miss living in a neighborhood with abandoned houses.

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How Do Abandoned Houses Affect My Property Value? - HomeGo

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Abandoned houses can be found across the nation in both rural and urban communities of all sizes. In a report released in late 2018 by ATTOM Data Solutions, almost 1.5 million vacant properties could be found nationwide. Vacant and abandoned houses can have a negative impact on neighborhoods and on the value of your property.

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Daisy Jackson is a fourth-generation Detroiter who has lived in her Islandview home for 50 years. As the city of Detroit decides how to spend an influx of federal money, for Jackson, neighborhood investment looks like fixing up homes.

Block clubs and neighborhood associations need financial support, said Denise Lyles, 62 of Detroit's Dexter Linwood area, where her family has lived for nearly a century.

Chase Cantrell, 37 of Detroit's Bagley community, thinks the city should ramp up funds for Black and brown developers and pilot a universal basic income program.

These three residents are among more than 3,000 others who, over the course of a month, shared how they'd like the city to spend $426 million in federal funds, through citywide community meetings. The money, made available through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, is for local governments to use to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Detroit received the fifth-largest amount among cities across the nation.

"Money needs to go back to the neighborhood," Lyles said. "Why do I say it needs to go back to the neighborhood? Because Detroiters are your stakeholders, Detroiters are what makes Detroit - the ones that hung in here through the bankruptcy, through everybody talking about Detroit, saying there was no hope for Detroit, but they struggled through and they held on."

More: Neighborhood improvement, fighting poverty among priorities for Detroit's $400M rescue fund

More: Michigan's local governments getting huge one-time $4.4B windfall: What it means

The city of Detroit hosted 63 meetings to gauge feedback on Mayor Mike Duggan's proposal on how to spend those dollars. The mayor's original plan focused on broad areas including fighting intergenerational poverty; restoring neighborhoods; improving parks, recreation and cultural facilities; enhancing public safety; closing the digital divide; and small business assistance.

Survey results from the city - capturing more than 580 responses - identified rebuilding neighborhoods, fighting intergenerational poverty and improving public safety as the top three priorities.

Detroit City Council must approve the mayor's final plan, and is slated to consider it during a meeting on Tuesday.

Councilmember Raquel Castañeda-López on Friday proposed her own recommendations for how to spend the federal dollars. Arguing that the mayor's plan "perpetuates the status quo," Castañeda-López issued a press release Friday advocating for federal money to be given to Detroiters.

"The intention of ARPA funds is to address the financial hardships families, businesses, and the city experienced during the pandemic. My proposal does that by giving ARPA monies directly to the people and small businesses through grants, forgivable loans, and piloting a universal basic income program," Castañeda-López said in a news release.

Cantrell said the community engagement process felt rushed and reversed. He said listening sessions should have come first, before the mayor presented funding priorities.

"My preference would have been that this would have been a little more open ended," Cantrell said.

Still, Lyles said she feels heard. She has attended six community meetings.

"They've been listening to what the people have said, and they've been re-appropriating and moving funds around. And to me, that's fantastic, because you have to listen to what the people have to say," Lyles said.

The Free Press tuned into or attended several meetings run by district managers, nonprofits, block clubs and city council members to understand how residents want their city government to spend millions of federal dollars.

Here are some of the issues Detroiters spoke about:

Home repairs and affordability

Detroiters expressed the need for home repair funds during most of the community meetings the Free Press tuned into. That's also reflected in the city's survey, with more than 250 responses identifying home repairs as a top need.

The mayor's plan puts $30 million toward home repairs for seniors, low-income residents and the disabled community. That's a change from $20 million in his previous proposal.

But Jackson, vice president of the Field Street Block Club, said that's not nearly enough. Being able to maintain homes is a way to support longtime residents and it keeps people in neighborhoods, she said.

"I would like for my grandkids to be able to buy a home or rent a home in this area and grow up in this area like my sons did," Jackson, 65, said.

Residents said home repairs should be in the form of grants instead of loans and that they should be widely available - not just for low-income or senior residents.

More than 24,000 homes in the city were moderately or severely inadequate, according to a 2020 study from the University of Michigan analyzing 2017 American Community Survey data. This could include homes with broken toilets, no working cooking equipment, rats in the unit, exposed wiring and water leaks.

In Detroit, nearly 80% of occupied residential structures were built before 1960, the U-M report found. Families who live in an aging home and who aren't able to afford repairs may have no choice but to leave their homes, researchers said, adding that "the repair needs in Detroit are significant."

Detroiters also brought up housing affordability.

"If we're talking about transforming the city, we start with giving people a decent quality, accessible and affordable place to live," said Linda Campbell, with the Detroit People's Platform, during a virtual June 21 meeting with City Council President Pro Tem Mary Sheffield.

The city is setting aside $7 million for an online tool to help people locate affordable housing.

"The locator is okay - I actually advocated that we develop a locator - but if there's no affordable housing available, it doesn't matter, if people are looking and they can't find quality affordable housing," Sheffield said.

Cantrell said that it's important to invest in Black and brown developers in Detroit. He said a municipal-run equity fund for developers could be an innovative way "to begin filling that financing gap for developers who don't really have any other choices."

Neighborhood investment

Ellyn McNamara, 43, and who grew up on the east side of the city, is fighting for more recreational centers.

McNamara was surrounded by recreational centers throughout her childhood. She frequented one on the corner of her street, often running into neighbors to engage in activities, games and sports. But the center was torn down when she was a teenager.

"That started happening all around the city. What I personally saw was all of the young men in my neighborhood get involved in either drugs or gangs and every year, one after another, they started dying. They were killed. But what happens when you don't give youth an outlet? They come up with something that a lot of times is very dangerous," McNamara said. "People are saying kids are so much into their phones now because we took away the options they had."

Among her visions for a community center would be starting a garden for youth to learn how to harvest food and sell it at farmer's markets.

Other attendees echoed the need for recreational centers and activities for young people.

"We need to invest in our recreation centers. Some people think that recreation is for fun, but when you've got kids walking in the middle of the streets or not having anything to do in the summer, they're more prone to engage in activities that are detrimental or get them on the wrong path," said Wanda Loweat a June 10 meeting hosted by Castañeda-López.

The mayor's plan allocates $30 million for new or expanded recreation centers and another $15.5 million for block clubs, neighborhood associations grants and neighborhood signs.

Jeannine Grant, CEO of Big Brother Big Sister of Metropolitan Detroit, wants to see federal dollars in neighborhoods that need it most.

"I would love to see an equitable distribution of funds, however they're used, especially as it relates to neighborhoods, making sure that those neighborhoods that don't have the biggest voices, or the most tax dollars, are still considered equally in their needs. ... to look from Indian Village to Wyoming and Fullerton, the disparity of what's happening is completely different," she said after a June 14 community meeting at the Alkebu-Lan Village in Detroit, where about 23 attendees met in person.

Theresa Zajac, interim president and CEO of the Southwest Detroit Business Association, said investing in small businesses and organizations like hers will support neighborhoods. The mayor's plan includes $40 million for small businesses.

"Preserving the neighborhood is keeping the business district strong," she said.

Mental health services

Detroiters expressed a need for more social workers at the Detroit Police Department to address mental health needs.

"We need to have more social workers, and more counselors attached to DPD and trained in that method so that they can answer some of these calls, as opposed to a police officer, so some of these instances can be de-escalated," Lyles said during a community meeting.

For Lyles, the issue is personal. She has a daughter with autism.

"I look around the country where officers, unfortunately, because they did not know how to react or respond to a person with special needs, this individual ended up dead. I would hate for that to happen," she said.

McNamara is also urging funds be used for mental health specialists to respond to emergencies instead of police.

"I've seen situations where people call the police because they had a relative who was having some type of mental health episode or someone who was on the spectrum, or someone who was having a nervous breakdown. Sometimes it could be a domestic dispute that doesn't necessarily need to escalate to police officers," McNamara said. "What about someone who is a mental health care professional who can help people? Police, they're not trained to be mental health professionals."

The city's proposal includes $50 million for public safety. This covers traffic enforcement, initiatives to reduce gun violence such as the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter, Detroit Police Department training facility improvements and EMS bays at firehouses.

The city's survey identifies improving public safety as the third most important funding priority. During community meetings, several attendees said they'd like less money to go toward that bucket.

Here are some responses during those meetings: Linda Bowiesaid she would take money from public safety and reducing the digital divide and put it toward a recreation center with pools and open up libraries; Amy Senese said that more cop cars, a helicopter and a training center isn't going to stop speeding cars or keep people safe; and June West said public safety efforts should be linked with mental health services and housing for the homeless.

Grant said police need to build relationships with communities.

"I think trauma-informed training for our police officers is important, not putting more money behind state-of-the-art militarized training. That's not what we need," she said.
Nushrat Rahman covers issues related to economic mobility for the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Detroit as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Contact Nushrat: nrahman@freepress.com; 313-348-7558. Follow her on Twitter: @NushratR. Sign up for Bridge Detroit's newsletter. Contact Dana Afana: dafana@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DanaAfana Become a Free Press subscriber.

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Detroit is getting $426 million. Here's where Detroiters say that money should go.

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Daisy Jackson is a fourth-generation Detroiter who has lived in her Islandview home for 50 years. As the city of Detroit decides how to spend an influx of federal money, for Jackson, neighborhood investment looks like fixing up homes.

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International Observatory on Social Housing

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Some of the most innovative programs to help low-income families have come from public housing authorities across the USA who were willing to partner, think outside of the box and go to often uncomfortable places in hopes of improving the life's of their tenants. Providing a safe, decent and sanitary place to live is the charge of all public housing authorities. The agencies mentioned below not only provide high quality housing but look for ways to go above and beyond. Obviously there are hundreds if not thousands of innovative programs within the public housing industry. I cannot mention all of them so this article is not to slight other great PHAs doing wonderful work but I hope these will be both interesting and inspiring to you.

Here is part I and the first 5 programs.

1. Five Year Time Limits in Public Housing: Tulare County Housing Authority: Might as well start this off with a controversial one. I will not advocate one way or another for or against but this was the first PHA in the country to try out time limits. Not only did they try it, they have been doing it for a really long time. In fact, they first timed residents out of their programs in 2004. The Executive Director who helped see this policy implemented wrote a good summary of the program and advantages/disadvantages. Take a read here

2. The Possible Project- Cambridge Housing Authority: The Possible Project is a youth entrepreneurship center that teaches youths how to develop and implement entrepreneurial programs. This is a mix of school teaching, hands on learning and overall skills development. This is a collaboration between Makerspace, in Cambridge, Mass with the Cambridge Housing Authority (CHA) and Biogen Idec Foundation. Find out more here

3. McCarver Project- Tacoma Housing Authority: The Tacoma Housing Authority used Moving to Work flexibility to create a program designed to help homeless families at the McCarver Elementrary school. There is a lot of literature about this program but the main aims include decreasing the amount of student turnover, increasing reading and math scores of students in the program, increasing the earned income of the parents and stabilizing the school in general. Check out this video

4. Cross Roads Assisted Living- Lincoln Housing Authority- This is a personal favorite of mine. A lot of focus goes on working families but senior/disabled often makes up 50% or more of the tenants living in public housing. The good folks at the Lincoln Housing Authority used MTW flexibility to create what amounts to an assisted living facility. It is not a total assisted living but there is a lot of services, housekeeping and help that is available to the residents. This is much more that a senior building that has a partner agency coming in 3 times a week. Check out more here

5. Ground Breaking Partnership between Seattle Housing and Seattle Public Schools- Seattle Housing Authority: The Seattle Housing Authority has partnered with The Seattle Public School system to take a systems based approach to serving the nearly 6,000 children who are accessing programs from both entities. The approach which has focused on putting data sharing agreements in place and working on cross-agency relationship building has set a foundation that could be a game changer. Over the next couple of years, the two agencies will focus on improving communications between families and the schools, improving transportation to schools, designing policies and programs that reach often under-served populations and an increase and improvement in partnerships with other agencies that might help improve student outcomes. Read more by clicking here
I will post part II of this article in the next couple of days.

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Public Housing: 10 Innovative Public Housing Programs-Part I

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Some of the most innovative programs to help low-income families have come from public housing authorities across the USA who were willing to partner, think outside of the box and go to often uncomfortable places in hopes of improving the life's of their tenants. Providing a safe, decent and sanitary place to live is the...

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Performing Department
Kinesiology Health & Sports St

Non Technical Summary
The Great Grocer Project (GGP) will boost the quality of grocery stores and increase healthy eating habits in the city of Detroit, where children and families experience significant health inequities and poor health outcomes. Rates of overweight and obesity are nearly 40% among youth and over 73% among adults and half of all Detroit children live in poverty. Detroit&#39;s large racial and ethnic minority populations (90% minority and 79% African American) when coupled with low-socioeconomic status, suggests that Detroit residents are at great risk for becoming overweight or obese and experiencing complications from obesity. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the inequities faced by Detroit families, particularly in terms of food security, access to healthy foods, unemployment, positive COVID diagnoses, and mortality. Furthermore, nearly 25% of Detroit residents do not have access to a personal vehicle and with very limited public transportation options, having access to quality healthy food can be difficult and at times impossible.The food environment in Detroit has a negative reputation, especially in terms of grocery store accessibility and healthy eating. While large chain grocery stores (e.g. Meijer, Whole Foods) have returned to more affluent areas of the city, most residents must rely on one of the 70 full-service, independent grocers in their neighborhood for food purchases due to limited transportation options. Often within these stores, the variety and quality of food for sale falls considerably below that of chain grocers. In addition, local Detroit grocers have limited human capital and knowledge of selling and rotating healthy foods to maximize profits and increase consumer demand.In 2014 and 2018, the Detroit Grocery Coalition (DGC) engaged resident consumers (2014: n=51; 2018: n=92) throughout all seven city council districts to discuss their perspectives of the community healthy food environment, their local grocers and what would be needed to engage them in improving their neighborhood food environments. Overall, community residents shared that while some of their neighborhood grocers offered high-quality, affordable healthy foods, many stores within their neighborhoods did not and several stores did not provide welcoming customer service. Because of this, despite limited access to reliable transportation, many Detroit families obtained their groceries from chain grocers outside the city, further undermining the economic mobility of local grocers. During these discussions, and through continued discussions with community residents and seven partnering community-based organizations (CBOs), resident families expressed interest in assisting the DGC in establishing relationships with their local grocers to collectively improve the community food environment.Identifying, promoting and assisting grocers in stocking, selling and promoting healthy foods can help low-income Detroiters make healthier food choices and can have a real impact on health outcomes, community healthy eating behaviors and local economies, therefore, the Detroit Grocery Coalition is proposing to create and promote the Great Grocer Project. The GGP includes the following activities: 1.) a Healthy Grocer Promotion (HGP) campaign to promote Detroit independent grocers and increasesales of high-quality, healthy foods; 2.) a Healthy Food Marketing Initiative (HFMI) within the 10 highest-scoring stores that provides nutrition education to low-income consumers; 3.) an "Adopt a Shop" community training initiative in collaboration with our seven partner CBOs, that builds local capacity to work with grocers and ensures the continuation of high-quality food sales in Detroit; and 4.) development of a toolkit to share with other communities for implementation in similar low-income settings. The overall goal for the GGP includes an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption and a decrease in simple carbohydrate consumption among 150 low-income Detroit families in three years, as well as improvements to 35% of the grocery retail environments within Detroit. This long-term goal will be achieved by implementing the intervention activities described in more detail below.Healthy Grocer Promotion: Baseline data was collected in 2018 using the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS) for grocery stores (N=74), interviews with a sub-sample of store owners/managers (N=43) and surveys among customers (N=200) within 37 Detroit stores. The NEMS results were utilized to create five GGP categories: 1) healthy food availability, 2) affordability and 3) quality (as indicated by NEMS), 4) customer service and safety (as indicated by customer surveys), and 5) participation in community activities (e.g., donations to local schools/churches, participation in Double Up Food Bucks, etc.) and these results were shared with CBO partners in May 2020. Results indicated most stores offered a variety of high-quality healthy foods but only seven stores met affordability and half of Detroit stores met customer service. Stores that rank in the top 10 of these categories will receive promotion within the community via connection to media outlets, DGC partner projects and CBOs, who will hold at least one promotional event within each store per year. The DGC will provide training and peer to peer mentorship for up to 30 store owners and staff about health issues that impact the communities they serve--including safety measures for COVID-19 and future pandemics, models for profitable produce operations, marketing of healthy foods, and information about medium-sized local farms and distribution networks that would be appropriate suppliers to store owners.Healthy Food Marketing Initiative (HFMI): In collaboration with the CBOs, we will also implement a HFMI within the top 10 GGP stores to promote the sale of healthy foods. The HFMI materials will be aligned to the logo and design of the GGP campaign and foods will be tagged in a stoplight format throughout the store. Culturally tailored, quick and easy recipes will be available in the produce section, at checkout and on the GGP webpage and will be created in collaboration with the CBOs.Adopt a Shop Community Capacity Building: Seven CBOs and resident families will assist in finalizing the GGP toolkit and training program that builds neighborhood capacity to develop a forum for communication that benefits both community members and grocers. CBOs will gain skills in conducting in-store food assessments (NEMS), providing nutrition education in stores, and will also enhance their communication strategies to improve the healthy food offerings within their local stores. Through these efforts, we aim to identify at least one (possibly two) community resident(s) from each of the seven Detroit neighborhoods to continue to work on the monitoring of their local grocers and expand their relationships with new, local grocers.Toolkit: A toolkit will be developed on the components of the GGP so that other communities can implement this project with fidelity in partnership with their local food retailers.We will assess the impact of the GGP among 150 low-income Detroit residents and 25 independent Detroit grocers through the use of multiple qualitative and quantitative measures. In-store assessments of healthy food availability, cost and quality will be conducted using the NEMS tool and store sales will be monitored in all 70 grocers. Comparisons will be made within the 25 GGP stores and stores that are not promoted via this project. Consumer knowledge, attitudes, motivations and behaviors for healthy eating will be assessed using valid and reliable surveys and narrative reports will be collected via focus groups. These measures will be collected three times over the length of the project to determine impact on the healthy food environment, community healthy eating behaviors and economic mobility within local grocers.

Research Effort Categories

Goals / Objectives
The overall goal for the GGP includes an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption and a decrease in simple carbohydrate consumption among 150 low-income Detroit families in three years, as well as improvements to 35% of the grocery retail environments within Detroit.Goal A: By September 2023, increase consumer relationships with 25 independent grocers located within the City of Detroit.Outcome 1A: By September 2021, develop capacity of seven CBOs to increase communications and relationships with 25 local, independent grocers.Outcome 2A: By September 2022, seven CBOs have implemented at least two strategies from the Adopt a Shop Toolkit in 25 local, independent grocery stores.Outcome 3A: By September 2023, seven community organizations have improved relationships with 25 local, independent grocery stores and have a plan to expand relationships to additional stores.Goal B: By September 2023, increase consumer consumption of healthy foods (as determined by food sales) within 25 independent grocery stores by 15% as compared to baseline.Outcome 1B: By September 2021, 2022 and 2023 increase capacity for up to 30 store owners/staff annually interested in increasing healthy food sales within their stores and connect stores with DGC partner projects.Outcome 2B: By September 2022, implement healthy food marketing interventions within top 10 scoring stores.Outcome 3B: By September 2023, increase healthy food access and sales within 25 GGP stores.

