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Shameless | 'Gentrification' Official Clip ft. William H. Macy | Season 5 Episode 2

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They say it starts when white people with money begin moving into a black neighborhood that's seen better days.

Developers gamble that the area will soon be desirable, and they start buying old houses, rehabbing them and then charging high rents or selling the homes for more than anyone in the area can afford. Then everyone's rent goes up, and the property taxes go up, and eventually the longtime residents who can't afford to stay are dispersed as the newcomers reclaim the neighborhoods their parents and grandparents once fled.

Some people call this paranoia. But for many Detroiters, when this discussion's usual social niceties and coded language are put aside, this is what gentrification amounts to.

"I call it a 'tsunami' coming," said Toyia Watts, the 65-year-old president of the Charlevoix Village Association, a neighborhood organization on Detroit's east side. "The tsunami is coming. It's half here, but it just ain't flowed all the way through yet. And beware and don't be surprised when the boogie man knocks at your door, 'cause boogie man is here."

This past winter, years of mutual suspicion, economic resentment and racial tensions came to be embodied in a battle over a little row house in the city's Islandview neighborhood that was slated for redevelopment.

Ever since Detroit's fortunes began to change after years of decline, there's been a persistent narrative that contrasts the revival of downtown and Midtown with the neighborhoods. It's a split often cast as New Detroit versus Old Detroit, the favored against the forgotten; a fight between the privileged and the poor, who wind up outnumbered in their neighborhoods by outsiders who drive them out.

That's why this small neighborhood association came to an obscure city government meeting on a cold weekday morning in January for what they assumed was a doomed effort to protest a tax break requested by the developer of that little row house. It might be just one small building, they say. But this is how it starts.

"They think the more they move the white people in here, the more they're going to push us out," said Daisy Jackson, 65, who lives down the street from the building. "But they got a fight on their hands with Charlevoix Village and Islandview. They got a fight on their hands 'cause they're going to have to drag us out of here, 'cause we gonna fight 'til the end, tongue and teeth. They ain't gonna separate us from this neighborhood."

This was supposed to be easy.

A small, abandoned apartment building on the corner of Kercheval and Field Street was slated for renovation by a New York developer called Astral Weeks, named for a Van Morrison album that was poorly received at first but later came to be considered a gem. The plan was to invest $2.46 million in renovating the structure, bringing eight, three-bedroom townhouses to the neighborhood, with rents starting at about $1,300 per month. Work on the building had already begun.

All the developer wanted, he told the Detroit City Council's Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee at its Jan. 23 meeting, was a brownfield TIF, or tax increment financing, worth $276,897. In other words, an eventual refund of some of the property taxes they'd be paying over several decades.

"This is a project that we're really barely scraping together, a funding package to little more than break even on," said Adam Schloff, the 35-year-old director of development for Astral Weeks, which has a history of rehabs like this in Brooklyn and Detroit. "This is not an easy project from a financial standpoint, but we acquired it and we feel it's the right thing to do to complete it for the long-term benefit of the community."

Before this, Astral Weeks held a community meeting at a local coffee shop, got the blessing of a prominent neighborhood pastor, worked with the local community development corporation and jumped through many of the city's bureaucratic hoops. It seemed like it had covered all its bases.

Although not required for such a small project, the developer promised to make two of the eight townhouses "affordable" at 80% of AMI, or area median income; promised to hire Detroiters for most of the construction jobs; pledged to put a Detroiter in charge of managing the building.

Without the tax reimbursement, Schloff told the committee, the project would actually lose money and could be in jeopardy. Several city officials came to the podium to support his request.

Since 1996, the Detroit Brownfield Authority has approved more than 200 brownfield projects, dozens of which include tax increment financing like the developer was asking for. Most had sailed through with barely a whisper of discontent. Proponents say they're necessary to get developers to build in risky areas with prospects of low returns.

But in a city with more than 600 block clubs and associations, the developer had the misfortune of buying a building in the territory of one of Detroit's most activist neighborhood groups.

"Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this item?" asked Councilman James Tate.

One by one, members of the CVA rose to speak. They said giving this project a tax break was insulting. They said they'd read that a Detroit News investigation found that the city had overtaxed residents on their property by $600 million since the Great Recession, contributing to nearly 140,000 homes being lost to mortgage and tax foreclosures in the aftermath. So far, the city had not offered any relief for that. And here was some wealthy New York developer asking for a tax break in their neighborhood of overtaxed homes. It was not good optics.

The CVA demanded a community benefits agreement, lower-cost housing at less than half the rent being offered, home repair grants for current residents and the outright denial of the TIF request. They brought data, graphs, charts and a petition signed by 100 residents of the neighborhood protesting the development.

"The residents have been very clear: They don't want this project," said Allison Lasky, 35, a CVA volunteer. "They don't see benefits for them. There's no affordability."

"When you give these incentives, we are investors in these projects, and just like these other investors who want to see a return, we want to see a return as well," said Tristan Taylor, 36, a CVA volunteer.

"This represents an investment of community money into the project, but we have been burned many times by developers making promises about what they will do for the community ... in exchange for tax incentives," said Brian Silverstein, 33, another CVA member.

The developer stood by, looking slightly blindsided, as did the city officials gathered behind him. Yes, Schloff admitted, the rents might seem expensive for this neighborhood. But, he suggested, two or three people could rent a home together and split the cost, as they'd done at some of the 50 or so homes in the neighborhood his company had previously invested in.

Few people knew about these 50 homes before he said this. That admission would be seized on by the CVA. It would later come back to haunt him.

"It looks like we have some work to do," Tate said. "I think it's important to make sure there's a relationship with the community, and it sounds like there's some angst that's there. We want to give you time to figure that out, if that's possible, because if it were voted on today, I've got a feeling it would be bounced." The vote was postponed for two weeks. A conversation among all the parties was encouraged.

CVA members were stunned that they'd forced a delay. "That's not what usually happens," said Silverstein. "I was pretty surprised."

The Charlevoix Village Association was founded in the '70s, an outgrowth of older block clubs in the area. The group has fewer than a dozen core members, but they're aggressive in their approach to politics. They've mastered the minutiae of city government, and are regulars at various city meetings and hearings, hammering city officials with their demands. They've barged into closed-door city meetings, insisting on their right to speak. They host monthly community meetings at their neighborhood recreation center, and can agitate residents into showering city officials with letters, phone calls and petitions on various issues.

"We're just a tick on their asses all the time," said Watts, president of CVA since 2000. "They know us very well. I like that part, that they know us. But are we getting anywhere? That's the key. But they can never say we're wrong."

A few years ago, there was an influx of young activists, veterans of other protest movements, who transformed the relatively quiet CVA into a more militant, responsive organization. Now it's a mix of young and old, black and white, known for their fists-in-the-air activism, almost a resurgence of the more radical politics of the early Coleman Young era in Detroit, in contrast to sleepier block clubs around them that are more inclined to block parties and alley cleanups.

"They was a blessing in disguise," Watts said. "I love it, 'cause I wouldn't have got this far if it wasn't for them. I couldn't have put all the paperwork together. With that knowledge and which way to go, who to talk to, when we need to go talk with them, it made a difference. It's like I'm in school, I feel that way when I'm around them, like my young sons are teaching me."

Watts sat in the dining room of the two-story house on Baldwin Street in which she grew up, where she returned 20 years ago to take care of her ailing mother. She remembers when this neighborhood was all white, back when black families weren't allowed to live here, at least until the white residents abandoned it for the suburbs after the unrest of 1967. And now, some people around here believe, those people's kids and grandkids are trying to get the neighborhood back.

The CVA has protested several developments in the neighborhood, from that relatively small row house to a 92-unit apartment complex being built at Van Dyke and Kercheval. No matter the size of the planned project, the issue is always the same.

"Where will Black people and poor people fit into these plans?" the CVA website asks. "Right now, they don't. There is no serious plan on how to deal with poverty and preserve the Black community here. The long term residents have been neglected for years, and we are still being neglected, while wealthy investors and speculators get incentives. There must be space for Black people and other underserved communities in the New Detroit. You can't replace this community with a richer, whiter community."

At first glance, this area isn't an obvious candidate for gentrification. The Islandview neighborhood lies roughly between Mack and Jefferson, and from Mount Elliott to Van Dyke. It's an old neighborhood that's seen few private investments over the past several decades. Some streets are dense with old homes, others are essentially grassy fields interrupted here and there by a house. Some homes are well kept, others are occupied eyesores, and a good number are vacant and boarded-up. There are about 6,500 residents. Average median income was $25,000 according to the 2018 five-year Census estimates.