Project Methods
The Great Grocer Project (GGP) will continue to be implemented via the efforts of the partnerships builtwithin the Detroit Grocery Coalition (DGC). DGC partners such as the Detroit Food Policy Council (DFPC) will continue their collaborations with the seven neighborhood community-based partner organizations to complete the Adopt a Shop activities. Wayne State University (WSU) and other DGC partners will continue to collaborate with top-scoring store owners to implement the healthy food marketing intervention within their stores. WSU and DFPC will also continue to collaborate on the development of an online website to share the scores of the top performing stores and begin to promote them to media outlets and neighborhood residents.The process evaluation will assess the degree to which the GGPwas delivered as designed to the target population of low-income Detroit consumers as illustrated in the logic model. Implementation fidelity, project reach and participant satisfaction will be assessed using surveys and focus groups among consumers and semi-structured interviews among store owners and staff.Yearly key informant interviews (with GGPpartners, community-based organization members and store owners) and project indicator checklists (store audits including assessing stores with the NEMS tool) will be used to determine implementation fidelity and satisfaction. Program reach for the GGP participants, will be determined, and tracked by validated consumer intercept surveys, store audits, store staff assessments and grocery sales data. Combined, these techniques will allow the evaluation team to assess whether the project is proceeding efficiently, on-schedule, and above all successfully, according to the project timeline and individuals served by the grant.The outcome evaluation will assess the degree to which the GGP was effective in improving healthy eating behaviors, knowlege, attitudes and motivations as well ascommunity food environments. Store assessments using the NEMS, consumer intercept surveys, focus groups with community-based oraganization residents and interviews with store owners and staff will be used to guide the evaluation.The GGP evaluation will follow a quasi-experimental, time series design and will compare outcome measures collected within GGP stores in 2017-2018 (baseline) to data collected at time 1 (April-August 2021) to time 2 (April-August 2022) and time 3 (April-July 2023) of the intervention. Outcome measures include healthy eating behaviors, use and awareness of GGP stores and available resources (e.g., healthy food marketing activities) and perceived relationships among store owners and the community. Community level outcomes will also be assessed such as neighborhood healthy food environments and food access.Table 1briefly highlights the data collection instruments and approaches that will be used in the study, when they will occur, the mode of data collection (how) and the time commitment necessary by each stakeholder group. Table 2shows the process and outcomes questions, the data collected, instruments and approaches, and corresponding goals and outcomes for the project.Table 1- Evaluation Data Collection MethodsData Collection Methods / InstrumentsWhenHowTime CommitmentHow Many ParticipantsKey Informant Interviews GGP Partners (KII-P)Once per yearFace to face1 hour25Key Informant Interviews Store Owners (KII-SO)Once per yearFace to face1 hour75Focus Groups Consumers (FG-Consumers)Time 1, 2, 3Face to face1 hour420 total (140 per year)Store Staff Surveys (Survey-Store)Time 1, 2, 3Paper or tablet30 minutes225 total (2 staff per store)Intercept Surveys (Intercept)Time 1, 2, 3Paper or tablet1-5 minutes900 total (300 per year)In Store Food Assessments (NEMS)Time 1, 2, 3In store audit1 hour75 storesFidelity Checklists/Store AuditsOngoingIn person, online1-2 hoursALLDocument ReviewOngoingIn person, online1 hourALLTable 2- Evaluation PlanProcess Q1How and to what extent were the GGP activities implemented as planned?Data Collected: Program satisfaction, implementation fidelity, barriers and facilitators to implementing GGP activitiesWho: GGP partners, organizations, store ownersInstrument/Approach: KII-P; KII-SO, Fidelity checklistsGoals/Outcomes Addressed: Goal A, Outcomes 1A, 2A, 3AProcess Q2To what extent has the GGP reached its intended audience?Data Collected: Zip code data, Consumer surveys, Organization interviewsWho: Store owners, consumers, partnersInstrument/Approach: KII-SO, FG-Consumers, Survey-Store, Intercept, KII-PGoals/Outcomes Addressed: Goal A, Outcome 3A; Goal B, Outcomes 1B-3BOutcome Q1How and to what extent has the GGP impacted low-income Detroiters healthy eating behaviors?Data Collected: Healthy Eating Knowledge; Healthy Eating Self-Efficacy; Healthy Eating BehaviorsWho: GGP Consumers and OrganizationsInstrument/Approach: KII-P; Intercept; FG-ConsumersGoals/Outcomes Addressed: Goal B, Outcomes 1B-3BOutcome Q2How and to what extent has the GGP improved access to healthy foods for Detroit residents?Data Collected: Store sales data, In store food assessment, community food audits, consumer perspectivesWho: Key informants (store owners, community partners); consumersInstrument/Approach: KII-SO, KII-P, FG-Consumers, Intercept, NEMS, Document ReviewGoals/Outcomes Addressed: Goal A, Outcome 3A; Goal B: Outcomes, 1B, 3B

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The Great Grocer Project (GGP) will boost the quality of grocery stores and increase healthy eating habits in the city of Detroit, where children and families experience significant health inequities and poor health outcomes. Rates of overweight and obesity are nearly 40% among youth and over 73% among adults and half of all Detroit children live in poverty.

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An estimated 37,630 Detroit households are living in housing with neglected and often dangerous maintenance issues, according to a new University of Michigan report.

The new study raises the number of households that need major repairs by 71 percent over an earlier estimate done by the same U-M group. It also shows renters and people younger than 65 are at higher risk; two groups often excluded from current City funding efforts, which typically focus on senior populations.

The new report finds that 13 percent of Detroit households live with hazards such as exposed wires or electrical problems, broken furnaces or heating problems, or a lack of hot or running water. The percentage of Detroit households with inadequate housing conditions is more than four times higher than the estimated 3.2 percent of Detroit suburban households with the same conditions, according to the new report.

Survey results

The study by the University of Michigan's Detroit Metro Area Community Study (DMACS), released this week, comes at a time when many housing advocates and several academics say neglected home repair has reached crisis level citywide.

The estimate of 37,630 Detroit households that need major home repair is far larger than the previous estimate of 22,000 households found by the same U-M group in an October report . The new report is based on a much larger citywide sample of 1,898 Detroiters surveyed between June 2 and July 9 of this year. The earlier report relied on 2017 American Housing Survey data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

At BridgeDetroit, we go above and beyond to tell the stories that matter in our community, to speak truth to power with our engagement, and to produce journalism that makes Detroit a better place to live. No one else covers Detroit like we do and that's because we're IN IT; our reporters and editors are united by a shared passion for Detroit.
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" This is another way to think about housing fragility" in Detroit, said Lydia Wileden, one of the U-M researchers who worked on the report. The pandemic provided temporary moratoriums on evictions and tax foreclosures. "Even if people are able to live in their houses, a lot of Detroiters are living in substandard conditions, living without heat, in homes that need entire foundation repair," she said.

The state of housing repair in Detroit

37,630 households - 15,336 owner-occupied households and 22,294 renter-occupied households - may be living in inadequate housing.

Renters are twice as likely as homeowners to be dissatisfied with housing conditions. Nearly 20% of renters are dissatisfied compared to 11% of owner-occupied households.

Almost 1 in 5 households with children, 18%, live in inadequate housing conditions, compared to 11% to households without children.

Younger residents (those under the age of 65) are twice as likely to report they are dissatisfied with the condition of their homes than seniors.

White households are half as likely, 8 percent, as households of color, 14%, to live in inadequate housing conditions.

Source: Detroit Metro Area Community Study, University of Michigan

As the repairs pile up, fewer residents have the means to fix the problems, according to recent studies and city housing advocates. A growing number of lower-income Detroit residents, along with those with low credit scores, cannot get loans from private financial institutions. Many contend there also are insufficient funds from grants and other programs.

American Rescue Plan Act funding

Home repair was among the top priorities residents told City officials seeking feedback on how to spend Detroit's share of federal COVID-19 aid. The aid, known as the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, is intended to help municipalities recover from the pandemic. Detroit is getting a whopping $826 million in one-time ARPA funds, with $426 million going toward community investments. The other $400 million is being used to make up for City budget deficits caused by the pandemic.

This past summer, City officials and community groups held 65 public meetings and posted an online asking residents how the ARPA money should be spent. A wide range of residents - from owners of historic homes in Palmer Park and Woodbridge to buyers of inexpensive land bank properties to many longtime residents - urged the City to fund home repair programs.

Renew Detroit

On Sept. 30, the City rolled out a $30 million home repair program for low-income seniors and homeowners with disabilities in Detroit. The program, called Renew Detroit , is the first program to use ARPA funds, which triples the amount that the City currently spends on its existing home repair program.

Mayor Mike Duggan and other City officials acknowledge $30 million won't solve the home repair crisis, but the budget is based on "the contractor capacity in this city and how much could we spend in three years," Duggan said at a press conference that introduced the home repair program. "Anybody who has tried to get a home repair worker in this town lately knows it is not that easy. "

City officials want to give the contracts to Detroit-based companies and workers. That further narrows the labor pool, as many firms and their employers are based in the suburbs. The Duggan administration is also working with foundations and corporate partners to raise more funding for home repairs.

Renew Detroit's first phase will aim to repair 1,000 roofs. The next phase, slated to launch in a year, is expected to provide additional repairs to another 500 homes. The program uses the Homeowner Property Tax Exemption, HOPE, as part of its qualification process. HOPE is a low-income homeowner's tax exemption formerly known as the Homeowners Property Tax Assistance Program (HPTAP).

To qualify for the tax-exemption status, a one-person household can earn no more than $22,840 in income annually; for a two-person home, the maximum annual income is $26,250; for a family of four, the maximum income is $32,488.

The U-M study bolsters the contention that Detroit's current home repair plans excludes far too many out who need funding.

"What about helping the longtime residents who helped keep the lights on, paid our taxes - even when we were overtaxed?" asked Daisy Jackson, a member of the Charlevoix Village Association on the lower east side. "Now, we have developers coming in and they get tax breaks for their projects. It's an injustice."

Thanks to all the funding partners who make BridgeDetroit possible!

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Detroit's home repair crisis is even bigger than experts thought - BridgeDetroit

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An estimated 37,630 Detroit households are living in housing with neglected and often dangerous maintenance issues, according to a new University of Michigan report. The new study raises the number of households that need major repairs by 71 percent over an earlier estimate done by the same U-M group.

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Tens of thousands of occupied homes in Detroit are becoming increasingly dangerous due to years of neglected upkeep, according to several academics and a dozen housing advocates.

The need for major home repair - with leaking roofs, broken furnaces and faulty wiring among the top issues - has reached crisis level citywide. It's a health risk to the many residents living in the conditions. The dwellings undermine the rebounding housing market in many neighborhoods because it lowers the overall value of residential property.

As the repairs pile up, fewer residents have the means to fix the problems, according to two recent University of Michigan studies and city housing advocates. A growing number of lower-income Detroit residents can't get loans from private financial institutions, and there are insufficient funds from grants and other programs.

"The repair needs in Detroit are significant, and our analysis ... suggests current resources devoted to repair don't come close to meeting the need," said Patrick Cooney, assistant director of economic mobility at University of Michigan Poverty Solutions.

Tens of thousands of Detroiters live in homes that are becoming increasingly unsafe due to neglected home repair. (BridgeDetroit photo by Valaurian Waller)

"Massive problem"

Though 24,000 residences needed major repairs, in 2018, only 2,934 homes were able to gain access to funds, such as grants and loans, aimed at low-income residents, according to the U-M study. The low number of those who received assistance shows the dearth of available funding.

Housing advocates, some who work in certain communities and others who work citywide, say every neighborhood has many residents in urgent need of home repairs. The problem is far more widespread than the U-M estimate, the advocates contend.

At BridgeDetroit, we go above and beyond to tell the stories that matter in our community, to speak truth to power with our engagement, and to produce journalism that makes Detroit a better place to live. No one else covers Detroit like we do and that's because we're IN IT; our reporters and editors are united by a shared passion for Detroit.
What we do has value. And it's made possible by readers like you. Will you make a tax-deductible donation to BridgeDetroit today?
"We may have 24,000 homes that need serious repair in the communities we serve" on the Southwest side, said Phyllis Edwards, executive director of Bridging Communities . Lisa Johanon, executive director of Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corp ., said home repair is a "massive problem" and one that hundreds of residents reach out to the nonprofit each year in order to get help.

Rescued from foreclosure, grappling with mounting repairs.

Longtime Detroit residents John and Mary Jones have lived in a dangerous house for over six years. The couple requested BridgeDetroit use pseudonyms rather than publish their real names. Both are elderly, disabled and have security concerns.
Related:
The couple began renting the two-story home in a northeast neighborhood when both were preparing to retire due to failing health. The couple relies on a monthly income of $2,500. The rent was $700 for the two-bedroom home with a basement. The home was built in 1924, according to property records.

Their new home had gone through a string of owners since 2008, all of whom narrowly avoided having the property seized by Wayne County for unpaid property taxes, according to public tax records.

The roof began to leak shortly after the Joneses moved in. The toilet routinely backed up. The furnace was unreliable. The landlord promised repairs that never happened, the couple said.

The roof leaks worsened. "Soon, we had buckets and pots in different rooms," to collect the water dripping from the ceiling, John said. The leaks caused part of the ceiling in their son's bedroom to collapse one night as he slept.

The Joneses also received $12,000 from the Make It Home program that's devoted to home repair. The couple used the money to patch up the roof, a repair that cost more than $18,000. The couple used their savings and a loan from a neighbor to come up with the additional $6,000.

But the roof is just one in a host of needed repairs. There are still gaping holes in the ceilings and walls throughout the home. One room is so cold, the couple store food and bottled water in it. There are bugs and rodents.

"We're extremely grateful for all the help we've gotten," John said. "We're trying to save for more repairs, but it's really tough. " Especially, since the couple decided to take in their granddaughter during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their son no longer lives with the couple.

Phyllis Edwards, executive director of Bridging Communities. The nonprofit is one of many groups in the city that get hundreds of residents seeking help for home repair. (BridgeDetroit photo by Valaurian Waller)

The root causes

The seeds of the dilemma have to do with the city's aging housing stock and older residents. Eight in 10 housing units in Detroit were built more than 60 years ago, U.S. Census data show. Nearly 27 percent of city households have residents who are 65 or older, according to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. And while the city's overall population is declining, the number of residents between 55 and 64 is growing.

There's a long waiting list for federally subsidized housing units in Detroit, Eisenberg said. That leaves a growing number of low-income households to seek shelter in an increasingly competitive private rental market. In 2019, housing costs were unaffordable for 73% of Detroit renters earning less than $35,000, with nearly half of those households spending at least 50% of their monthly income on rent, according to the U-M study

Growing attention

The optimistic news is the broad coalition of private, public and academic entities that have been working on Detroit's housing challenges - reducing tax foreclosures, demolishing empty blighted properties, halting mass water shut-offs - are starting to focus more on home repair.

"I think there is hope," said Cooney, the U-M policy analyst. There is more data on the issue that enables policymakers and others to work on solutions, he said. Like others, there is a belief the Biden administration will result in more federal funding for Detroit.

Rocket Community Fund, a key funder and collaborator with groups working on Detroit's housing challenges, intends to commit more attention to home repair needs, said Laura Grannemann, vice president of strategic investments for the fund.

"We are going to continue to be very committed to this challenge and we are scaling up our work here. This is our next big challenge on the horizon," Grannemann said.

Thanks to all the funding partners who make BridgeDetroit possible!

A list of BridgeDetroit's funders can be found here.

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Finding a fix for Detroit's 'massive' home repair crisis - BridgeDetroit

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Tens of thousands of occupied homes in Detroit are becoming increasingly dangerous due to years of neglected upkeep, according to several academics and a dozen housing advocates. The need for major home repair - with leaking roofs, broken furnaces and faulty wiring among the top issues - has reached crisis level citywide.

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New Detroit home repair program can fix 1,000 roofs. Nearly 5,000 applied. - BridgeDetroit

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More than 4,800 people have already applied for a home repair program that aims to replace 1,000 roofs in Detroit. The application closes Oct. 31.

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Renew Detroit is a program that provides free repairs to eligible Detroit homeowners using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The program will be held in two phases, with Phase 1 calling for 1,000 Roof Replacements. The application for Phase 1 closed on October 31, 2021.

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This story is published in partnership with Outlier Media's The Dig.

Nora Rodriguez has lived three places in her life, all in Southwest Detroit. Nearly everything she needs is nearby-her job, friends and family, grocery stores, restaurants and more. But every house is also close to factories or highways. Where she lives now, on Dragoon Street, is just blocks from I-75 and a frequent route for truck traffic. It's also less than two miles from Zug Island, an industrial site on the Detroit River where a U.S. Steel plant operates, and just shy of three miles from a Marathon Oil refinery.

Rodriguez has had asthma since she was a kid.

Nora Rodriguez lives in Southwest Detroit, where she is caring for her mother. Rodriguez has never seriously considered leaving the area despite her own health issues. She is a community organizer and outreach worker with two local nonprofits. Photo by NICK HAGEN

"It's not the worst asthma in the world, but my lungs are weak," said Rodriguez, who's in her 20s. "It's triggered by pollutants, dust and pollen. I get sick a lot easier, and when I do get sick, it's worse."

Rodriguez knows it's not just the air outside that makes her asthma worse, but also the air inside her house, which she says is more than 100 years old.

"I know a lot of it has to do with where I live," said Rodriguez, who has never been a smoker and uses an inhaler.

She describes her home as "drafty" and in need of better insulation, new windows, a new roof and mold remediation. These issues make it easier for the triggers of her asthma to get inside the house and increase her utility bills.

Detroit ranks as the 12th worst city in the country for particulate pollution. Not coincidentally, it has the highest childhood asthma rate of any major U.S. city. Detroit also has the highest chronic absenteeism rate in the country. (Asthma is the No. 1 cause of missed school days.)

There has long been an understanding that it is unhealthy to live close to pollution or environmental toxins. The two pillars of the environmental justice movement have been to draw attention to how often this pollution is concentrated in or near poor communities of color and to find ways to change that. Now, there is increasing energy around the idea that it is not only where a house is situated that makes people vulnerable to environmental impacts but the condition of the house, too.

Housing itself has become an environmental justice issue.

"These are historically disregarded and disinvested communities where, for over 100 years, we have robbed families of their fundamental abilities to compete, to learn and to earn," said Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative. "In city after city, including Detroit, we lowered the bar on housing code enforcement, and allowed our housing to deteriorate and become toxic."

Poor housing quality contributes to several environmental exposures. Each has its own unique sources and health risks.

"Detroit has housing conditions with mold, mildew, poor indoor air quality, poorly weatherized housing, extreme heat and cold and moisture that causes lead-based paint to chip," Norton said. "We basically have an effective car wreck-a critical mass of unhealthy housing."

Rodriguez has never seriously considered leaving Southwest Detroit despite her health issues. She is a community organizer and outreach worker with two local nonprofits. She also lives with and is caring for her aging mother.

In Detroit, 80% of the housing stock is at least 60 years old. With 80% of Detroit's housing stock being at least 60 years old and 35% of Detroit residents living below the poverty line, thousands of homes are in desperate need of maintenance. A 2021 report from the University of Michigan's Poverty Solutions found that bringing every home in the metro area up to a healthy standard could cost $2 billion.

In surveys about how Detroit should spend its $826 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, home repair was residents' top issue. The Mayor's Office answered back by announcing $30 million in home repair grants for seniors and disabled homeowners. But the program will only make a dent in the need. The first phase of the program aims to pay for around 1,500 roof replacements. The U-M report on home repair estimated that there were at least 24,000 homes in a moderate or severe condition.
The nexus between housing and environmental justice in Detroit

There has long been an understanding that it is unhealthy to live close to pollution or environmental toxins. The environmental justice movement aims to draw attention to how often pollution is concentrated in or near poor communities of color and to find ways to change that. Photo by NICK HAGEN

Describing a health risk as environmental instantly brings to mind images of outside air pollution from highways, flooding on streets and toxins from hulking industrial plants ending up in rivers and water. But because people spend more than 90% of their time indoors, the trickle-down effects of pollution and climate change in buildings and homes are the environmental impacts most likely to be felt day-to-day.

And the people living in those old homes in vulnerable areas are overwhelmingly people of color. In the U.S., Black people are exposed to 38% more polluted air than white people and are 75% more likely to live near sources of pollution. In Detroit's most polluted ZIP code, 48217, near where Rodriguez lives, 71% of the population is Black.
Old housing and lingering lead
Lead is a potent neurotoxin that can cause learning delays and behavioral problems. Lead poisoning disproportionately impacts Black children in low-income families.

Michigan has one of the highest numbers of lead pipes per capita in the country, with Detroit bringing up the average. The city estimates it has more than 80,000 lead service lines-about 11,872 miles per 100,000 people.

But the bulk of lead poisoning comes not from pipes but from paint.

"Lead in water contributes somewhere between 10-20% of lead poisoning," Norton said.

Congress outlawed the use of lead in residential paint in 1978, but as the vast majority of homes in Detroit were built before that date, most homes are at risk of containing a lead hazard.

Widespread real estate speculation and housing demolition are realities in Detroit neighborhoods that drive lead poisoning. University of Michigan research tied elevated blood lead levels in children to homes purchased at the Wayne County tax foreclosure auction.

For years, real estate investors could purchase properties in bulk at the foreclosure auction for cheap. Some never paid taxes and simply lost their initial purchase price if they couldn't sell it. Others, like notorious landlord Michael Kelly, initiate land contracts that are risky for the buyers, who can be evicted after missing a single payment. In both cases, the owners let the homes deteriorate.

Speculators and disinvestment more generally have left widespread blight throughout the city. Demolition of blighted properties is a necessity but the amount of lead paint in those old structures makes the demos dangerous for surrounding homes. A 2017 Detroit Health Department task force found elevated blood lead levels in children near demolition sites.

But the city has only expanded on its demolition program since then, thanks to a $250 million bond funding another 8,000 home demolitions. The city said it has improved its protocols around demolition through better outreach and by providing lead testing and cleaning kits.

As part of the city's Rental Registry Ordinance, landlords must obtain a lead clearance certificate proving there is no lead hazard in the home. But as of August, just 5,271 of at least 60,000 rental units had received a clearance, in part because abatement is so expensive.

"It's an emergency," said Alexa Eisenberg, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a co-author of the report on elevated blood levels and the auction. "It requires unprecedented resources. Every day that policymakers wait to act or underinvest in this issue the problem only gets more severe and more expensive-and the more people are harmed."

Lead remediation is expensive but the costs of lead exposure are greater. Every $1 spent on lead paint control could result in up to $221 in returns.

President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan would invest $45 billion in the removal of all lead pipes nationwide, but Norton believes the money may be better spent on addressing lead-based paint.

"It's a real missed opportunity," she said.
Preparing for uneven impact of climate change
Climate change is accelerating the deterioration of Detroit homes that are already in need of major repairs.

As this summer's extreme rain events made clear, Detroiters are especially vulnerable to flooding. Approximately 40,757 properties -or about 15% of all Detroit households-??are at risk of flooding. That number will continue to rise as intense rainfall, or what the city has taken to calling "rain events," increases.

The problem is as related to infrastructure as weather. The aging and combined sewer systems in Detroit convey sewage and rainfall in the same pipes, which were not built to handle the kinds of intense rainfall expected to become more frequent with climate change. Communities of color have to deal with the impacts of the older systems which can include illness from waterborne disease and lingering dampness can lead to mold infestation.

It may cost as much as $1.7 billion to address the region's flooding-related infrastructure issues. So far, about 40,000 people have applied for about $118 million in FEMA relief for this summer's flooding alone.
Energy and water utility burdens

Nora Rodriguez of Southwest Detroit describes the home where she lives with her mother as "drafty" and in need of better insulation, new windows, a new roof and mold remediation. These issues make it easier for the triggers of her asthma to get inside the house and increase her utility bills. Photo by NICK HAGEN

A home needs to be able to act as a buffer against the environment for the people that live inside.

But heating and cooling homes is getting more expensive as the weather gets more extreme. Detroiters pay more for water and electric utilities than their suburban neighbors and bear more of the harm caused by producing electricity for others.

"Detroiters are extremely vulnerable to [heat waves], in part because people don't have insulated homes and aren't able to keep things out and in part because they don't have reliable access to air conditioning," said Justin Schott, project manager of the Energy Equity Project at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. "They don't have any protection during cooling seasons."

A Health Impact Assessment conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2020 found that DTE Energy's coal-fired power plants are disproportionately in communities of color. The air pollution the plants generate causes more harm to low- to moderate-income neighborhoods of color.

Spending more than 6% of total income on utilities is considered a "high-energy burden" by experts. In metro Detroit, 43% of Black households and 38% of Hispanic households are spending more than they can afford on their utilities.

The breadth of the housing quality problem can seem overwhelming to tackle. But because of its ubiquity in poor cities of color, it may be the most straightforward way to address environmental justice.

"This is a clear opportunity to increase racial equity and close the racial gap," Norton said. "Until we fix that and these things, we are not taking concrete steps to actually close health and racial disparities. And if we cannot get to that ground truth, then we've got problems."
Reach AARON MONDRY at aaron@outliermedia.org or 313-403-7221. Reach NINA IGNACZAK, editor of Planet Detroit, at nina@planetdetroit.org. Planet Detroit's Solving Lead & Asthma in Detroit series is underwritten, in part, by the Erb Family Foundation.

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Is housing an environmental justice issue? In Detroit, yes.

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Reading Time: 8 minutes This story is published in partnership with Outlier Media's The Dig. Nora Rodriguez has lived three places in her life, all in Southwest Detroit. Nearly everything she needs is nearby-her job, friends and family, grocery stores, restaurants and more. But every house is also close to factories or highways.

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A significant challenge in social justice work is apathy from people who don't see how they will personally benefit from the policies we promote. It can be easy for people who haven't been directly harmed by existing policies to shrug off the resulting inequities. It can be hard for them to understand why their tax dollars should pay for someone else's "special" need.

But no one's needs are "special" - we need things like education, food, healthcare and housing. We deserve to live with safety, dignity and self-determination. We're all growing older. We all have been, are currently, or could be disabled in the future. As Michigan's population ages and the costs of healthcare and long-term care continue to rise , all families face the possibility of being primary caregivers for loved ones .

Everything, including suitable housing, costs more for people with disabilities . Discrimination in , the criminal legal system , and the leads to worse health, low incomes and high unemployment for disabled people. Disability program benefits are difficult to obtain, and meager benefit levels and strict income and asset limits force recipients to live in poverty .

Disability becomes more common with age, and systemic racism has created disparities. Exposure to pollution , poor housing conditions , health care access barriers and experience of toxic stress are just some of the factors that contribute to higher disability rates among Black, Indigenous and other people of color-a striking legacy of the residential segregation stemming from historical and contemporary racist housing policies .

These disparities also grow with age: disability prevalence increases much more rapidly among people of color compared to white people. The convergence of systemic racism, ableism, and ageism helps explain why disabled, Black and Indigenous people are overrepresented among homeless people, and why homelessness among older adults has been rising in our state.

There are other ways Michigan can nurture a more inclusive housing environment: ending employment discrimination, including preventing employers from paying workers with disabilities a subminimum wage , and ensuring that accessible housing developed with public money promotes community integration .

Additionally, we are pleased to support Senate Bill 949 , introduced by Sen. Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) to allow for the sealing of eviction records under certain conditions. Eviction disproportionately affects renters with disabilities and these records can lock entire families out of safe housing indefinitely, regardless of the circumstances.

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Column: Safe, accessible and affordable housing is not a 'special' need ⋆ Michigan Advance

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A significant challenge in social justice work is apathy from people who don't see how they will personally benefit from the policies we promote. It can be easy for people who haven't been directly harmed by existing policies to shrug off the resulting inequities. It can be hard for them to understand why their tax [...]

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Torey Edmonds has lived in the same house in an African-American neighborhood of the East End of Richmond, Va., for all of her 61 years. When she was a little girl, she says her neighborhood was a place of tidy homes with rose bushes and fruit trees, and residents had ready access to shops like beauty salons, movie theaters and several grocery stores.

But as she grew up, she says, the neighborhood went downhill. By the 1970s, stores had disappeared; those that did return were corner shops selling cheap alcohol but "no real food," Edmonds says. Houses declined too, as homeowners - including her parents - were rejected for loans.

"If the bank's not loaning, she says, "then things deteriorate."

Today, Edmonds' neighborhood remains overwhelmingly African-American, with a poverty rate of nearly 60%. Many of her neighbors suffer chronic medical conditions like kidney disease and diabetes.

"They age differently," says Edmonds, who works for Virginia Commonwealth University promoting community health. "We have a lot of our neighbors that have health challenges."

But it's not just Edmonds' neighborhood. In city after city across the U.S., from Milwaukee to Miami, researchers have found a disturbing pattern: People who live in neighborhoods that were once subjected to a discriminatory lending practice called redlining are today more likely to experience shorter life spans - sometimes, as much as 20 or 30 years shorter than other neighborhoods in the same city.

Researchers from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the University of Richmond and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee analyzed historic redlining maps from 142 urban areas across the U.S. - these maps, created in the 1930s, classified Black and immigrant communities as risky places to make home loans.They compared the maps to the current economic status and health outcomes in those neighborhoods today and found higher rates of poverty, shorter life spans and higher rates of chronic diseases including asthma, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and kidney disease.

These once-redlined neighborhoods are also more likely to have greater social vulnerability, meaning they're less able to withstand natural and human disasters because of their more limited resources.

The researchers published interactive versions of these city-by-city maps online for the public to explore their own communities. If your neighborhood was mapped back in the 1930s, these graphics allow you to see how it ranked back then and how it fares today.

What makes these findings especially urgent today, the researchers note, is that these neighborhoods have higher levels of many conditions that raise the risk of severe COVID-19.

"That's a startling revelation, that this global pandemic is going to have a more serious impact on communities that were redlined by official policy in the 1930s," says Jason Richardson, research director for the NCRC and a co-author of the study.
Redlining: Federally sanctioned discrimination
The redlining maps originated in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when the federal government set out to evaluate the riskiness of mortgages in major metropolitan areas of the country. The maps, created by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation, color-coded neighborhoods by credit worthiness. Areas with African-Americans and immigrants were almost always considered the highest risk, and they were marked in red on maps... hence, "redlining."

That practice and other discriminatory housing policies of the time helped concentrate poverty in communities of color for generations.

"When banks and other actors are discouraged from lending in the community, you see a very kind of predictable arc of that community," Richardson says. "When I stop and think about it, I'm kind of shocked by the lingering impact of these policies."

Redlining made it difficult, if not impossible, to buy or refinance. A lack of investment meant houses fell into disrepair. That led to health hazards like mold and lead paint. Industrial sites were more likely to be located near redlined neighborhoods, which meant more exposure to pollution.

As areas declined, retailers left, including grocery stores, which meant less access to healthy food. These neighborhoods also had less access to parks and other green spaces, meaning fewer places to exercise. All of those factors combined to create an environment conducive to poorer health outcomes, the researchers say.

"Where we live impacts our exposure to health-promoting resources and opportunities,"says Helen Meier, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and co-author of the study. "Redlining has systematically shaped characteristics of the built environment in neighborhoods [in ways] that are impacting our health."

The findings come as no surprise to Edmonds. "Trust me, I know," she says.

The average life expectancy in her neighborhood is just 68 years. That's 21 years less than in a well-off predominantlywhite community a few miles away in the West End of Richmond - a community that got the highest rating on those government redlining maps back in the 1930s. At one point in the pandemic, Edmonds' zip code - 23223 - also had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Richmond.

Dr. Lisa Cooper, a health disparities researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was not involved in the research. She says that people often think of health as the result of individual choices. But she says the redlining study's findings show how health is also a result of a lack of choices baked into the very fabric of American cities by racist policies made long ago.

"If you just happened to be born in that neighborhood, who's to say you wouldn't be in the same predicament?" Cooper says.

Cooper notes that there's a large body of research linking residential segregation to negative health effects. It's less about who your neighbors are than about the concentration of disadvantage."
Structural racism, illustrated
Redlining played a major role in shaping the demographics of modern American urban areas, says Robert Nelson, a historian at the University of Richmond who focuses on urban housing policy and race. And the racism underlying those redlining decisions is undeniable, he says. He's a co-author of the study on redlining and modern health outcomes.

As director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the university, Nelson helped create an interactive project that visualizes the study's findings; it juxtaposes the comments made by federal surveyors who rated neighborhoods on those 1930s maps with their modern-day health indicators. "Infiltration of negroes" is a common reason cited to explain an area's rating as high risk.

"These are not just racist attitudes. This is policy that is being made by the federal government in these documents," Nelson says. He says redlining didn't create residential segregation but helped cement it, because the practice was a federal policy that set a standard which private lenders followed.

"If you want an example of what systemic or structural racism looks like, you really aren't going to find a better example" than these maps, he says.

Along with other federal segregationist housing policies of the time, redlining helped turn white families into homeowners and moved them into the suburbs, while leaving out many families of color, particularly African-American families, many of whom later ended up pushed into urban housing projects, he says.

"This is a way for white families to build intergenerational wealth, and black families are just cut off from those opportunities for generations," says Nelson. Although redlining was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the damage was already done, he says.
Links between redlining and health
The redlining maps were first digitized in 2016. Since then, several studies have examined the links between redlining and health outcomes today in specific cities or regions of the U.S., says Dr. Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. For example, Krieger's work has found links between redlining and preterm births in New York City and late-stage cancer diagnoses in Massachusetts.

Other work has found that formerly redlined neighborhoods tend to be hotter than non-redlined areas in the same city, with fewer trees, which also impacts health, as NPR has previously reported.

Krieger, who was not involved in the study from NCRC and its partner universities, says its findings are important because they offer the first nationwide look at the links between redlining and a range of public health outcomes. They also emphasize the ways in which racist policies of the past have ongoing ramifications.

"History never really says goodbye," Krieger says, quoting the Uruguyan writer Eduardo Galeano. "History says, see you later."

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In U.S. Cities, The Health Effects Of Past Housing Discrimination Are Plain To See

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Torey Edmonds has lived in the same house in an African-American neighborhood of the East End of Richmond, Va., for all of her 61 years. When she was a little girl, she says her neighborhood was a place of tidy homes with rose bushes and fruit trees, and residents had ready access to shops like beauty salons, movie theaters and several grocery stores.

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In recent years, states, communities and families across the country have been struggling to cope as decades of stagnant or falling wages and rising housing prices have come to a head. America is commonly said to be in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis. If we look back through history, however, it's clear that this isn't a new problem-at least not for people of color, particularly African Americans-and Detroit may provide one of the country's clearest examples.

For people of color, Detroit's housing crisis began in the early 1700s with the arrival of European colonizers. The French and later the British enslaved indigenous and Black people, exploiting their bodies, skills and knowledge to establish farms and build a thriving international fur trade. ¹ In the centuries since then, systemic racism has evolved constantly. It has become more subtle in modern times but always worked to maintain White exclusivity in control over land, access to quality housing and the opportunity to build generational wealth through homeownership. As a result, today we see-in Detroit and other communities across the nation-appalling racial inequities in housing, health and wealth. Reversing the harmful impacts of historical injustice through community-driven, inclusive policy must be central to revitalization efforts in the city.

What is "Affordable"?

The median household income in Detroit is $27,838 per year-roughly half of the statewide median income-and the poverty rate in the city is twice the state poverty rate. ² Compounding the struggle for many households, the average rent in Detroit increased by 26% from 2005 to 2016. ³ With so few financial resources at their disposal, Detroit families have a higher housing-cost burden (the share of income spent on housing) than families in many other Michigan communities.

Housing is considered affordable when it consumes no more than 30% of household income. Nearly half of Detroit families are housing-cost burdened, meaning they spend even more than that. Among renter households-now the majority of households in Detroit ⁴ -the median housing cost equals a staggering 48% of median income. This leaves very little room in the budget for food, clothing, healthcare, transportation and other basic necessities that promote health, academic success, employment and economic security.

In the larger Detroit metro area, affordable rentals are available for fewer than 1 in 3 renter households with extremely low incomes. ⁵ Federal funding for key affordable housing programs in the city has been slashed, falling by 45% from 2002 to 2016. ⁶ To make matters worse, thousands of Detroit units developed with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) will reach the end of their required 15-year affordability period over the next few years. This leaves little to discourage the owners from converting them to market-rate units, especially in neighborhoods targeted for redevelopment.

In 2017, Detroit adopted a voluntary inclusionary zoning ordinance applicable to developers getting a discount on the purchase of city-owned land or accepting at least $500,000 in subsidies from the city. Under the ordinance, 20% of units in these developments must be priced affordably for households making up to 80% of Area Median Income (AMI). Whether this policy will substantially increase affordable housing options for struggling Detroiters, however, is questionable because AMI is calculated with regard to the entire metropolitan area. In the Detroit metro area, AMI is roughly twice the median income in the city itself. Most of the city's cost-burdened households make less than $20,000 per year ⁷ -well below 80% of AMI. Even with the subsidies, it's possible that these families with the very lowest incomes won't be a priority for developers.

The Insidious Shapeshifting of Racism

The Great Recession caused the largest setbacks for African Americans, who already had lower homeownership rates than Whites and lived in more dilapidated neighborhoods and homes. This was a result of decades of explicitly racist laws, neglectful public budget decisions, and discriminatory practices in the real estate and lending industries. In some cases when African Americans managed to achieve homeownership in good neighborhoods despite these obstacles, Whites employed violence (often with the complicity of law enforcement) to prevent them from moving into the homes they had legally purchased. From 2000 to 2016, the homeownership rate among Michigan's African American families dropped from 51% to 40% ⁸, further stalling progress toward closing the racial wealth divide. In Detroit, as in so many communities across the country, the barriers to quality housing and wealth accumulation facing families of color today are just the latest configuration of structural racism.

Even though housing discrimination was banned decades ago, it set the stage for residential segregation and wealth inequality to persist even without the force of law behind them. In 2017, Whites received nearly half of the mortgages issued in Detroit despite making up only 10% of the population. Of the city's nearly 300 census tracts, mortgages were concentrated in nine of the wealthier ones while 139 tracts saw no mortgage activity at all. ⁹

The economic impact of past housing policies is connected to an alarming health legacy in Detroit following the Great Recession. For every 10 percentage-point increase in a neighborhood's historical redlined area, there were seven more foreclosures per 100 owner-occupied units from 2009 to 2011. Residents of neighborhoods with higher foreclosure rates during that time were also more likely to report being in poor health, with the foreclosure rate having a greater effect on health in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of redlined areas. ¹⁰

The policies and practices that have forced people of color into substandard rental housing and neglected neighborhoods reveal themselves in the health status of city residents. In the context of racism in housing, it is not surprising that Detroit-the nation's largest majority-African American city-has exceptionally high rates of childhood lead poisoning, asthma, and infant and maternal mortality.