But based on data from the four Census tracts within Islandview, there's evidence to back up CVA's conviction that gentrification is taking place.

According to 2018 Census estimates, the black population of the neighborhood dropped by 20% since 2010, while the white population's proportion almost tripled, from 6% of the neighborhood in 2010 to nearly 18% now, which reflects not just an influx of roughly 700 white residents but also a loss of more than 1,300 black residents.

"It feels very striking to people who live here," said Silverstein, who owns a home on Fischer Street. "I moved to the neighborhood in 2016, and then the next year shit started changing, and now it's like a tsunami."

The CVA first heard of the row house project last October, when the developer held a meeting seeking the community's blessing at the Commons, a coffee shop and laundromat that opened two years ago in the neighborhood. Of the residents attending, two spoke in favor of the project, five spoke against. Nobody who lives here could possibly afford that rent, opponents said, and that would just draw well-to-do outsiders, and that could lead to displacement as it has all over town. Just ask the former low-income residents of a gentrified area like Midtown, they say. Or those from Corktown. Or the low-income senior renters who used to live downtown in the renovated, high-rise apartments now marketed toward young professionals.

"I think that it's a good idea that it has been salvaged and redone. We definitely need it in the neighborhood," said Jennine Spencer, the 49-year-old president of the Field Street Block Club, about the little row house. "However, I don't think they should exclude the members of the neighborhood with the high rent. What it does is it forces out the people that have been in the neighborhood that want to continue to live here, because the rent is too high. They can't afford it. And then you have to be making a least $50,000 a year to afford that. Nobody in this neighborhood makes that unless you're more of a newcomer."

But in the New Detroit, they say, the deck is already stacked in favor of developers. The only power a little group like CVA has is to disrupt the system enough to get their concerns heard.

"That's why we go after the tax abatements and show up at these public meetings and use the delay tactics, 'cause that actually fucks up these projects," Silverstein said. "It costs them money, it drives them crazy and it's been forcing them to talk with us. People in this area have been asking for development for decades. We just want to make sure that the people who live here are the ones who actually get the benefit of that. But if it's also shooting the rents up without protections for people who are here now, no one that is living here now gets to benefit from those things. It's for the rich people who are coming in afterwards."

By the next committee meeting on Feb. 6, the CVA said their petition had grown to 200 signatures. And now that they knew about the developer's investment in 50 or so house renovations in the neighborhood, they wanted some of those houses set aside for low-income renters, too. Above all, they still wanted the tax incentive denied, even if that meant it might kill the row house project.

"So the neighborhood association is fine having this building vacant for however long it needs to be vacant in the neighborhood?" Councilman Tate asked them. "Do you believe that's the general consensus of the overall community? I know sometimes folks who are the loudest don't necessarily always represent the entire community."

"If it was him using his own money, we wouldn't have an issue," CVA's Taylor replied, referring to the developer. "The fact is they're asking for abatements and benefits. That is the citizens', that's where it comes from, and so that's why they're like, 'We'd rather see it empty than to not see our folks in it, which is the same thing for us.' "

Tate spoke to the developer, who was standing forlornly nearby. "Why would you all want to be in a neighborhood that said they don't want you there?"

Unlike the last meeting, though, the developer had invited supporters to speak in his favor.

"When people say the community is fine with this remaining vacant, that is categorically untrue," said Mac Farr, executive director of the Villages Community Development Corporation. "There is a diversity of opinion on this; and my organization, and our stakeholders and our partners really want to see this project come on line, we want to see it completed and we want to see it occupied, because it has been vacant and blighted for years."

"In your opinion, what do we do about the opinions of those who think we should not approve this?" asked Tate.

"I think they're valid opinions, but the thing is they're just that, they're opinions. I recognize the Charlevoix Village Association as having an important voice in this conversation, the issues that they raise are valid - you know, illegal taxation, displacement, gentrification - these are all things that need to be dealt with. But they're not going to be dealt with by eight townhouses on Kercheval remaining vacant in perpetuity. I mean, we're not going to do anything about illegal taxation with blight on Kercheval. We're not going to do anything about displacement with broken windows just remaining there."