The Trauma of Housing Instability

Unaffordable housing costs, dangerous building conditions and evictions lead to frequent moves and homelessness, with serious consequences for health and economic security. In the 2015-16 school year, 58% of all Detroit students were enrolled in more than one school, compared to only 26% of their suburban peers. ¹¹ One in 3 of the city's elementary students changes schools every single year ¹², constantly leaving friends, trusted teachers and other school staff and having to establish new relationships and routines in an unfamiliar environment. When children change schools, academic achievement suffers at both the individual and classroom levels, and the negative impact grows with each subsequent move. ¹³

Children experiencing multiple moves, homelessness and other forms of housing instability experience worse health, more hospitalizations and greater developmental risks than their counterparts with stable housing. Parents and other caregivers also face negative health impacts, which can make it difficult to provide for the family. ¹⁴

Water Crisis

Water bills have played a significant role in Detroiters' housing struggles over the last few years. To be considered affordable, water bills should consume no more than 2.5% to 4.5% of household income. Among households living below the federal poverty line in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, however, water bills average 10% of income. ¹⁵ Compounding the struggle, water bill arrearages in Detroit are rolled into unpaid property taxes, meaning people who can't afford to pay for their water use are in danger of losing their homes to tax foreclosure.

In 2014, the city of Detroit-under the authority of an emergency manager-began shutting off water service once a household's arrearage lasts for 60 days or reaches $150. Since then, tens of thousands of homes have lost water, some due to administrative errors. Shutoffs have been concentrated in African American and Latinx neighborhoods ¹⁶, and many affected households are considered some of the city's most socially vulnerable based on such factors as poverty and disability status, language and access to healthcare. ¹⁷

Although shutoffs have dropped following implementation of a new water bill assistance program and other changes by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, water costs are still a burden that force many struggling families to cut back on other basics like heat and electricity, healthcare, food, transportation and school supplies. ¹⁸

A lack of water service has serious consequences for hygiene and health, especially for people who already face health challenges. Among more than 37,000 hospitalized Detroit residents, researchers have identified an increased likelihood of diagnosis of certain water-related illnesses, such as gastrointestinal, skin and soft tissue infections, among those living on blocks affected by shutoffs. ¹⁹

Adding to the stress among families is a fear that loss of water service could lead to an investigation by child welfare officials and possibly removal of their children from the home. ²⁰ This may deter people from seeking assistance or lead anxious parents to send their children to live elsewhere temporarily. Such family separations can be harmful, especially to people who have already endured the traumatic effects of prolonged water shutoff and housing instability.

Policy Recommendations

While the housing issues discussed in this brief may be especially severe in Detroit, they can affect families throughout the state. Thus, our policy recommendations include local measures that could be implemented in other communities as appropriate, as well as actions to be taken at the state level, to make safe homes more affordable and accessible to all Michiganders. (For other state-level policy recommendations, see the League's first issue in the Home, Health, Hope series, "A Crack in Michigan's Foundation.")

Target more affordable housing efforts toward the households with the lowest incomes:Detroit's inclusionary zoning ordinance aims to produce more housing for families making up to 80% of AMI, but incomes in the city are generally much lower than incomes in the larger metro area and the most severe shortage of affordable housing is among renter households with Extremely Low Incomes (ELI)-those living at 30% of Area Medican Income (AMI) and below. ²¹ To focus on these families, the ordinance also created the Affordable Housing Development and Preservation Fund, which receives 20% of the net receipts of city-owned commercial property sales as well as the penalties assessed for failure to comply with the ordinance. The money can be used to meet the housing needs of families with incomes of up to 50% of AMI, with the majority dedicated to ELI families. In 2018, Mayor Mike Duggan announced an initiative to establish a second housing fund, the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund (AHLF). Planned investments to the AHLF from several sources total $250 million over five years, eclipsing the city's commitment to the ordinance-created fund. The AHLF, however, is directed at development priced for households up to 80% of AMI, with a focus on those up to 60% of AMI. The city should make a more robust commitment of dedicated annual revenue to the first fund, which includes creation of an Affordable Housing Task Force, in order to achieve its deeper affordability goals for the Detroit families facing the greatest housing challenges.

The city also could address the shortcomings of the ordinance by lowering its upper income limit or using a more localized alternative to AMI as the reference point-for example, the city median income or median income by ZIP code. In certain metropolitan areas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has started using ZIP code as the geographic unit for calculating Housing Choice Voucher amounts. This type of small area approach would allow for more precise targeting of affordable housing developments to ensure that they benefit the families most historically underserved or excluded by the private market.

Strengthen the Community Benefits Ordinance (CBO): In 2016, Detroit voters approved a CBO that applies to developments that are worth at least $75 million, receive $1 million or more in property tax abatements, or receive $1 million or more in value of city land sales or transfers. Few projects in the city, however, are large enough to meet any of those criteria; as of September 2018, only nine projects have been subject to the CBO. Additionally, there is concern among some Detroiters that only two of the nine representatives of the neighborhood councils that advise developers in creating individual Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are chosen by residents of the impacted neighborhood. ²²

Furthermore, developers ultimately are not required to incorporate the advisory councils' feedback in their legally binding CBAs, resulting in a feeling among some Detroit residents that the community benefits produced thus far are lackluster compared to the significant subsidies given to profitable developers. ²³ Residents who have remained in and cared for the city through hard times should be given greater assurance of long-term benefits that will truly uplift their families and neighbors, including a commitment to affordable housing, local hiring and environmental justice.

Establish water shutoff protections and income-based bills for households with low incomes: Michigan should extend to water suppliers the same rules that prohibit electric and natural gas providers from shutting off service to households with low incomes, older adults and people with serious medical conditions. Additionally, water suppliers should consider income-based rates for customers facing burdensome bills. In 2017, Philadelphia adopted a water rate structure, setting bills at 2% to 4% of income for customers at or below 150% of the federal poverty level or who experience certain financial hardships. Such a plan makes it more likely that families can stay current on their water bills, increases certainty in the water supplier's revenue stream, and reduces the supplier's expenses related to collections and bad debt.

Provide for eviction expungement: Nearly 30,000 evictions are filed in Detroit every year. ²⁴ Any dispute between a landlord and tenant that ends up in housing court-even if it doesn't ultimately end in eviction-can tarnish a tenant's rental history indefinitely, making it extremely difficult to secure an adequate, stable home for the entire family.

In some cases, landlords who fail to properly maintain their rentals move to evict tenants for complaining about property conditions or escrowing rent payments. A majority of Detroit landlords are actually operating illegally, flouting city requirements to register their rentals and have them inspected. ²⁵ Even under these circumstances, when tenants attempt to hold their landlords accountable for providing a basic level of habitability, the court approves eviction. The law should provide for eviction expungement after a certain period of time, just as it does for negative financial entries on a credit report, to give struggling families the opportunity to gain the housing that is so critical to economic security.

Strengthen consumer protections in land contracts: Following the Great Recession, land contracts have made a comeback in Detroit, outnumbering mortgage transactions in recent years. ²⁶ Beyond capping the interest rate on a land contract at 11%, Michigan law places few parameters around this type of real estate transaction, leaving buyers with little protection against unscrupulous sellers. At a minimum, state law should require that land contracts be recorded with the county register of deeds. Ideally, the law also should prohibit unfair, deceptive and abusive practices; allow for an independent inspection and third-party appraisal of the home; and require the contract to disclose all transaction terms, address any existing liens or delinquent property taxes, and clarify what will happen upon early termination by either party. ²⁷ These measures would help ensure that buyers are not unfairly denied the return they're promised on their investment and ultimately gain the home equity that is so important to the transmission of intergenerational wealth.

Endnotes

1. Miles, T. (2017). The dawn of Detroit: A chronicle of slavery and freedom in the city of the straits. New York, NY: The New Press.

2. Ruark, P. Michigan League for Public Policy. (February 2019). City Fact Sheets. Retrieved from https://mlpp.org/city-fact-sheets/.

3. Pinho, K. (2018, March 12). Detroit plans to preserve, create 12,000 affordable housing units with new $250 million fund. Crain's Detroit Business. Retrieved from https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20180312/news/655016/detroit-plans-to-preserve-create-12000-affordable-housing-units-with.

4. MacDonald, C. (2018, July 10). Black homeownership plunges in Michigan. The Detroit News. Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/2018/07/10/black-home-ownership-drop-largest-michigan/767804002/.

5. National Low Income Housing Coalition. (2019). The Gap Report 2019: Michigan. Retrieved from https://reports.nlihc.org/gap/2017/mi.

6. Pinho, K. (2018, March 12). Detroit plans to preserve, create 12,000 affordable housing units with new $250 million fund. Crain's Detroit Business. Retrieved from https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20180312/news/655016/detroit-plans-to-preserve-create-12000-affordable-housing-units-with.

7. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). Selected housing characteristics, 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Retrieved from https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF.

8. Hedman, C. and Pendall, R. Urban Institute. (June 2018). Rebuilding and sustaining homeownership for African Americans. Retrieved from https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/98719/rebuilding_and_sustaining_homeownership_for_african_americans.pdf.

9. Gallagher, J. (2019, March 21). Few Black people get home mortgages in Detroit, data show. The Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/john-gallagher/2019/03/21/black-mortgages-detroit-real-estate-michigan/3165381002/.

10. McClure, E., Feinstein, L., Cordoba, E., Douglas, C., Emch, M., Robinson, W., Galea, S., & Aiello, A. (2019). The legacy of redlining in the effect of foreclosures on Detroit residents' self-rated health. Health and Place, 55, 9-19. Retrieved from https:www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135382921830618X.

11. Einhorn, E. & Pratt Dawsey, C. (2018, October 2). The children of 8B: One classroom, 31 journeys, and the reason it's so hard to fix Detroit's schools. Chalkbeat. Retrieved from https://chalkbeat.org/posts/detroit/2018/10/02/students-change-schools-turmoil-disrupts-detroit-classrooms/.

12. Ibid.

13. How Housing Matters. (2018, September 5). High student turnover and switching schools affect academic outcomes. Retrieved from https://howhousingmatters.org/articles/high-student-turnover-switching-schools-affect-academic-outcomes/.

14. Sandel, M., et al. (2018). Unstable Housing and Caregiver and Child Health in Renter Families. Pediatrics, 141(2). Retrieved from https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/141/2/e20172199.full.pdf.

15. Rockowitz, D., Askew-Merwin, C., Sahai, M., Markley, K., Kay, C., & Reames, T. University of Michigan Poverty Solutions. (August 2018). Household water security in metropolitan Detroit: Measuring the affordability gap. Retrieved from https://poverty.umich.edu/10/files/2018/08/PovertySolutions-PolicyBrief-0818-r2.pdf.

16. Miller, E. (2019, February 7). Why many in the Great Lakes region can't afford basic drinking water. National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/692466358/why-many-in-the-great-lakes-region-cant-afford-basic-drinking-water.

17. Plum, A., Mosley, K., & Zervos, M. We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective. (2017). Water Shutoffs Impact Public Health. Retrieved from http://wethepeopleofdetroit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Health-Study-Handout.pdf.

18. Rockowitz, D., Askew-Merwin, C., Sahai, M., Markely, K., Kay, C., & Reames, T. University of Michigan Poverty Solutions. (August 2018). Household Water Security in Metropolitan Detroit: Measuring the Affordability Gap. Retrieved from https://poverty.umich.edu/10/files/2018/08/PovertySolutions-PolicyBrief-0818-r2.pdf.

19. Plum, A., Mosley, K., & Zervos, M. (2017, April 8). The Impact of Geographical Water Shutoffs on the Diagnosis of Potentially Water-Associated Illness, with the Role of Social Vulnerability Examined. Retrieved from http://wethepeopleofdetroit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Water-ShutoffsIllnesses-Report.pdf.

20. Winchester, H. (2014, July 7). Water shutoffs bring concern over welfare of children. Click on Detroit. Retrieved from https://www.clickondetroit.com/consumer/water-shutoffs-bring-concern-over-welfare-of-children.

21. National Low Income Housing Coalition. (2019). The gap: A shortage of affordable rental homes. Retrieved from https://reports.nlihc.org/gap/2017/mi.

22. Tate, M. (2018, March 13). Time to reconsider Detroit's weak community benefits ordinance. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/03/13/detroit-development-community-benefits-ordinance/414944002/.

23. Jouppi, S. (2018, March 19). Detroit's community benefits ordinance yields hours of dialogue and almost no community benefits. WDET. Retrieved from https://wdet.org/posts/2018/03/19/86319-detroits-community-benefits-ordinance-yields-hours-of-dialogue-and-almost-no-community-benefits/.

24. Kurth, J. (2019, March 12). One in five Detroit rentals face eviction. Time to call in the lawyers? Bridge. Retrieved from https://www.bridgemi.com/detroit-journalism-cooperative/one-five-detroit-rentals-face-eviction-time-call-lawyers.

25. MacDonald, C. (2019, January 14). Detroit push fails to boost rental inspections. The Detroit News. Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2019/01/14/detroit-push-rental-inspections-fails-increase-compliance/2473755002/.

26. MacDonald, C. (2017, October 16). Persistent evictions threaten Detroit neighborhoods. The Detroit News. Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2017/10/05/detroit-evictions-threaten-neighborhoods-rentals/106315064/.

27. Battle, J., Mancini, S., Saunders, M., & Williamson, O. National Consumer Law Center. (July 2016). Toxic Transactions: How Land Installment Contracts Once Again Threaten Communities of Color. Retrieved from https://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/pr-reports/report-land-contracts.pdf.

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Detroit: The evolution of a housing crisis - MLPP

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In recent years, states, communities and families across the country have been struggling to cope as decades of stagnant or falling wages and rising housing prices have come to a head. America is commonly said to be in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis.

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Rochella Stewart has lived in her Detroit home, near Livernois and Grand River Avenue, for more than six decades. It's where she grew up and it's where she plans to stay.

But crumbling conditions in her childhood home make that difficult. Although she was able to get her roof repaired last year, her ceilings are cracking, her front door frame sags and air seeps through windows. Her bathroom sink doesn't have hot water and she needs a new furnace. Stewart's basement saw about 8 inches of water from late June flooding that swept through metro Detroit, damaging wood paneling.

Still, Stewart, 63, doesn't plan to leave. She's on a fixed income and is searching for grants to help her repair her home.

"My kids wanted me to move out, go into senior living. I said, 'Nope, I'm going to sit here and fight and find something to fix this home up, and stay until I leave this Earth,' " she said.

Home repair was among the top issues residents raised during several community meetings last month, where Detroiters expressed how they would like their city government to spend an influx of federal COVID-19 relief dollars. Researchers and community organizations say existing programs are difficult to tap into and don't address the breadth of repair needs in the city. One program for seniors, for example, has a two-year waitlist with more than 2,000 people.

"The scale is immense. And in many ways, overwhelming. ... It's beyond the capacity of the city to address with its own revenues," Alexa Eisenberg, a researcher with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, said.

The city plans to launch a new program later this year with federal funds that aims to address the need for home repair.

The deluge of federal dollars is an opportunity to make a "significant dent" in home repair needs but what's been allocated so far - $30 million for seniors, low-income residents and people with disabilities - is not enough, Eisenberg said.

Researchers, in a 2020 U-M study, pointed out ways to make existing programs more accessible for people, such as offering deferred loans with no credit score requirement.

Individual blocks need thousands of dollars in repair work.

"When you talk about the scale of repair needed for a lot of the neighborhoods, in a single block, you're going to have 20 or so homes. Of those 20 homes, more than half of them are going to need $30,000 worth of work," Fikre Prince, executive director of Central Detroit Christian Community Development, said. "And so you're talking $300,000 for a single block, just to bring it up to a place where when you drive down the block, you feel good about that block."

'Demand greater than supply'

There were more than 24,000 moderately or severely inadequate homes in Detroit, according to the U-M study, which analyzed 2017 American Housing Survey data. These could be homes with broken toilets, no working cooking equipment, rats in the unit and exposed wiring and water leaks.

That's a conservative estimate, Eisenberg said.

Thirty-five percent of homes in metro Detroit had repair needs, a 2019 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found. The cost for repairs was about $2 billion, researchers estimated.

But the need in Detroit itself could be much greater than the metro-wide average, said Eileen Divringi, community development research specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
More: More: Detroit Voter Guide 2021: See candidates for Detroit mayor, city council, city clerk Detroit is getting $426 million. Here's where Detroiters say that money should go.
"There's just an abundance of evidence that conditions in our housing units affect our physical and mental health," she said. "There are things that are directly related to illness and injury: the presence of mold, broken windows, holes in the floor where you can catch your foot - very clear hazards. There are also some more indirect challenges. There's evidence that living in visible disrepair has a really negative impact on people's mental health."

Help for home repairs is the No. 1 call Central Detroit Christian Community Development receives, Prince said. The organization helps connect residents to services and resources.

As many as eight out of 10 homes on blocks the organization works with on Detroit's west side are in need of anywhere between $12,000 to $20,000 worth of emergency repairs, Prince estimated.

"Not to mention the amount of repair that would be needed to bring the house up to say what a new house would be - be able to have the technology in the homes, the newer plumbing and things of that nature, but they're in an emergency state almost," he said. "A lot of the houses in our neighborhood are still having issues with lead and asbestos."

There isn't enough funding to address home repairs, said Linda Smith, executive director of U-SNAP-BAC, a Detroit-based organization that helps residents buy and maintain homes.

"The demand is greater than the supply," Smith said.

One block club in Detroit has taken matters into its own hands - raising money online for neighbors who need critical home repairs and heating and electrical appliances.

The city plans to launch a new home repair program later this year with $30 million in federal dollars, said Heather Zygmontowicz, chief of special housing programs and strategic implementation.

"We're still working through exactly how it's going to work. ... The North Star right now is to look at the current needs that are not being addressed and trying to fill in as many gaps as possible," she said.

The U-M study estimates that $15.8 million in loans and grants reached 2,943 homes in 2018. This includes loan, grant and weatherization programs from the federal government, city, state and an energy company.

In addition to a lack of funding, researchers said that low-income Detroiters struggled to access loan programs and need help navigating applications for loan and grants, bids and inspections.

When it comes to grants, nine programs in 2018 provided about $6.6 million in funding, which reached 771 households, the U-M study found.

One of those programs - the Senior Emergency Home Repair Program - has a two-year long wait list of about 2,100 people as of July, according to the city. Another 131 residents have been approved and are in line for repair work to begin, and 395 applicants are under review. Grant amounts are for up to $15,000 and the program is for low-income homeowners over 55 years old who receive Social Security Disability benefits.

"There are many things that have contributed to the list. It has existed for some years now. The waitlist has been continuously open, with the number of people calling for assistance greater than the available resources," Nicole Wyse, associate director of community development at the city's housing and revitalization department, said in an email.

The city paused the program from March through August of last year to curb the spread of COVID-19, she said.

"During that time additional residents were added to the waitlist. We are working to catch up now that restrictions have been relaxed," Wyse said.

Patricia Maxwell, 65, is among the seniors on the waitlist. She's No. 967, according to the city. Maxwell is on a fixed income and needs her porch railing fixed and her basement patched up where rain seeps in. But it has been hard to get financial help, she said.

"I'm just trying to do the best I can," she said.

Maxwell has lived in her Islandview home for 14 years. Seniors in Detroit need repairs because they want to stay in the city but can't do that in unsafe houses, she said.

"What's the problem? These people have paid into the city of Detroit, probably all their lives. And now we got to be the ones to take the back seat while our property is literally falling down around us," she said.

Wyse said the city has seen an increase in funding for the senior repair program since 2019, and that it has updated the program's procurement process, recruited more contractors and tightened program specifications to emergencies in order to keep project costs down and serve more seniors.

Stewart said she hasn't applied for loans because she can't afford to pay them back. Loans can be hard to access because payment amounts may be too high, especially for people on fixed incomes, and because of the required credit score, the U-M report found.

The city's 0% Interest Home Repair Loan program which offers 10-year, interest-free loans up to $25,000 accepted 919 applicants, as of June 2019, according to data the U-M report analyzed. Less than a quarter of extremely low-income borrowers - meaning a person with an income below $14,450 - were approved. A little more than half of borrowers with incomes above $38,450 were accepted, researchers found.

"The lowest acceptance rate is among the lowest income population," Eisenberg said. "Obviously, that's just not an equitable way of distributing funds."

Finding help is difficult

It can be hard for residents to navigate the resources that are out there, leaders at community organizations said.

"The nature of home repair resources is incredibly convoluted, diffused and confusing," said Josh Elling, CEO of Jefferson East, Inc.

In a month, Jefferson East, Inc. plans to launch a neighborhood resource hub that aims to streamline resources.

"Folks will be able to walk in, meet with our intake counselor, who then will refer all the appropriate resources, and we help people with the application processes, but more importantly, follow up with the resource providers to make sure that that homeowner is getting the support they need," he said.

Older housing stock, a high poverty rate, an aging population and a lack of centralized resources all contribute to the high demand for repairs in Detroit, researchers and leaders at community organizations said.

In metro Detroit, nearly 11% of Black households lived in inadequate housing compared with less than 3% of white households, according to the U-M report.

"Black households and Latino households are disproportionately affected by home repair needs," said Divringi of the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia.

Late June flooding in metro Detroit only exacerbated existing problems.

"That was just the kick in the teeth," Elling said.

Still, he says federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act is a "good down payment."

"We are at a very unique time now where we'll actually be able to make a really big dent in Detroit," he said. "We've just got to make sure we coordinate, line things out and help as many people as possible."

U-M researchers reviewed home repair programs in six other cities. Nearly all cities offered deferred loans that would delay repayment until the sale of a home or forgive the loan if the home's value goes down. That, researchers said, doesn't add an immediate financial burden on households.

Researchers studied programs in Minneapolis and noted that the city offered deferred loans, loan terms were up to 30 years and some programs were available to people without a credit score. Community organizations say there needs to be a citywide centralized place to get information and assistance. Michelle Lee, director of housing and neighborhood services at Jefferson East, Inc., pointed to the city of Milwaukee's website detailing available programs.

"They tend to have less requirements around credit and they make the loan application process a little less arduous for people," Eisenberg said about programs in other cities. "But you do see similar things happening all over the place where a middle-income household is much more likely to be able to access funds because their ability to pay back a loan is better."

Overall, there needs to be "multiple variations of intervention" to address Detroit's home repair needs, Prince said.
Nushrat Rahman covers issues related to economic mobility for the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Detroit as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Contact Nushrat: nrahman@freepress.com; 313-348-7558. Follow her on Twitter: @NushratR. Sign up for Bridge Detroit's newsletter. Become a Free Press subscriber.
"Some of that comes with lending from banks, some of it comes from grants from the state and from the city. And some of that just comes with greater economic mobility and employment for the residents," he said.

How to get help: for more information about available resources, go to https://bit.ly/detroithomerepair to view the University of Michigan Poverty Solutions' 2019 home repair resource guide.

2021 Detroit Voter Guide

Welcome to the Detroit Free Press/BridgeDetroit 2021 Detroit Voter Guide, which offers information about the Aug. 3 Detroit primary election. We sent questionnaires to candidates in every primary race. Candidate responses have not been edited for grammar, spelling or accuracy. Detroit voters, enter your address to learn about the candidates that will be on your ballot.

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Detroiters want to fix up their homes. The path to do that isn't easy.

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Rochella Stewart has lived in her Detroit home, near Livernois and Grand River Avenue, for more than six decades. It's where she grew up and it's where she plans to stay. But crumbling conditions in her childhood home make that difficult.

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Detroit City Council approves Duggan’s plan to spend $826 million in federal funds

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Detroit City Council on Tuesday approved Mayor Mike Duggan’s proposal to spend millions in COVID-19-related federal funds.

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Repair crisis bigger than experts thought

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Repair crisis bigger than experts thought

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Detroit’s home repair crisis is even bigger than experts thought

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An estimated 13% of Detroit households live with hazards such as exposed wires, electrical problems, broken furnaces or lack of hot or running water.

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Detroiters can bring down energy costs. But getting homes weatherized isn’t easy.

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Weatherization can help low income Detroiters save on energy costs. But crucial home repairs for roofs, mold and asbestos must be addressed first.

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https://www.insider.com/tour-abandoned-homes-detroit-1000-dollars-2021-6?amp

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The Detroit Land Bank Authority is an organization that works with the local government to sell these homes to buyers. In 2014, the city of Detroit, Wayne County, and the state of Michigan started transferring ownership of the homes to the Land Bank.

"It was an effort to consolidate a mass of publicly owned properties within the city of Detroit," said Alyssa Strickland, the assistant director of public relations and strategic initiatives at the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

The homes go up for auction on the Lank Bank website, starting at $1,000. When the auctions close, the average home sells for just under $5,000, but some could reach $50,000. A buyer is then expected to renovate and restore the home to livable standards within six months to ensure it doesn't remain abandoned under the new ownership.

Strickland said the bulk of the Land Bank's remaining inventory is "modest, single-family homes under 2,000 square feet."

He explained that he's lived on this block, which has a few abandoned, boarded-up houses, for 50 years and watched as people left the neighborhood.

"We're waiting for a new body of people who want to see change," he said. "Change is coming."

Cynthia Reaves runs JGA Property Group, a real-estate development company in Detroit, and decided to buy a two-family home in the Bagley neighborhood through the Land Bank.

In 2019, she bought the house for $52,000 through the auction process but then got a 50% discount because her mother used to work for the city.

Reaves said she feels she was a victim of an investor group trying to bid up the price. She said she doesn't believe the home was worth $52,000.

This is a common complaint Detroiters have about the Land Bank. According to Curbed, many Detroiters have complained they cannot buy the homes they want in the neighborhoods they want through the Land Bank. Some Detroiters say the Land Bank favors out-of-town investors and developers who price gauge the auctions.

Strickland said this isn't the case. "Seventy-one percent of our buyers are Detroit residents at the time of purchase. 74% are Black, and 64% become homeowners through their Land Bank purchase," she said.

She added, "We're very proud of how these numbers demonstrate that the Land Bank is succeeding in creating accessible pathways to home and property ownership for Detroiters."

Keep reading

More: Detroit Real Estate Homes Renovation

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I toured 3 abandoned Detroit homes that are being auctioned off for $1,000. See what buyers can expect.

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The Detroit Land Bank Authority is an organization that works with the local government to sell these homes to buyers. In 2014, the city of Detroit, Wayne County, and the state of Michigan started transferring ownership of the homes to the Land Bank.

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Ever wonder what causes homes to become abandoned?

Homes become abandoned due to lack of employment, increased crime rate, or dangerous environmental hazards such as radiation or contaminated drinking water. Below we explore this phenomenon in more detail.

I've been in homes where everything was just left sitting for years. Food in the fridge, dishes in the sink, clothes in the laundry basket. It's a weird feeling seeing everything in the same place that it was left years ago, and it makes you wonder what happened. In this article, we'll be exploring what causes abandoned houses, and why someone would leave everything behind.

Deportation & Imprisonment

In 2017, 81,600 people were removed from their residences and deported from the United States. When this happens their belongings as well as their homes can become lost, or seized by the government. While there are procedures in place to collect immigrant's belongings and return them, that isn't always what happens.

Depending on the circumstances the home can be sealed and held in a state of 'limbo' for years. Often times valuables like jewelry, family photos, home movies, and even the ashes of family members become entombed inside.

I remember entering a small residential home that had sat on a corner for over 5 years. It was early morning and upon entering through the basement into the kitchen, plates were still on the table. The house was a time capsule, and even though the ceiling was caving in due to water damage everything else sat still.

There was enough personal information inside that I was able to determine the family was deported after doing further research. Children's drawings molding on the refrigerator and Christmas decorations still hanging in the August heat is a strange and sad sight to see.

Environmental Hazards

Sometimes conditions in an area can become so unbearable, people just leave everything behind. This can be natural like a volcano or flood, or man-made like radiation exposure or polluted groundwater.

One of the most famous examples of mass exodus is the evacuation of Pripyat in 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a catastrophic failure. Authorities evacuated 120,000 people from their homes in the city and surrounding area. Families could only take what they could carry, and many thought that they would be able to return in a few days.

This was not the case.

More recently in 2011 the failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had displaced over 160,000 people. Of those people roughly 80,000 still remain displaced. While some were allowed to return briefly to their homes to retrieve some of their belongings, a majority of the buildings and homes remain abandoned with everything inside.

Lastly on the island of Montserrat there was a town Plymouth where a volcano erupted multiple times during the 1990s. The island was covered in molten lava and the air was saturated with ash. Conditions became so bad the entire island had to be evacuated. Many of the homes are now destroyed but with such little notice, so were their personal possessions

Foreclosure

This is broad, but probably accounts for the vast majority of the abandoned homes you will find. When a homeowner is unable to pay their monthly mortgage the lender will take the home as collateral. Usually this means the bank cleans out the property and resells it, but it doesn't always end up that easy.

In impoverished communities homes become abandoned because homeowners cannot make their payments. The surrounding area usually has a higher crime rate due to lack of jobs, education and overall opportunity. This creates a snowball like effect where home values fall, and those who can leave, leave quickly.

This creates an environment where the population is decreasing, home values have plummeted, and no one is buying. Banks now have swaths of homes that are left rotting and unmaintained while slumlords buy properties cheaply to provide low quality government backed housing for those on government assistance. It's a complicated problem, and this doesn't cover all of the factors that go into what causes homes to become abandoned, but it's an overview on how neighborhood blight can run rampant.

Cities like Flint Michigan are hit hard hit extremely hard where not only are they dealing with the problems above, but they are also suffering from failing infrastructure, contaminated water, and lack of opportunity. 41% of people in Flint live below the poverty line. Cities such as Flint and Detroit which relied so heavily on one company or industry are hit the hardest by layoffs and negative changes in the market.

What About Businesses?

The reason why businesses become vacant is a lot different and sometimes more complex to understand and explain.

Businesses much like residential homes suffer from declining population and lack of education in the area. Certain businesses that rely on the community itself for commerce such as a grocery store or gym may have to close due to declining sales, inability to fill positions, or theft. Once again this can snowball and cause entire communities to become derelict.

Sometimes a local healthy economy isn't enough.

Major shifts in industry such as the boom in ecommerce can drastically change communities in a short period of time. Companies such as Amazon and Ebay have driven smaller brick and mortar businesses to bankruptcy. Smaller companies who can't compete online begin to fade out of existence. With the absence of those physical stores, buildings and strip malls lay dormant waiting to be filled often times for years before getting another tenant.

We see the side effects of this industry shift with the death of malls. Overtime more and more stores are closing their doors and malls are slated for demolition or sale. In a twist of fate, Amazon has been known to purchase the very malls it helped run out of business to build its fulfillment centers.

Amazon isn't the only company who has disrupted local communities. Detroit famously known for its success in the automotive industry, relied heavily on the Big Three for employment. The Big Three consisted of GM, Ford, and Chrysler and were a major source of economic success and employment in Detroit.

Between 1945 and 1957 the Big Three began to close large plants in the inner city and build multiple smaller plants in the suburbs. This was done to mitigate the risk of a complete shutdown due to labor strikes, which weren't uncommon at the time.

Overtime other automakers would go out of business completely as the Big Three and parts manufacturers relocate to other areas of the state and the country. In more recent times, automation has been a threat to employment in the auto industry as well as factories in general. This combined with cheaper labor and parts overseas drives large corporations to seek cheaper alternatives away from American cities.

The reason why homes become abandoned isn't always an easy one to answer. No matter why they're left vacant, it's still a place someone used to call home. Even if the place is trashed, be respectful because you are just a visitor.

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What Causes Homes To Become Abandoned? - Urbex

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Ever wonder what causes homes to become abandoned? Homes become abandoned due to lack of employment, increased crime rate, or dangerous environmental hazards such as radiation or contaminated drinking water. Below we explore this phenomenon in more detail. I've been in homes where everything was just left sitting for years.

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The city of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan, has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population of the city has fallen from a high of 1,850,000 in 1950 to 680,000 in 2015, removing it from the top 20 of US cities by population for the first time since 1850. Local crime rates are among the highest in the United States (even though the overall crime rate in the city has seen a decline during the 21st century), and vast areas of the city are in a state of severe urban decay. In 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history, which it successfully exited on December 10, 2014. Poverty, crime, shootings, drugs and urban blight in Detroit are ongoing problems.

Before the advent of the automobile, Detroit was a small, compact regional manufacturing center. In 1900, Detroit had a population of 285,000 people, making it the thirteenth-largest city in the U.S. Over the following decades, the growth of the automobile industry, including affiliated activities such as parts and tooling manufacturing, came to dwarf all other manufacturing in the city. The industry drew a million new residents to the city. At Ford Motor's iconic and enormous River Rouge plant alone, opened in 1927 in Detroit's neighbor Dearborn, there were over 90,000 workers. The shifting nature of the workforce stimulated by the rapid growth of the auto industry had an important impact on the city's future development. The new workers came from diverse and soon far-flung sources. Nearby Canada was important early on and many other workers came from eastern and southern Europe, a large portion of them being ethnic Italians, Hungarians, and Poles. An important attraction for these workers was that the new assembly line techniques required little prior training or education to get a job in the industry.

The breadth of sources for the growing demand for auto assembly workers, however, was sharply limited by the turmoil of World War I, and shortly thereafter by the restrictive U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, with its limited annual quotas for new immigrants. In response, the industry-with Ford in the forefront-turned in a significant way to hiring African-Americans, who were leaving the South in huge numbers in response to the combination of a post-war agricultural slump and continuing Jim Crow practices. At the same time large numbers of southern whites were hired, as well as large numbers of Mexicans, since immigration from most of the western hemisphere was not restricted at all by new immigration quotas. By 1930 Detroit's population had grown to nearly 1.6 million, and then to nearly 2 million by its peak shortly before 1950. A World War II boom in the manufacture of war materiel contributed to this growth surge. This population was, however, very spread out in comparison with other U.S. industrial cities. A variety of factors associated with the auto industry fed this trend. There was the large influx of workers. They earned comparatively high wages in the auto industry. The plants they worked at, belonging to various major and minor manufacturers, were spread around the city. The workers tended to live along extended bus and streetcar lines leading to their workplaces. The result of these influences, beginning already by the 1920s, was that many workers bought or built their own single-family or duplex homes. They did not tend to live in large apartment houses, as in New York, or in closely spaced row houses as in Philadelphia. After New Deal labor legislation, high auto-union secured wages and benefits facilitated this willingness to take on the cost and risk of home ownership.

These decentralizing trends did not have equal effects on African-American residents of the city. They tended to have far less access to New Deal mortgage support programs such as Federal Housing Authority and Veterans Administration insured mortgages. African-American neighborhoods were viewed by lenders and the federal programs as riskier, resulting-in this period-in much lower rates of homeownership for African-Americans than other residents of the city.

The auto industry also gave rise to a large number of high paying management and executive jobs. There were also large numbers of attorneys, advertisers, and other workers who supported the industry's managerial force. These workers already by the 1920s had begun to move to neighborhoods well removed from the industry's factories and higher crime rates. This upper stratum moved to outlying neighborhoods, and further, to well-to-do suburbs such as Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe. Oakland County, north of the city, became a popular place to live for executives in the industry. "By the second half of the twentieth century, it was one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, a place profoundly shaped by the concentration of auto-industry-derived wealth."

The auto industry too was decentralizing away from Detroit proper. This change was facilitated by the great concentration of automobile production into the hands of the "Big Three" of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. The Big Three were able to build cars better and cheaper and put nearly every smaller competitor automaker out of business. While this corporate concentration was taking place, the Big Three were shifting their production out of central Detroit to escape the auto-union wage requirements. Between 1945 and 1957 the Big Three built 25 new manufacturing plants in the metropolitan area, not one of them in the city itself.

The number and character of these new, suburban auto factories was a harbinger of future trends detrimental to the economic health of Detroit. There was an interaction between factory decentralization and the nature of the industry's post-New Deal unionized labor force. Ford Motor was one of the first to undertake major decentralization, in reaction to labor developments. Ford's workers voted to join the UAW in 1941. This led Ford to be concerned about the vulnerability of its huge flagship Rouge River plant to labor unrest. The workers at this plant were "among the industry's most well-organized, racially and ethnically diverse, and militant."[citation needed ] A strike at this key plant could bring the company's manufacturing operations as a whole to a halt. Ford therefore decentralized operations from this plant, to soften union power (and to introduce new technologies in new plants, and expand to new markets). Ford often built up parallel production facilities, making the same products, so that the effect of a strike at any one facility would be lessened. The results for the River Rouge plant are striking. From its peak labor force of 90,000 around 1930, the number of workers there declined to 30,000 by 1960 and only about 6,000 by 1990. This decline was mainly due to labor movement to non-union areas and automation.

The leadership of Detroit failed to diversify the city's industry beyond automotive manufacturers and related industries. Because the city had flourished in the heyday of the auto industry, local politicians made periodic attempts to stimulate a revival of the auto industry in the city. For example, in the 1980s the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck used the power of eminent domain to level part of what had been Poletown to make a parking lot for a new automobile factory. On that site, a new, low-rise suburban type Cadillac plant was built, with substantial government subsidies. The new Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly employs 1,600 workers. In the 1990s, the city subsidized the building of a new Chrysler plant on the city's east side, Jefferson North Assembly, which employs 4,600 people.[when? ] In 2009 Chrysler filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, and survives in a partnership with Fiat of Italy. while GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 1, 2009, and survives as a much smaller company-smaller now than Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation. A little over two years after these major blows to the U.S. auto industry, the city itself went into Chapter 9 bankruptcy after years of mismanagement by local leaders.

During the Roosevelt administration, the New Deal molded the urban landscape as a battleground of interracial hostility and residential segregation. New Deal policy sought to expand homeownership for low-income residents through the construction of federally subsidized public housing. For many Americans, homeownership symbolized responsible citizenship, financial investment, and social prestige, all of which were signs of upward mobility and middle-class status. However, the economic intervention of the federal government in expanding affordable housing presented a fundamental disconnect between New Deal policy and Black homeownership. This disconnect remained ingrained in the racist and classist ideologies of the white middle class that viewed public housing as a taxpayer-handout for the poor while foreseeing severe depreciation of single-family homes within neighborhoods that were the sites of public housing construction. Consequently, independent homeowners inhibited the construction of New Deal sponsored public housing by using civic disorder and rioting as political tools to consolidate homeowner rejection of Black occupancy in middle-class neighborhoods. Consequently, the political dominance white homeowners assumed in Detroit's housing disputes encouraged the Detroit Housing Commission (DHC) to establish racist policy such as the continuation of racial segregation within Detroit's housing market, allowing the DHC to avoid the racial bloodshed of public housing construction.

Because the local government had the final say over the distribution of federal funds for home loan eligibility, there were no major alternatives for obtaining loans for a new home, which further promoted the precarious and unstable living conditions of Black Detroiters. The redemptive capacity of the private-public partnership between local Detroit banks and the FHA-HOLC funneled a vicious territorialism of the white middle class that upheld the high property values of white neighborhoods by unequivocally suppressing the upward mobility of Black Detroiters. Collectively, Black integration into white neighborhoods greatly depreciated property values, which further motivated white Detroiters to keep their neighborhoods segregated. Despite the creation of an affordable housing agenda that was rooted in liberal thought, Roosevelt's New Deal underhandedly restricted the residential agency of Black Detroiters. Predicated upon a de jure system of residential segregation, New Deal policy remained tethered to the governmental imposition of societal and policy discrimination that aggravated structures of racism within Detroit's fractured housing market. In the unfolding of the housing crisis within Detroit, the federal government perpetuated the marginalization of Black Detroiters by neglecting the jarring racism and segregation that New Deal policy produced.