Gordon Hawkins, the owner of a local real estate firm, agreed. "For the past, I don't know, 20 years, this property has been blighted, it's been drug-infested and I can't see anyone in the neighborhood that wants to see this property vacant with that kind of activity there," he said. "So I understand that some people want affordable housing, but I don't think anybody in the neighborhood wants to see this property actually vacant because of tax incentives."

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Eric Criteser, a Field Street resident, echoed them. "Right now, it's the largest single abandoned building on Kercheval Avenue from the Boulevard to St. Jean," he said. "It needs to be fixed or removed, and I'd much rather see it incorporated. It's a beautiful building. it just needs to be maintained and lived in."

The committee gave its approval. The matter was sent to the full council for a final decision a week later, where anything could happen. This time, the CVA lost.

They already began discussing plans to attend the next meeting. Even if they lost, they figured, at least their voices would be heard. At least they'd go down swinging.

"I don't really understand it," Criteser said a few days later about the fierce opposition from the CVA to this relatively minor rehab project. "It's literally become a microcosm of development in general."

Criteser has lived in the Islandview neighborhood since 2004, in a 12-room historic house on Field Street that was built before the Civil War. "This neighborhood is so nice and comfortable, and nice and neighborly, and everybody waves and has dogs and cats. And then you get this silliness, which began with me trying to reclaim a local neighborhood building so it isn't a rat sore, and all of a sudden here we are, and I gotta put on a tie and talk to City Council."

Eight years ago, he said, he convinced a developer to buy the abandoned row house, helped hire local residents to clean out mounds of trash from inside and board it up to preserve it. That developer bailed, but now here comes another one, perhaps the best chance at turning this building into something functional. And here's this small group of loud neighbors fighting it like it's the tip of the spear of an invasion.

"This is just some local people, some rabble rousers that are pissy," Criteser said. "It's a really big neighborhood. We've got rich folks, we've got poor folks, but there's this segment of folks it seems to be they've congregated at this Charlevoix Village Association, and they've become this sticky wicket of ridiculousness. I would think anyone who would buy any house would be welcomed as a neighbor. But some see it as colonial occupation or something like that. I don't get it."

About a mile away, the Rev. Barry Randolph found himself caught in the middle on this. The 57-year-old pastor of the Church of the Messiah is known in the area for advocating benefits for the community. He's friendly with CVA. Yet he was an early backer of the developer behind the little row house.

"We have to look at what's best for the community and neighborhood," he said. "That building has been vacant for 10 years, and sometimes when they remain vacant they can turn into a haven for drugs, for human trafficking, or the building can catch fire. It's better to have it occupied."

He's already lived through gentrification growing up in the West Village, which now bears little resemblance to the lower-income community he once called home.

"A lot of people who used to live there cannot live there anymore," he said. "And I don't want to see that happen in Islandview. But we also have to think about what is the best way to do development. Is there a way to do it where we look out for people who already live here and at the same time make a project worth doing?"

The trick, he said, is balancing new development with the needs of the neighborhood. But few from Islandview could afford those $1,300 rents, he acknowledged. "Let's face it, I couldn't afford to live there," he said.

A mile or so to the east, Farr sat in the offices of the Villages CDC atop the Commons coffee house.

"Here's where I actually have a little bit of sympathy for what CVA did," said the 38-year-old. "If we're putting out tens of thousands of Detroiters for not paying their property taxes, to say 'all right, these developers are getting reimbursed for their property taxes for the motive of profit,' to me is just sort of like, I don't always agree with how CVA works, I don't always agree with their tactics, I don't always agree with even necessarily their reasons; but in this instance, I don't think that they were wrong, per se."

Farr's role with the Villages CDC, he said, is pestering the city for infrastructure improvements such as repairing sidewalks, clearing gutters, removing dead trees and maintaining vacant city-owned lots; concrete actions that will attract and complement development. Because, ultimately, he said, the city simply has to grow.

"I want development to happen," Farr said. "I believe it's necessary that we have development. EMS and police and DPW, none of this pays for itself. We need to grow the tax base in order to do right by the people who have been here throughout, so we can continue to pay retiree pensions. And sometimes I think we lose sight of that from time to time. Detroit is not a done deal. We are not finished. We are not totally in the clear. Our recovery is still not entirely a done deal by any stretch of the imagination."