Furthermore, the threat of racial integration in white communities facilitated the rise of neighborhood associations, which were coalitions of independent white homeowners that fervently protected homeownership rights through advocacy for residential segregation. Frequently, neighborhood associations relied on restrictive covenants to mandate legal barriers to Black homeownership in middle-class neighborhoods to avoid the radical disinvestment that would stem from a racially integrated neighborhood. During the legality of restrictive covenants, these deed restrictions were explicitly racist and took the form of; "people of color can't purchase this home," or only for the "Caucasian race." By leveraging the legally discriminatory capacity of restrictive covenants, neighborhood associations prioritized the stability of homeownership through the preservation of neighborhood investment and relatively high single-family home values. The homogenization of the economic and social fabric of middle-class neighborhoods reflected the white-afflicted segregation of Black Detroiters that confined these residents to Detroit's oldest and worst housing stock. However, in the midst of a mid-twentieth century movement for civil rights reform, certain hallmark legal cases of discrimination in housing such as Shelley vs Kraemer deemed restrictive covenants unconstitutional. Upon this Supreme Court ruling, neighborhood associations were forced to change their restrictive zoning regulations as Black Detroiters began moving out of the dilapidated Detroit ghetto and sought residency in middle-class neighborhoods. Therefore, the repealing of restrictive covenants resulted in neighborhood associations relying on extralegal subversions of restrictive covenants to alternatively stunt Black residential integration. For example, neighborhood associations amended housing contracts to now contain phrases such as "undesirable" rather than "Black" to avoid the explicit discrimination of housing based on race. These slight revisions in already racist housing contracts allowed neighborhood associations to remain legally immune during the discriminatory protection of middle-class homeownership from the perceived social disorder and housing depreciation of racially integrated neighborhoods. Therefore, throughout the history of restrictive covenants, the preservation of the social and economic stability of middle-class neighborhoods hardened the residential segregation of Black Detroiters by placing restrictions on Black homeownership. Overall, restrictive covenants reinforced unequal race relations and perpetuated racial divisions that continue to exacerbate the urban inequality of current-day Detroit.

Coupled with the ability of de jure discrimination to mandate residential segregation through policy, neighborhood associations curbed civil rights reform that sought to mitigate racism within housing. The middle-class mentality of neighborhood associations would govern the political climate of Detroit as this anti-integration constituency resonated with politicians who would dispel public housing and the threat of racial invasion. The 1949 mayoral election of Detroit pitted George Edwards, a UAW activist and public housing advocate, against Albert Cobo, a corporate executive and real estate investor. Cobo presented an unwavering distrust of government economic intervention and pledged to protect single-family home investment through the disapproval of federally funded public housing projects within Detroit. Therefore, the anti-public housing and pro-homeownership sentiment of Albert Cobo garnered immense support from neighborhood associations that served an indispensable role in the overwhelming victory of Cobo over Edwards for mayor of Detroit.

The systematic exclusion of Black families from homeownership generationally suppressed Black Detroiters from receiving the economic assets of homeownership such as stable education, retirement, and businesses opportunities, which have created greater degrees of residential instability and precariousness. Overall, Detroit's convoluted history of segregation reveals that homeownership should not be viewed as a means to overcome poverty as exploitative market dynamics and racist housing policy eradicate the dimension of impartiality within the United States housing market.

In 1948, Shelley v. Kraemer and three other United States Supreme Court cases established that state enforcement of racially restrictive covenants were unconstitutional. This decision revitalized the advocacy for integrated neighborhoods. Suburbs around Detroit expanded dramatically as wealthy African-Americans began to move into white neighborhoods. The singular asset that many white residents held after World War II was their home, and they feared that if Black people moved in, the value of their homes would plummet. This fear was preyed upon by blockbusting real estate agents who would manipulate Whites into selling their homes for cheap prices by convincing them that African-Americans were infiltrating the neighborhood. They would even send Black children to go door to door with pamphlets that read, "Now is the best time to sell your house-you know that." With the means to pick up and leave, many white residents fled to the surrounding suburbs. This " white flight" took much away from the city: residents, the middle class, and tax revenues which kept up public services such as schools, police, and parks. Blockbusting agents then profited by reselling these houses at incredibly marked-up prices to African-Americans desperate to get out of the inner city.

These inflated prices were only affordable by the black "elite." As wealthier black Detroiters moved into the previously white neighborhoods, they left behind low-income residents in the most inadequate houses at the highest rental. Redlining, restrictive covenants, local politics, and the open housing movement all contributed to the restricted movement of black, low-income Detroiters.

In the postwar period, the city had lost nearly 150,000 jobs to the suburbs. Factors were a combination of changes in technology, increased automation, consolidation of the auto industry, taxation policies, the need for different kinds of manufacturing space, and the construction of the highway system that eased transportation for commuters. Major companies like Packard, Hudson, and Studebaker, as well as hundreds of smaller companies, declined significantly or went out of business entirely. In the 1950s, the unemployment rate hovered near 10 percent.

By the late 1940s, the economic wounds from years of redlining and restrictive covenants hurt the standard of living for many African Americans and minorities living in Detroit. With limited housing opportunities and sky-high rents, those living in "red" neighborhoods like Black Bottom and Paradise Valley often had little financial ability to pay for private apartments or even housing repairs. Consequences of close-quarter living were exacerbated by an influx of black immigrants during the Great Migration and World War II. The decaying neighborhoods also developed sanitation problems; garbage pickups were rare and trash littered the street, accelerating the spread of diseases and enticing pests. Perceptions of "urban blight" and a need for " slum clearance" in these areas were fueled especially by (majority white) Detroit city planners, who classified over two-thirds of housing in Paradise Valley as substandard.

A plan for "urban renewal" in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods was put forth by Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries in 1944. Utilizing eminent domain laws, the government began taking down buildings in the Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949. The push for urban renewal in post-World War II Detroit was popularized by local government officials, in conjunction with real estate agents and bank owners of the time, who stood to gain from investment in new buildings and wealthier residents. When the 1956 Highway Act mandated new highways routed through Detroit, the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley areas were an ideal placement; deconstruction of the site had already been started, and the political clout of slum clearance was more powerful than the limited ability residents had to advocate against the placement.

A letter from a Mrs. Grace Black found in the Bentley Historical Library's historical archives illustrates the struggles of finding housing with children in the midst of highway construction:

Governor Williams:

Please consider a family of 6 who are desperately in need of a house to rent. Husband, wife, and four lonely children, who have been turned down because we have children. We are now living in a house of the Edsel Ford Express Highway. We have our notice to move on out before the 23rd of Oct. So far we haven't found a place to move. Nobody want to rent us because we have children. My children aren't destructive but nobody will give us a chance to find out if they are or not. We are so comfortable here. It's the first freedom we've enjoyed since we've had children. My husband work at children's hospital only mak $60 a week. Sixty dollars we are paying $50 a month which we don't mind because we are comfortable. This will be demolished if we were able we would buy this house. But are not. So if anything you can do will be appreciated from the depths of our hearts. You have done so much to help the lower income families. We are deeply grateful wishing you God's speed. This is urgent! Please give this your immediate consideration.

Mrs. Grace Black (a worried mother)

I-75, Ford Field, and Comerica Park now occupy most of the area where Paradise Valley once stood. Historian Thomas Sugrue notes that of the families displaced by the razing of the Paradise Valley neighborhood:

[A]bout one-third of the Gratiot-area's families eventually moved to public housing, but 35 percent of the families in the area could not be traced. The best-informed city officials believed that a majority of families moved to neighborhoods within a mile of the Gratiot site, crowding into an already decaying part of the city, and finding houses scarcely better and often more overcrowded than that which they had left.

The Detroit Race Riot of 1943 broke out in Detroit in June of that year and lasted for three days before Federal troops regained control. The rioting between blacks and whites began on Belle Isle, Detroit's largest park, on June 20, 1943, and continued until June 22, killing 34, wounding 433, and destroying property valued at $2 million. This was one of Detroit's worst riots, with the buildup of racial tension and animosity between blacks and whites culminating in brawls that broke out on the bridge connecting Belle Isle to southeast Detroit. Fierce attacks were launched on each other's property, including the looting of both black and white-owned stores and white rampages throughout Paradise Valley, a segregated section of Detroit that was predominantly black and very poorly maintained.

As racial tensions escalated between blacks and whites, the gravity of the consequences of these tensions also escalated. Violence and riots were common, especially when regarding housing situations, as blacks began to encroach on predominantly white neighborhoods. In 1955, the black Wilson family bought a home in a white neighborhood, and soon faced vandalism and property destruction. Angry demands and threats were made at the Wilson family, harassing them to move out. Again, the Detroit police officers rarely did anything to help, choosing instead to sit in their cars nearby despite the constant harassment of the Wilsons.

The summer of 1967 saw five days of riots in Detroit. Over the period of five days, forty-three people died, of whom 33 were black and 10 white. There were 467 injured: 182 civilians, 167 Detroit police officers, 83 Detroit firefighters, 17 National Guard troops, 16 State Police officers, and three U.S. Army soldiers. In the riots, 2,509 stores were looted or burned, 388 families were rendered homeless or displaced, and 412 buildings were burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million.

After the riots, thousands of small businesses closed permanently or relocated to safer neighborhoods, and the affected district lay in ruins for decades.

Of the 1967 riots, politician Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor, wrote in 1994:

The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterward, it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion, the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.

According to the economist Thomas Sowell:

Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit's black population had the highest rate of home-ownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent. It was not despairing that fueled the riot. It was the riot which marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair. Detroit's population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.

Economist Edward L. Glaeser believes the riots were a symptom of the city's already downward trajectory:

While the 1967 riots are seen as a turning point in the city's fortunes, Detroit's decline began in the 1950s, during which the city lost almost a tenth of its population. Powerful historical forces buffeted Detroit's single-industry economy, and Detroit's federally supported comeback strategies did little to help.

State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring, including the State Police hiring blacks for the first time, and Detroit more than doubling the number of black police. The Michigan government used its reviews of contracts issued by the state to secure an increase in nonwhite employment. Between August 1967 and the end of the 1969-1970 fiscal year, minority group employment by the contracted companies increased by 21.1 percent.

The Michigan Historical Review writes that "Just as the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. facilitated the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included fair housing, so the Detroit riot of July 1967, 'the worst racial disturbance' of the century to that time, provided the impetus for the passage of Michigan's fair housing law as well as similar measures in many Michigan communities." Other laws passed in response to the disorder included "important relocation, tenants' rights, and code enforcement legislation." Such proposals had been made by Governor Romney throughout the 1960s, but the opposition did not collapse until after the riot.

The 1970 census showed that white people still made up a majority of Detroit's population. However, by the 1980 census, white people had fled at such a large rate that the city had gone from 55 percent to 34 percent white within a decade. The decline was even starker than this suggests, considering that when Detroit's population reached its all-time high in 1950, the city was 83 percent white.

Economist Walter E. Williams writes that the decline was sparked by the policies of Mayor Young, who Williams claims discriminated against whites. By contrast, urban affairs experts largely blame federal court decisions which decided against NAACP lawsuits and refused to challenge the legacy of housing and school segregation - particularly the case of Milliken v. Bradley, which was appealed up to the Supreme Court.

The District Court in Milliken had originally ruled that it was necessary to actively desegregate both Detroit and its suburban communities in one comprehensive program. The city was ordered to submit a " metropolitan" plan that would eventually encompass a total of fifty-four separate school districts, busing Detroit children to suburban schools and suburban children into Detroit. The Supreme Court reversed this in 1974. In his dissent, Justice William O. Douglas' argued that the majority's decision perpetuated " restrictive covenants" that "maintained...black ghettos."

Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton wrote that the "Suburbs were protected from desegregation by the courts, ignoring the origin of their racially segregated housing patterns." John Mogk, an expert in urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit, has said that "Everybody thinks that it was the riots [in 1967] that caused the white families to leave. Some people were leaving at that time but, really, it was after Milliken that you saw a mass flight to the suburbs. If the case had gone the other way, it is likely that Detroit would not have experienced the steep decline in its tax base that has occurred since then." Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota, has said:

was perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of that period. Had that gone the other way, it would have opened the door to fixing nearly all of Detroit's current problems... A deeply segregated city is kind of a hopeless problem. It becomes more and more troubled and there are fewer and fewer solutions.

Detroit became notorious for violent crime in the 1970s and 1980s. Dozens of violent black street gangs gained control of the city's large drug trade, which began with the heroin epidemic of the 1970s and grew into the larger crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. There were numerous major criminal gangs that were founded in Detroit and that dominated the drug trade at various times, though most were short-lived. They included The Errol Flynns (east side), Nasty Flynns (later the NF Bangers) and Black Killers and the drug consortiums of the 1980s such as Young Boys Inc., Pony Down, Best Friends, Black Mafia Family and the Chambers Brothers. The Young Boys were innovative, opening franchises in other cities, using youth too young to be prosecuted, promoting brand names, and unleashing extreme brutality to frighten away rivals.

Several times during the 1970s and 1980s, Detroit was named the "arson capital of America", and the city was also repeatedly dubbed the "murder capital of America". Detroit was frequently listed by FBI crime statistics as the "most dangerous city in America" during this time frame. Crime rates in Detroit peaked in 1991, at more than 2,700 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Population decline left abandoned buildings behind that became magnets for the drug trade, arson, and other criminal activity. The city's criminality has pushed tourism away from the city, and several foreign countries even issued travel warnings for the city.

Around this period, in the days of the year preceding and including Halloween, Detroit citizens went on a rampage called " Devil's Night". A tradition of light-hearted minor vandalism, such as soaping windows, had emerged in the 1930s, but by the 1980s it had become, said Mayor Young, "a vision from hell." During the height of the drug era, Detroit residents routinely set fire to houses that were known as popular drug-dealing locations, accusing the city's police of being either unwilling or unable to solve the deep problems of the city.

Urban decay is the process where a city that was once flourishing and functioning properly falls into disuse and disrepair. Common indicators of a city in urban decay are empty plots of land, abandoned and decrepit buildings, high unemployment rates, and high crime rates. Detroit fits all of these categories and is the most famous example of urban decay in the US. Detroit is often likened to a ghost town. Parts of the city are so abandoned they have been described as looking like farmland, urban prairie, and even complete wilderness.

In the 1940s, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the US thanks in large part to the automobile industry. However, in the 1950s the automobile industry was no longer confined to Detroit. The industry began to spread out. Detroit was still the center of the industry, but many jobs left the city. More than any other city in America, Detroit has felt the negative effects of globalization. Recently, there has been a major nationwide movement of people moving back into cities.[citation needed ] However, Detroit has felt the opposite effects. Once dubbed "the blackest city in America", Detroit now holds the name of "America's comeback city."

However, blight remains specifically in predominantly African American neighborhoods. A significant percentage of housing parcels in the city are vacant, with abandoned lots making up more than half of total residential lots in large portions of the city. With at least 70,000 abandoned buildings, 31,000 empty houses, and 90,000 vacant lots, Detroit has become notorious for its urban blight.

In 2010, Mayor Bing put forth a plan to bulldoze one-fourth of the city. Detroit is a metropolis that sprawls 139 square miles. In comparison, Manhattan is just over 22 square miles. The sprawling nature of the city is conducive to urban decay. The Mayor's plan was to concentrate Detroit's remaining population into certain areas to improve the delivery of essential city services, which the city has had significant difficulty providing (policing, fire protection, trash removal, snow removal, lighting, etc.). In February 2013 the Detroit Free Press reported the Mayor's plan to accelerate the program. The project has hopes "for federal funding to replicate it [the bulldozing plan] across the city to tackle Detroit's problems with tens of thousands of abandoned and blighted homes and buildings." Bing said the project aims "to right-size the city's resources to reflect its smaller population." Despite this, there is still an estimated 20 square miles of empty land within the city limits.

The average price of homes sold in Detroit in 2012 was $7,500. As of January 2013, 47 houses in Detroit were listed for $500 or less, with five properties listed for $1. Despite the extremely low price of Detroit properties, most of the properties have been on the market for more than a year as the boarded-up, abandoned houses of the city are seldom attractive to buyers. The Detroit News reported that more than half of Detroit property owners did not pay taxes in 2012, at a loss to the city of $131 million (equal to 12% of the city's general fund budget).

The first comprehensive analysis of the city's tens of thousands of abandoned and dilapidated buildings took place in the spring of 2014. It found that around 50,000 of the city's 261,000 structures were abandoned, with over 9,000 structures bearing fire damage. It further recommended the demolition of 5,000 of these structures.

Between 2000 and 2010, Detroit lost a quarter of its population. More people left Detroit during this time-237,500-than fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina-140,000. However, from 2010 to 2018, Detroit saw the biggest growth in racial diversity of any city analyzed by a US news study. This is not the racial diversity most other cities experienced. Opposite of the white flight most cities experienced where whites fled cities for safer suburbs, Detroit saw an influx of white residents into the downtown and midtown areas. The Midtown and downtown areas have increasing population density while African American neighborhoods remain without good access to public services. The poverty rate of the city remains several times higher than the national average. Much as the city has been likened to a ghost town, it has more recently been compared to a game of Monopoly, where the economic disparity is clear and present within a few city blocks. The balance between race and capitalism plays out in Detroit in a historic fashion.

The vast majority of this population loss was due to the deindustrialization of Detroit that moved factories from the inner city to the suburbs. This was coupled with the phenomenon of white flight, the movement of many white families from urban areas of metro Detroit to the suburbs on the outskirts of the city. White flight was spurred on by the Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of blacks migrated from the South to Detroit in search of employment. This caused overcrowding in the inner city and led to racial housing segregation. Practices of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants in Detroit further contributed to the overcrowding of certain minority groups residing in subsections of Detroit such as Black Bottom. Many of the white residents of Detroit did not wish to integrate with their black counterparts. They often chose to flee the city and reside in nicer, racially homogenous neighborhoods in the suburbs. This was also a result of an increased desire for homeownership. A report, "The Population Revolution in Detroit," published in February 1963 by Wayne State University sociologist Albert J. Mayer, suggested flight to the suburbs was grounded as much in economics as race: "Present population trends clearly demonstrate that the city is, by and large, being abandoned by all except those who suffer from relatively great ... deprivations." White families were in better positions to relocate into the suburbs, in juxtaposition with blacks who faced discrimination in home loans and in the real estate market.

Highway construction post-WWII also contributed to white flight, specifically with the construction of the Interstate Highway System. This allowed white families to easily commute to work in the city from the suburbs, and incentivized many white Detroiters to thus relocate. The construction of highways in Detroit further exacerbated the pre-existing racial segregation, as government officials built highways through areas that were seen as blighted - typically black "ghettos" - that were under-financed and under-maintained.

As a result of white flight and mass migration to the suburbs, a significant change in the racial composition of Detroit occurred. From 1950 to 2010, the black/white percentage of population went from 16.2%/83.6% to 82.7%/10.6%. Approximately 1,400,000 of the 1,600,000 white people in Detroit after World War II left the city for the suburbs. Beginning in the 1980s, for the first time in its history, Detroit was a majority black city.

White flight does appear to be reversing starting in the 1990s, with rich white families returning to the city and gentrifying areas of urban decay and blight. However, this has caused many issues with both physical and cultural displacement occurring, disproportionately impacting marginalized minority communities. Real estate development and the overall "improvement" of the city leads to increased rent in those parts of the city. Since marginalized communities tend to be more impoverished, they are not financially able to support these increased levels of rent, and therefore are physically displaced. Following physical displacement, there is also the issue of cultural displacement as gentrification causes a loss of sense of belonging, ownership, history, identity and pride associated with living in a certain place.

Data does show that Detroit's population loss is slowing. The decrease in 2017 was 2,376 residents compared to the 2016 decline of 2,770. The city has yet to rebound to the heights of population growth of the 1950s, but the decline is indeed slowing.