None of those development supporters came to the podium the day the City Council was to vote on the issue, on Feb. 18. A lone voice spoke on behalf of the project and warned about the CVA.

"There is a small organization who dubiously claims to represent a significant portion of Islandview and the villages," said Reimer Priester, a 38-year-old local developer who partnered with Astral Weeks on those 50 or so homes being renovated in the neighborhood. "To my knowledge, they have protested against every single recent development project in this area." Such constant opposition, he said, would only scare off other developers who won't want to deal with this kind of hassle.

"CVA is not an authority and they are not a policy body!" he exclaimed.

Once again, CVA members lined up to speak. They brought their facts and figures, and their signed petition, and their confrontational rhetoric.

"We think, especially given the situation of people being overtaxed in the city of Detroit, that if we're going to be giving tax incentives it should be to long-term residents and not multimillion dollar corporations who quite frankly can afford to do development on their own dime," said Taylor to scattered applause from the audience. "Poor people are always told that we have to do things within our means, so that should hold true for the developers. If they can't do it on their own, they don't deserve to do it at all."

But this time, they also brought some ammo. Since that last City Council meeting, the CVA had done some research and they discovered that, wouldn't you know it, some of those 50 or so houses the developer had invested in had racked up a whopping $38,000 in blight tickets in just a few months. The CVA members had long complained that the recent increase in blight tickets on the old homes in the neighborhood likely came thanks to the newcomers, people they thought looked down on them and their distressed houses, people they swore were calling in blight reports to harass them, even though many who were getting tickets were seniors who couldn't afford the major repairs their homes needed.

And here was one of those newcomers, a developer of means, racking up astronomical fines for blight in their neighborhood. The irony was rich. And it was damning. They presented that information to the council prior to the meeting.

It was a turning point.

"Though this may not be directly attributed to this particular project, it's now a part of the conversation based upon this partnership," Councilman Tate said. Several people in the audience applauded. And many of them weren't with the CVA.

"My concern is if there are blight tickets in another area, what's to say that we won't have the same blight tickets in this area?" asked Council President Brenda Jones. "If we have people coming into the city of Detroit, your property needs to be kept up and we need to know that you are keeping up your property, because you just can't do business and have the city looking any kind of way. Whoever's tickets they are, please take care of your property before asking to do more business in the city of Detroit."

More applause.

In a city where officials have long been accused of favoring developers over the residents, of giving priority to New Detroit versus Old Detroit, giving tax relief now would've been politically unthinkable. Councilwoman Mary Sheffield, in whose district the building lies, announced that she was inclined to vote against it. With Jones now publicly lecturing the developer, and with Tate saying the blighted houses were now an issue, the writing was on the wall. Rather than be publicly defeated, the developer withdrew the request for the tax incentives for the little row house.

Shockingly, the CVA won.

They cheered and danced in their seats, and hugged each other. Then they spilled out into the hallway where the celebration continued, where they took photos of each other beneath a towering portrait of former Mayor Coleman Young, controversial to many outside the city but still lovingly viewed by many Detroiters as an advocate for the community against what they see as powerful and wealthy outsiders. They smiled and raised their fists in the air, the longtime symbol of resistance.

Taylor stood apart from them for a minute, with a serious expression on his face, one ear turned toward the auditorium, still listening, still on alert. Despite this apparent success, he wasn't celebrating yet. After all, Astral Weeks might resubmit the request another day. And there would surely be other developers bringing their own plans and tax requests, and more newcomers arriving in the neighborhood, eager to transform it. The tsunami is still coming.

"This isn't it," he said. "It isn't over."
Free Press staff writer Kristi Tanner contributed to this report. John Carlisle writes about people and places in Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle, Facebook at johncarlisle.freep or on Instagram at johncarlislefreep

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Detroit neighborhood group sees gentrification as the enemy

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It was just a small building being rehabbed. But to one neighborhood group, it became a symbol of gentrification. And they fought it hard.

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What Are Gentrification and Displacement - Urban Displacement

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Table of Contents Pushed Out: Displacement Today and Lasting Impacts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb4xATPMlLc This video was made in collaboration with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank and the Great Communities Collaborative, an initiative of the San Francisco Foundation.Take a look at the gentrification and displacement page on the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank's site.