Unemployment

The U.S.A. Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 ranks Detroit first among all 71 U.S. cities for which rates were calculated in percentage of the city's population living below the poverty level. The individual rate living below the poverty level is 36.4%; the family rate is 31.3%.

Detroit has some of the highest crime rates in the United States, with a rate of 62.18 per 1,000 residents for property crimes, and 16.73 per 1,000 for violent crimes (compared to national figures of 32 per 1,000 for property crimes and 5 per 1,000 for violent crime in 2008). Detroit's murder rate was 53 per 100,000 in 2012, ten times that of New York City. A 2012 Forbes report named Detroit as the most dangerous city in the United States for the fourth year in a row. It cited FBI survey data that found that the city's metropolitan area had a significant rate of violent crimes: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

On March 1, 2013, Governor Rick Snyder announced that the state would be assuming financial control of the city. A team was chosen to review the city's finances and determine whether the appointment of an emergency manager was warranted. Two weeks later, the state's Local Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board (ELB) appointed an emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr. Orr released his first report in mid-May. The results were generally negative regarding Detroit's financial health. The report said that Detroit is "clearly insolvent on a cash flow basis." The report said that Detroit would finish its current budget year with a $162 million cash-flow shortfall and that the projected budget deficit was expected to reach $386 million in less than two months. The report said that costs for retiree benefits were eating up a third of Detroit's budget and that public services were suffering as Detroit's revenues and population shrink each year. The report was not intended to offer a complete blueprint for Orr's plans for fixing the crisis; more details about those plans were expected to emerge within a few months.

After several months of negotiations, Orr was ultimately unable to come to a deal with Detroit's creditors, unions, and pension boards and therefore filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in the Eastern District of Michigan U.S. Bankruptcy Court on July 18, 2013, the largest U.S. city ever to do so, with outstanding financial obligations to more than 100,000 creditors totaling approximately $18.5 billion. On December 10, 2014, Detroit successfully exited bankruptcy.

By the late 2010s, many observers, including The New York Times began[citation needed ] pointing to an economic and cultural resurgence of Detroit. This resurgence was primarily due to private and public investment that served to revitalize the city's social and economic dynamics. Through a combination of reinvestment and revamped social policies Detroit has achieved a renewed sense of interest and serves as a model for other areas to learn how to re-energize their urban centers.

Evidence of Detroit's resurgence is most readily found in the Midtown Area and the Central Business District, which have attracted a number of high-profile investors. Most notably, Dan Gilbert has heavily invested in the acquisition and revitalization of a number of historic buildings in the Downtown area. A primary focus of private real estate investment has been to position Detroit's Central Business District as an attractive site for the investment of technology companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.[citation needed ] Approaches to the private investment of Midtown, however, have prioritized re-establishing Midtown as the cultural and commercial center of the city. Midtown Cultural Connection's DIA Plaza Project, for instance, aims to unify the city's cultural district-which includes the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Public Library, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and several other institutions-by constructing a public space that creates a sense of inclusion and harmony with the rest of the city. Public transportation within the Downtown area has also been a target for private investors, as evidenced by Quicken Loans' investment in Detroit's QLine railcar, which currently runs a 3.3 miles (5.3 km) track along Woodward Avenue.

Over the past seventy years, the city of Detroit, Michigan has experienced a dramatic reduction in its population and economic wellbeing. This decline has left countless members of the community in economic turmoil, driving many residents to fall behind on taxes and subsequently subject their homes to tax Foreclosure. Due to the overassessment of property values based on outdated appraisals, the property taxes on these homes are massively inflated, perpetuating further property foreclosure and Community displacement. These foreclosed properties are often turned over to a public auction, where many of them are purchased by wealthy investors looking to take advantage of Detroit's housing market.

In 2015, a group of activists started a Community land trust, or CLT, to combat this Housing crisis by providing community controlled Affordable housing while simultaneously promoting economic development. The movement to implement CLTs in Detroit began with several meetings held by the Building Movement Project. Detroit's first CLT was established by a nonprofit organization named Storehouse of Hope. At this time, the organization created a Go Fund Me campaign used to purchase fifteen homes which then became a part of the Community Land Trust. The CLT works to ensure housing stability and helps residents overcome financial hardship by covering the costs of property taxes, insurance, building repairs and water bills while the residents themselves pay one third of their income in rent to the CLT. Sales caps are also placed on the properties of the CLT in order to maintain affordability for generations of future buyers.

Most of the skepticism surrounding CLTs is rooted in their reliance on external funding. As CLT organizations grow and their boards become more professionalized, they are often distanced from their original ideals of community-based land control which the organizations were founded upon. The majority of CLTs are not built upon economically self-sustaining models, so they are forced to compete for external funding. This takes away the autonomy of the CLT, as all of the power is transferred into the hands of grant funding organizations and private foundations. Some believe that this problem could be avoided if CLTs could somehow source their funding from investors within the community or from funders who share their ideals of community empowerment.

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The city of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan, has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population of the city has fallen from a high of 1,850,000 in 1950 to 680,000 in 2015, removing it from the top 20 of US cities by population for the first time since 1850.

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the 8 most abandoned neighborhoods in Detroit.

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the 8 most abandoned neighborhoods in Detroit.

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Eight neighborhoods in Detroit have been so ravaged by crime, foreclosures, fires and scrappers that more than a third of the homes and businesses are abandoned, according to recently released findings from an unprecedented survey of every Detroit parcel.

Many of the areas have been consumed by thick brush, collapsing houses and discarded tires.

A quarter of the city's houses and buildings are vacant, according to the survey led by the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force and Motor City Mapping. Below is a ranking of neighborhoods with the highest percentage of vacant homes and buildings.

8. Brightmoor

% of unoccupied buildings: 34.2%
# of unoccupied buildings: 1,636

In the 1920s, Brightmoor was a neighborhood of modest homes for working-class immigrants and southerners who came to Detroit for auto jobs. But residential flight over the past five decades has turned some of the neighborhood into an urban prairie, making it an ideal location for small farms. The area, however, is rife with violent crime.

% of unoccupied buildings: 34.4%
# of unoccupied buildings: 2,377

Large swaths of this neighborhood are vacant and burned out, with deteriorating commercial strips along E. 7 Mile and a section of Hayes. Dominated by modest houses built in the 1920s and '30s, the east-side neighborhood was predominately white until the 1980s. It is now the youngest neighborhood in Detroit, with 25% of its population under the age of 18, according to the 2010 census.

6. Ravendale

% of unoccupied buildings: 35.5%
# of unoccupied buildings: 2,512

Bordering a blighted stretch of Gratiot to the west, this neighborhood has a lot of bungalows and other middle-income homes built primarily in the 1920s. The abandonment changes drastically by the block, with some streets lined with empty lots and crumbling houses. East Outer Drive has managed to remain relatively occupied.

5. State Fair

% of unoccupied buildings: 35.6%
# of unoccupied buildings: 933

Just south of the old Michigan State Fairgrounds, this small neighborhood sprang up in the late 1910s and early 1920s and is bordered by 8 Mile to the north and Woodward to the west. It has a variety of single family homes. The vast empty lots have made this a prime spot for dumping.

abandoned, blight, Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, homes, motor city mapping, Real estate, Vacant

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Up close: 8 most abandoned neighborhoods in Detroit

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Eight neighborhoods in Detroit have been so ravaged by crime, foreclosures, fires and scrappers that more than a third of the homes and businesses are abandoned, according to recently released findings from an unprecedented survey of every Detroit parcel. Many of the areas have been consumed by thick brush, collapsing houses and discarded tires.

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 Detroit has around 30,000 abandoned houses!

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 Detroit has around 30,000 abandoned houses!

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Topic : Abandonment of houses in Detroit 

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Topic : Abandonment of houses in Detroit 

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Things Taxes are supposed to fund but doesn’t. 

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Things Taxes are supposed to fund but doesn’t. 

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Least equitable situations happening in detroit

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Least equitable situations happening in detroit

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Detroit Future City released The State of Economic Equity in Detroit, outlining disparities and systemic inequality that persists in Detroit and the region. The report focuses on six key areas:

Income and wealth building

Access to quality employment

Business and entrepreneurship

Education

Health

Neighborhoods and housing

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Cost of Living Table for Detroit v.s Michigan v.s America

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Cost of Living Table for Detroit v.s Michigan v.s America

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Income demographics by Age, Gender and poverty

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Income demographics by Age, Gender and poverty

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Please note that the ACS 3-year estimates have been discontinued.

The highest paying industries in Detroit, MI, by median earnings, are .

The closest comparable data for the census place of Detroit, MI is from the county of Wayne County, MI.

Medicare enrollees between the ages of 65 and 75 that have had treatment related to their diabetes and been categorized with the racial labels, either Black or non-Black, from the Dartmouth Atlas. The closest comparable data for the census place of Detroit, MI is from the county of Wayne County, MI.

In 2014, the Medicare enrollees in Wayne County, MI between the ages of 65 and 75 had 13,479 eye exams, 18,464 hemoglobin tests, and 16,638 lipid tests as part of their diabetes care. Here is a breakdown of each test by race as a percentage of enrollees with diabetes.
Dataset: Source:

Female Medicare enrollees between the ages of 67 and 69 that have been classified with the racial labels, either Black or non-Black, from the Dartmouth Atlas. The closest comparable data for the census place of Detroit, MI is from the county of Wayne County, MI.

In 2014, out of the 12,672 women in 7,434 had mammograms. This chart looks at the change in percentage of Black and non-Black Medicare enrollees who had mammograms from Wayne County, MI between the ages of 67 and 69 enrolled in medicare, 2010 to 2014.
Dataset: Source:

In 2015, the most common concentation for Bachelor's Degree recipients in Detroit, MI was 511 graduates. Registered Nursing with

When compared to other census places , Detroit, MI has a relatively high number of students obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Science. In 2015, there were 12 graduates, which is approximately 2.44 times more than would be expected based on the national percentage of students who graduate with a Environmental Science degree.

This visualization illustrates the percentage of students graduating with a Bachelor's Degree from schools in Detroit, MI according to their major.
Dataset: Source:

Largest Universities by Graduates

In 2015, the Detroit, MI institution with the largest number of graduating students was Wayne State University with 6,299 graduates.

Most students in Detroit, MI are graduating from Public, 4-year or above institutions. Here is the breakdown of tuitition costs by sector for both in-state and out-of-state tuition:
Dataset: Source:

In 2016, the median property value in Detroit, MI grew to $43,500 from the previous year's value of $42,600.

The following charts display, first, the property values in Detroit, MI compared to other geographies and, second, owner-occupied housing units distributed between a series of property value buckets compared to the national averages for each bucket. In Detroit, MI the largest share of households have a property value in the $40k-$50k range.
Dataset: Source:

Using averages, employees in Detroit, MI have a approximately equal commute time (25.3 minutes) than the normal US worker (25.3 minutes). Additionally, 2.68% of the workforce in Detroit, MI have "super commutes" in excess of 90 minutes.

The chart below shows the average travel time in Detroit, MI compared to its parent geographies.
Dataset: Source:

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Detroit, MI has a population of 672,829 people with a median age of 34 and a median household income of $28,099. Between 2015 and 2016 the population of Detroit, MI declined from 677,124 to 672,829, a 0.63% decrease and its median household income grew from $25,980 to $28,099, a 8.16% increase.

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https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/MI/Detroit-Demographics.html

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https://www.incomebyzipcode.com/michigan

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10 Richest Michigan Zip Codes

per the most current (2020) Census data with at least 500 people and a reasonable margin of error

To identify the richest zip codes in Michigan, we downloaded the most current income data from the US Census Bureau, excluded zips with fewer than 500 people, excluded the zips with margins of error greater than 50% of the income estimate and sorted by mean income. Click on the links above in the chart to see more income statistics for these wealthy Michigan zips codes or learn more about the highest income zip codes in the US.

Michigan Income Statistics

The following data are the most current income statistics for Michigan from the US Census Bureau, are in 2020 inflation adjusted dollars and are from the American Community Survey 2020 5-year estimates.

Median Household Income: $59,234.

Average Household Income: $80,803.

Per Capita Income: $32,854.

5.7% of Households in Michigan are High Income Households that make over $200,000 a year.

Median Household Income in Michigan by Age of Householder

About the Data

Sources & Margins of Error

All income statistics for Michigan are the most current, comparable income statistics available from the US Census Bureau and are from the American Community Survey 2020 5-year estimates. These values are in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars and were downloaded on 17 March 2022.

The following data tables were used:

B19001 Household Income in the Past 12 Months (in 2020 inflation adjusted dollars)

B19013 Median Household Income in the Past 12 months (in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars)

B19301 Per Capita Income in the Past 12 months (in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars)

S1902 Mean Income in the Past 12 months (in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars)

B19049 Median Household Income In The Past 12 Months (in 2020 Inflation-adjusted dollars) By Age Of Householder

Margins of error for the income data for Michigan

Median Household Income: +/-$218

Average Household Income: +/-$312

Per Capital Income: +/-$142

High Income Households: +/-0.1%

Median Household Income: Householders under 25: +/-637

Median Household Income: Householders 25 to 44: +/-509

Median Household Income: Householders 45 to 64: +/-395

Median Household Income: Householders 65+: +/-307

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Income Statistics for Michigan Zip Codes

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per the most current (2020) Census data with at least 500 people and a reasonable margin of error To identify the richest zip codes in Michigan, we downloaded the most current income data from the US Census Bureau, excluded zips with fewer than 500 people, excluded the zips with margins of error greater than 50% of the income estimate and sorted by mean income.

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https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/

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Barely 10 years past the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the U.S. economy is doing well on several fronts. The labor market is on a job-creating streak that has rung up more than 110 months straight of employment growth, a record for the post-World War II era. The unemployment rate in November 2019 was 3.5%, a level not seen since the 1960s. Gains on the jobs front are also reflected in household incomes, which have rebounded in recent years.

But not all economic indicators appear promising. Household incomes have grown only modestly in this century, and household wealth has not returned to its pre-recession level. Economic inequality, whether measured through the gaps in income or wealth between richer and poorer households, continues to widen.

Household incomes are growing again after a lengthy period of stagnation

With periodic interruptions due to business cycle peaks and troughs, the incomes of American households overall have trended up since 1970. In 2018, the median income of U.S. households stood at $74,600. This was 49% higher than its level in 1970, when the median income was $50,200. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

But the overall trend masks two distinct episodes in the evolution of household incomes (the first lasting from 1970 to 2000 and the second from 2000 to 2018) and in how the gains were distributed.

Most of the increase in household income was achieved in the period from 1970 to 2000. In these three decades, the median income increased by 41%, to $70,800, at an annual average rate of 1.2%. From 2000 to 2018, the growth in household income slowed to an annual average rate of only 0.3%. If there had been no such slowdown and incomes had continued to increase in this century at the same rate as from 1970 to 2000, the current median U.S. household income would be about $87,000, considerably higher than its actual level of $74,600.

The shortfall in household income is attributable in part to two recessions since 2000. The first recession, lasting from March 2001 to November 2001, was relatively short-lived. Yet household incomes were slow to recover from the 2001 recession and it was not until 2007 that the median income was restored to about its level in 2000.

But 2007 also marked the onset of the Great Recession, and that delivered another blow to household incomes. This time it took until 2015 for incomes to approach their pre-recession level. Indeed, the median household income in 2015 - $70,200 - was no higher than its level in 2000, marking a 15-year period of stagnation, an episode of unprecedented duration in the past five decades.

More recent trends in household income suggest that the effects of the Great Recession may finally be in the past. From 2015 to 2018, the median U.S. household income increased from $70,200 to $74,600, at an annual average rate of 2.1%. This is substantially greater than the average rate of growth from 1970 to 2000 and more in line with the economic expansion in the 1980s and the dot-com bubble era of the late 1990s.

Upper-income households have seen more rapid growth in income in recent decades

The growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households. At the same time, the U.S. middle class, which once comprised the clear majority of Americans, is shrinking. Thus, a greater share of the nation's aggregate income is now going to upper-income households and the share going to middle- and lower-income households is falling.

The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. This downsizing has proceeded slowly but surely since 1971, with each decade thereafter typically ending with a smaller share of adults living in middle-income households than at the beginning of the decade.

The decline in the middle-class share is not a total sign of regression. From 1971 to 2019, the share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 14% to 20%. Meanwhile, the share in the lower-income tier increased from 25% to 29%. On balance, there was more movement up the income ladder than down the income ladder.

But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%. This was considerably less than the 64% increase for upper-income households, whose median income increased from $126,100 in 1970 to $207,400 in 2018. Households in the lower-income tier experienced a gain of 43%, from $20,000 in 1970 to $28,700 in 2018. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

More tepid growth in the income of middle-class households and the reduction in the share of households in the middle-income tier led to a steep fall in the share of U.S. aggregate income held by the middle class. From 1970 to 2018, the share of aggregate income going to middle-class households fell from 62% to 43%. Over the same period, the share held by upper-income households increased from 29% to 48%. The share flowing to lower-income households inched down from 10% in 1970 to 9% in 2018.

These trends in income reflect the growth in economic inequality overall in the U.S. in the decades since 1980.

Income growth has been most rapid for the top 5% of families

Even among higher-income families, the growth in income has favored those at the top. Since 1980, incomes have increased faster for the most affluent families - those in the top 5% - than for families in the income strata below them. This disparity in outcomes is less pronounced in the wake of the Great Recession but shows no signs of reversing.

From 1981 to 1990, the change in mean family income ranged from a loss of 0.1% annually for families in the lowest quintile (the bottom 20% of earners) to a gain of 2.1% annually for families in the highest quintile (the top 20%). The top 5% of families, who are part of the highest quintile, fared even better - their income increased at the rate of 3.2% annually from 1981 to 1990. Thus, the 1980s marked the beginning of a long and steady rise in income inequality.

A similar pattern prevailed in the 1990s, with even sharper growth in income at the top. From 1991 to 2000, the mean income of the top 5% of families grew at an annual average rate of 4.1%, compared with 2.7% for families in the highest quintile overall, and about 1% or barely more for other families.

The period from 2001 to 2010 is unique in the post-WWII era. Families in all strata experienced a loss in income in this decade, with those in the poorer strata experiencing more pronounced losses. The pattern in income growth from 2011 to 2018 is more balanced than the previous three decades, with gains more broadly shared across poorer and better-off families. Nonetheless, income growth remains tilted to the top, with families in the top 5% experiencing greater gains than other families since 2011.

The wealth of American families is currently no higher than its level two decades ago

Other than income, the wealth of a family is a key indicator of its financial security. Wealth, or net worth, is the value of assets owned by a family, such as a home or a savings account, minus outstanding debt, such as a mortgage or student loan. Accumulated over time, wealth is a source of retirement income, protects against short-term economic shocks, and provides security and social status for future generations.

The period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s was beneficial for the wealth portfolios of American families overall. Housing prices more than doubled in this period, and stock values tripled. As a result, the median net worth of American families climbed from $94,700 in 1995 to $146,600 in 2007, a gain of 55%. (Figures are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

But the run up in housing prices proved to be a bubble that burst in 2006. Home prices plunged starting in 2006, triggering the Great Recession in 2007 and dragging stock prices into a steep fall as well. Consequently, the median net worth of families fell to $87,800 by 2013, a loss of 40% from the peak in 2007. As of 2016, the latest year for which data are available, the typical American family had a net worth of $101,800, still less than what it held in 1998.

The wealth divide among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharp and rising

The wealth gap among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharper than the income gap and is growing more rapidly.

The period from 1983 to 2001 was relatively prosperous for families in all income tiers, but one of rising inequality. The median wealth of middle-income families increased from $102,000 in 1983 to $144,600 in 2001, a gain of 42%. The net worth of lower-income families increased from $12,3oo in 1983 to $20,600 in 2001, up 67%. Even so, the gains for both lower- and middle-income families were outdistanced by upper-income families, whose median wealth increased by 85% over the same period, from $344,100 in 1983 to $636,000 in 2001. (Figures are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

The wealth gap between upper-income and lower- and middle-income families has grown wider this century. Upper-income families were the only income tier able to build on their wealth from 2001 to 2016, adding 33% at the median. On the other hand, middle-income families saw their median net worth shrink by 20% and lower-income families experienced a loss of 45%. As of 2016, upper-income families had 7.4 times as much wealth as middle-income families and 75 times as much wealth as lower-income families. These ratios are up from 3.4 and 28 in 1983, respectively.

The reason for this is that middle-income families are more dependent on home equity as a source of wealth than upper-income families, and the bursting of the housing bubble in 2006 had more of an impact on their net worth. Upper-income families, who derive a larger share of their wealth from financial market assets and business equity, were in a better position to benefit from a relatively quick recovery in the stock market once the recession ended.

As with the distribution of aggregate income, the share of U.S. aggregate wealth held by upper-income families is on the rise. From 1983 to 2016, the share of aggregate wealth going to upper-income families increased from 60% to 79%. Meanwhile, the share held by middle-income families has been cut nearly in half, falling from 32% to 17%. Lower-income families had only 4% of aggregate wealth in 2016, down from 7% in 1983.

The richest are getting richer faster

The richest families in the U.S. have experienced greater gains in wealth than other families in recent decades, a trend that reinforces the growing concentration of financial resources at the top.

The tilt to the top was most acute in the period from 1998 to 2007. In that period, the median net worth of the richest 5% of U.S. families increased from $2.5 million to $4.6 million, a gain of 88%.

This was nearly double the 45% increase in the wealth of the top 20% of families overall, a group that includes the richest 5%. Meanwhile, the net worth of families in the second quintile, one tier above the poorest 20%, increased by only 16%, from $27,700 in 1998 to $32,100 in 2007. (Figures are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

The wealthiest families are also the only ones to have experienced gains in wealth in the years after the start of the Great Recession in 2007. From 2007 to 2016, the median net worth of the richest 20% increased 13%, to $1.2 million. For the top 5%, it increased by 4%, to $4.8 million. In contrast, the net worth of families in lower tiers of wealth decreased by at least 20% from 2007 to 2016. The greatest loss - 39% - was experienced by the families in the second quintile of wealth, whose wealth fell from $32,100 in 2007 to $19,500 in 2016.

As a result, the wealth gap between America's richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016. In 1989, the richest 5% of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second quintile, $2.3 million compared with $20,300. By 2016, this ratio had increased to 248, a much sharper rise than the widening gap in income.

Income inequality in the U.S has increased since 1980 and is greater than in peer countries

Income inequality may be measured in a number of ways, but no matter the measure, economic inequality in the U.S. is seen to be on the rise.

One widely used measure - the 90/10 ratio - takes the ratio of the income needed to rank among the top 10% of earners in the U.S. (the 90th percentile) to the income at the threshold of the bottom 10% of earners (the 10th percentile). In 1980, the 90/10 ratio in the U.S. stood at 9.1, meaning that households at the top had incomes about nine times the incomes of households at the bottom. The ratio increased in every decade since 1980, reaching 12.6 in 2018, an increase of 39%.

Not only is income inequality rising in the U.S., it is higher than in other advanced economies. Comparisons of income inequality across countries are often based on the Gini coefficient, another commonly used measure of inequality. Ranging from 0 to 1, or from perfect equality to complete inequality, the Gini coefficient in the U.S. stood at 0.434 in 2017, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This was higher than in any other of the G-7 countries, in which the Gini ranged from 0.326 in France to 0.392 in the UK, and inching closer to the level of inequality observed in India (0.495). More globally, the Gini coefficient of inequality ranges from lows of about 0.25 in Eastern European countries to highs in the range of 0.5 to 0.6 in countries in southern Africa, according to World Bank estimates.

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1. Trends in income and wealth inequality

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Barely 10 years past the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the U.S. economy is doing well on several fronts. The labor market is on a job-creating

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https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/news-release/occupationalemploymentandwages_detroit.htm

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Workers in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area had an average (mean) hourly wage of $27.76 in May 2020, about 3 percent above the nationwide average of $27.07, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Regional Commissioner Jason Palmer noted that, after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were lower than their respective national averages in 11 of the 22 major occupational groups, including legal; computer and mathematical; and life, physical, and social science. Five groups had significantly higher wages than their respective national averages, including construction and extraction, production, and architecture and engineering.

When compared to the nationwide distribution, Detroit area employment was more highly concentrated in 6 of the 22 occupational groups, including production, architecture and engineering, and business and financial operations. Thirteen groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation, including educational instruction and library, construction and extraction, and food preparation and serving related. (See table A.)

One occupational group-production-was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories. Detroit had 170,250 jobs in production, accounting for 9.6 percent of local area employment, significantly higher than the 6.1-percent share nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $21.51, significantly above the national wage of $20.08.

Some of the larger detailed occupations within the production group included miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators (46,960); inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers (14,100); and first-line supervisors of production and operating workers (11,630). Among the higher-paying jobs in this group were power distributors and dispatchers and power plant operators, with mean hourly wages of $47.55 and $40.15, respectively. At the lower end of the wage scale were textile knitting and weaving machine setters, operators, and tenders ($11.04) and pressers, textile, garment, and related materials ($11.62). (Detailed data for the production occupations are presented in table 1; for a complete listing of detailed occupations available go to www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_19820.htm.)

Location quotients allow us to explore the occupational make-up of a metropolitan area by comparing the composition of jobs in an area relative to the national average. (See table 1.) For example, a location quotient of 2.0 indicates that an occupation accounts for twice the share of employment in the area than it does nationally. In the Detroit area, above-average concentrations of employment were found in some of the occupations within the production group. For instance, tool and die makers were employed at 6.0 times the national rate in Detroit, and cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic, at 3.7 times the U.S. average. Printing press operators had a location quotient of 1.0 in Detroit, indicating that this particular occupation's local and national employment shares were similar.

These statistics are from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, a federal-state cooperative program between BLS and State Workforce Agencies, in this case, the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget.

Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Name Change

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program has changed its name to Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) to better reflect the range of data available from the program. Data released on or after March 31, 2021, will reflect the new program name. Webpages, publications, and other materials associated with previous data releases will retain the Occupational Employment Statistics name.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Impact on May 2020 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics

Due to features of the OEWS methodology, the May 2020 OEWS estimates do not fully reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The May 2020 OEWS estimates are based on survey panels collected for May 2020, November 2019, May 2019, November 2018, May 2018, and November 2017. Because 5 of the 6 survey panels used to produce the estimates date from before the COVID-19 pandemic, only the most recent (May 2020) survey panel reflects changes in occupational proportions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The May 2020 OEWS employment estimates are benchmarked to the average of May 2020 and November 2019 employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). Although the May 2020 QCEW data reflect the early employment effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the November 2019 QCEW employment data precede the pandemic, and therefore do not reflect its impact.

In addition, as a result of the pandemic, response rates for the November 2019 and May 2020 panels were lower in some areas. Lower response rates may negatively affect data availability and data quality. More information is available at www.bls.gov/covid19/effects-of-covid-19-pandemic-on-occupational-employment-and-wage-statistics.htm.

Implementing the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System

With the May 2019 estimates, the OEWS program began implementing the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. Because the May 2019 and May 2020 estimates are based on a combination of survey data collected using the 2010 SOC and survey data collected using the 2018 SOC, these estimates use a hybrid of the two classification systems that contains some combinations of occupations that are not found in either the 2010 or 2018 SOC. This is the second and final year that the hybrid occupational structure will be used. The May 2021 estimates, to be published in Spring 2022, will be the first OEWS estimates based entirely on survey data collected using the 2018 SOC. For more information on the occupational classification system used in the May 2019 and May 2020 estimates, please see www.bls.gov/oes/soc_2018.htm and www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#qf10.

Upcoming Changes to the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Methodology

With the May 2021 estimates, to be released in Spring 2022, the OEWS program plans to begin using a new estimation methodology. The new model-based methodology, called MB3, has advantages over the existing methodology, as described in the Monthly Labor Review article at www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2019/article/model-based-estimates-for-the-occupational-employment-statistics-program.htm. OEWS estimates for the years 2015-2018 were recalculated using the new estimation methodology and are available as research estimates at www.bls.gov/oes/oes-mb3-methods.htm.

The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey is a semiannual survey measuring occupational employment and wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments in the United States. The OEWS data available from BLS include cross-industry occupational employment and wage estimates for the nation; over 580 areas, including states and the District of Columbia, metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), nonmetropolitan areas, and territories; national industry-specific estimates at the NAICS sector, 3-digit, most 4-digit, and selected 5- and 6-digit industry levels, and national estimates by ownership across all industries and for schools and hospitals. OEWS data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.

The OEWS survey is a cooperative effort between BLS and the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs). BLS funds the survey and provides the procedures and technical support, while the State Workforce Agencies collect most of the data. OEWS estimates are constructed from a sample of about 1.1 million establishments. Each year, two semiannual panels of approximately 180,000 to 185,000 sampled establishments are contacted, one panel in May and the other in November. Responses are obtained by mail, Internet or other electronic means, email, telephone, or personal visit. The May 2020 estimates are based on responses from six semiannual panels collected over a 3-year period: May 2020, November 2019, May 2019, November 2018, May 2018, and November 2017. The unweighted sample employment of 83 million across all six semiannual panels represents approximately 56 percent of total national employment. The overall national response rate for the six panels, based on the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is 69 percent based on establishments and 66 percent based on weighted sampled employment. The sample in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area included 7,022 establishments with a response rate of 71 percent. For more information about OEWS concepts and methodology, go to www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_tec.htm.

A value that is statistically different from another does not necessarily mean that the difference has economic or practical significance. Statistical significance is concerned with the ability to make confident statements about a universe based on a sample. It is entirely possible that a large difference between two values is not significantly different statistically, while a small difference is, since both the size and heterogeneity of the sample affect the relative error of the data being tested.
Metropolitan area definitions
The substate area data published in this release reflect the standards and definitions established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

The Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area includes Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, and Wayne Counties.
For more information
Answers to frequently asked questions about the OEWS data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm. Detailed information about the OEWS program is available at www.bls.gov/oes/oes_doc.htm.

Information in this release will be made available to individuals with sensory impairments upon request. Voice phone: (202) 691-5200; Federal Relay Service: (800) 877-8339.

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Occupational Employment and Wages in Detroit-Warren-Dearborn - May 2020

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Workers in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area had an average (mean) hourly wage of $27.76 in May 2020, about 3 percent above the nationwide average of $27.07, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

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1. South Dakota | 9.9%
2. Texas | 7.5%
3. Utah | 7.1%
4. Connecticut | 7.0%
5. Tennessee | 6.7%
6. Nebraska | 6.3%
7. Iowa | 6.3%
8. Delaware | 5.8%
9. Alaska | 5.8%
10. Mississippi | 5.6%
11. Missouri | 5.6%
12. North Dakota | 5.4%
13. Idaho | 5.4%
14. Arkansas | 5.1%
15. Indiana | 5.0%
16. Ohio | 5.0%
17. Alabama | 5.0%
18. New Jersey | 4.8%
19. North Carolina | 4.8%
20. Massachusetts | 4.7%
21. Georgia | 4.7%
22. Virginia | 4.7%
23. Minnesota | 4.7%
24. Colorado | 4.5%
25. South Carolina | 4.4%
26. Arizona | 4.3%
27. Kentucky | 4.3%
28. Nevada | 4.2%
29. Kansas | 4.0%
30. California | 3.8%
31. Wyoming | 3.8%
32. New Hampshire | 3.8%
33. Pennsylvania | 3.7%
34. New York | 3.7%
35. Vermont | 3.7%
36. Maryland | 3.6%
37. Montana | 3.6%
38. Oklahoma | 3.5%
39. Illinois | 3.5%
40. West Virginia | 3.4%
41. Louisiana | 3.0%
42. Florida | 3.1%
43. Maine | 2.8%
44. Wisconsin | 2.8%
45. Oregon | 2.7%
46. Rhode Island | 2.6%
47. New Mexico | 2.5%
48. Hawaii | 2.1%
49. Washington | 1.8%
50. Michigan | 1.7%

US Economic Growth by States [Report 2022] (usabynumbers.com)

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US Economic Growth by States [Report 2022]

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Do you know the fastest growing state of America? Check out the data of economic growth by states.

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https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2021/12/02/michigan-minimum-wage-to-increase-slightly-in-2022-still-below-livable-wage/?outputType=amp

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Employees making minimum wage in Michigan will get a slight raise in 2022.

Michigan's minimum wage rate will increase to $9.87 on January 1, 2022, an increase from the current $9.65. Michigan's Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act of 2018 establishes the annual schedule and increases.

The Michigan Wage & Hour Division announced that while the law does prohibit scheduled increases when the state's annual average unemployment rate for the preceding calendar year is above 8.5%, it is highly unlikely Michigan will exceed this threshold causing another delay as occurred in 2021.
Related: Claim your cash: Check Michigan's unclaimed property database, you could have money waiting
Effective January 1, 2022:

Michigan's minimum wage will increase to $9.87 an hour.

The 85% rate for minors aged 16 and 17 increases to $8.39 an hour.

Tipped employees rates of pay increases to $3.75 an hour.

The training wage of $4.25 an hour for newly hired employees ages 16 to 19 for their first 90 days of employment remains unchanged.

More: Should minimum wage increase? A look at key data points
The $9.87 wage remains below what is considered a livable wage in Michigan, according to MIT's Living Wage calculator, which estimates an adult without children needs to make at least $13.63 per hour to support themselves. That numbers goes up to $31.15 for an adult with one child.

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Michigan minimum wage increases slightly, still below livable wage

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Employees making minimum wage in Michigan will get a slight raise in 2022. Michigan's minimum wage rate will increase to $9.87 on January 1, 2022, an increase from the current $9.65. Michigan's Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act of 2018 establishes the annual schedule and increases.

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What is occurring to make equitable economic growth a bad thing to citizens in Detroit?

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https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/detroit-mi-population

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Detroit, the most populous city in Michigan and the Metro Detroit area, serves as a vital port connecting the Great Lakes to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Detroit is also known as the traditional automotive center of the world, and its name is synonymous for the US auto industry, as well as its musical legacies, which have earned it the nicknames Motor City and Motown. Detroit's population in 2000 was 951,270, which dropped to only 713,777 by 2010.

Detroit's population has been declining for more than 60 years, and its 2016 estimated population of 677,116 represents a 0.94% decrease from its 2010 population. The urban area of Detroit is home to an estimated 3.7 million, while its metropolitan area has a population of 4.275 million. The Combined Statistical Area has a population of 5.2 million.

In 1950, Detroit was the 4th largest city in the country, but its population has been in decline for the past 60 years with the second largest population decline in the country (second only to St. Louis).

Because of this decline, Detroit now has a large number of abandoned buildings and homes and the area is dealing with urban decay.

Detroit's Decline

Detroit has been going through an economic decline for many years, in part due to urban decay, in which young, educated people move away from the city for better options. Other causes of Detroit's decline include segregation, politics, and of course, the collapse of the auto industry, which the city has relied on for many years.

Between 1947 and 1963, the city lost over 140,000 manufacturing jobs. In the next decade, Japanese car imports took up a greater share of the United States market, which took even more jobs from the region. Unfortunately, Detroit became dependent on a single industry -- automobiles -- and the city's population dropped by over 40% from 1970 to 2006.

Between 2000 and 2010, Detroit's population fell an astounding 25%, dropping the city from the 10th largest city in the country to the 18th. In 2010, Detroit's population was 713,000, a 60% decrease from its peak population of 1.8 million in 1950.

Detroit is an extreme case of what has affected other major, old industrial cities in the country. As the industrial cities in the United States declined, only Detroit hit rock bottom with $20 billion in unpaid bills in 2013 that led to the single largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

Detroit Diversity

Along with its population problem, Detroit also has a demographics problem with a wide age distribution. 31.1% of its population is under 18, 9.7% are 18-24, 29.5% are 25-44, 19.3% are 45-64 and 10.4% are 65 or older. The median age in Detroit is 31, and for every 100 females aged 18, there are 83 males.

Detroit is also one of the poorest major cities in the United States, and poverty is a real problem. The median household income dropped from $29,526 in 2000 to $26,098 in 2009. A year later, it had fallen further to $25,787. nIn In 2010, the mean income is below the US average by thousands. 1 in 3 residents in the city are in poverty.

Oakland County, a part of Metro Detroit, was once one of the wealthiest counties in the US, but it is no longer in the top 25.

In 1940, non-Hispanic whites accounted for 90.4% of Detroit's population, but there has been a significant shift in its population to the suburbs since the 1950s. In 1910, only 6,000 black people lived in the city, which grew to 120,000 by 1930.

Detroit is still one of the most racially segregated cities in the country. While black people moved to Detroit from the 40s through the 70s to escape Jim Crow laws elsewhere, they encountered exclusion from white areas, sometimes through economic discrimination or even violence. The traditional boundary between white and black regions of the city is Eight Mile Road.

Blacks and African Americans makeup only 13% of the state's population as a whole but account for 82% of Detroit's population.

Detroit Population Growth

Detroit's population decline is expected to continue for some time. The city owes creditors $18 billion, and its bankruptcy case was approved in 2014. As of 2016, the future for the city remains unknown.

Even if Detroit comes up with a feasible plan, it doesn't answer the question of what will happen in the future. Detroit's revenues do not match its expenses, and it's dealing with a rapidly declining population, and thus lower tax revenues.

According to the US Census Bureau, Detroit's population decline is finally slowing, which means its 25% drop over the last ten years may have bottomed out. This doesn't say the slump is over, however, or that the city is rebounding.

It's currently estimated that Detroit's population will fall to just 610,000 people by 2030, down from 2013's 701,475. Demographer Kurt Metzger, however, adds that he believes the population will as low as 600,000 before stabilizing.

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Detroit, the most populous city in Michigan and the Metro Detroit area, serves as a vital port connecting the Great Lakes to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Detroit is also known as the traditional automotive center of the world, and its name is synonymous for the US auto industry, as well as its musical legacies, which have earned it the nicknames Motor City and Motown.

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Detroit's Peak Population during 1950 Census before white flight to the suburbs after WW2

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Detroit's Peak Population during 1950 Census before white flight to the suburbs after WW2

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It predicts Detroit's average wage rate will rise 4.1% in 2022, 3.6% in 2023 and about 3% annually from 2024-26 — faster growth than Michigan overall.

https://amp.detroitnews.com/amp/6846017001

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There are 358,145 housing units in Detroit, and the median year in which these properties were built is 1947. Of the 270,446 occupied housing units in Detroit, 47.6% are owner-occupied, while 52.4% have renters living in them.
Meanwhile, properties bought with mortgages account for 32.73% of the units, and the median value of a home with a mortgage is $69,300. In general, housing costs reach $734 per month in Detroit.

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Detroit, MI Household Income, Population & Demographics | Point2

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https://detroitmi.gov/document/february-2022-revenue-estimating-conference-detroit-forecast-update-0

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U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Detroit city, Michigan

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Frequently requested statistics for: Detroit city, Michigan

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Source: https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mde/2020/10/13/2020-21_Foundation_Amounts.pdf?rev=ead630b22fbc40228dffe00f8467fa95

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Detroit Demographic Info 2010/2020 Census

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Detroit Demographic Info 2010/2020 Census