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As a native Detroiter who has lived through all of the changes in the City over the past several decades, a new initiative by Mayor Dave Bing to assist in bringing people back piqued my interest. The mayor recently unveiled a unique home ownership program to Detroit police officers in order to reverse two recent trends over the last few decades: 1) police officers who do not live in the city they patrol, and 2) a vast number of abandoned and foreclosed properties that devalue neighborhoods.
I have watched the city's decline, and a program that would mean more people living here and adding to the tax base and vibrancy of my hometown would be good news.
The program, which will offer police officers a chance to purchase foreclosed homes for $1,000, is named “Project 14” which is a police code name for “back to normal.” The plan also includes funds for rehabilitation of each home of up to $150,000. What makes this program unique is that the 200 homes are located in two stable areas that are on the National Historic Register: the Boston-Edison Historic District and the East English Village District. The houses are sturdy, well-made homes built in the early to mid-20th century, and just a few years ago would have sold for $150,000 to $750,000 or more. Mayor Bing plans to use a mixture of federal Neighborhood Stabilization monies and home rehabilitation grants to fund this program.
[Full Disclosure: My husband and I own a beautiful, 98-year-old, 4,000 sq.ft. home in the Boston-Edison Historic District. There are several vacant homes on our block, and we would be overjoyed to have new homeowners in our neighborhood.]
This incentive is a part of a larger strategy that Mayor Bing has announced to “right-size” the City of Detroit. The City of Detroit has been losing population since the 1950s, when it reached the peak number of residents of approximately 1.8 million. The rise of the interstate system, coupled with ongoing racial discord, exacerbated the flight of people from the city to the suburbs; fifty years later, by the turn of the 21st century, the population of Detroit had been reduced to approximately 800,000 -- less than half its former size. However, Detroit still maintained its status as one of the cities in America with the highest percentage of home ownership due to the relatively low cost of home ownership and the stability of secure and good-paying blue-collar jobs. Detroit was known as a city of proud and well-kept neighborhoods; each with a unique character.
The mayor's "right-sizing" vision is very controversial: Many people think that lower-income people would be forced to move, entire neighborhoods razed, and city services reduced. The mayor has had numerous community meetings to involve the residents in the different components of these programs; he insists that something unique, innovative and even drastic must be done to manage a city of 139 square miles yet less than 800,000 people. One-half to two-thirds of Detroit residents now live at or below the U.S. poverty line.
Within the past decade, with the worsening economy, the loss of the manufacturing industries, the mortgage crisis and 2-year-long deep recession, the number of foreclosed properties in Detroit grew to one of the highest levels in the United States. Several areas in the city contain blocks with only one or two occupied houses, and the property tax base has been decimated. With “Project 14,” the mayor hopes to jumpstart a new era of home ownership that would bring people back to the city and increase the tax base while slowing the decline of neighborhood stability.
Another long-standing controversial issue in the City of Detroit is whether police officers should be mandated to live in the City they work for. One view is that police officers are more attuned to a community if they actually live in that community; on the other side, many in metro Detroit feel that it does not matter where police officers live. In 1999, the legislature of the State of Michigan ruled that municipal employees did not have to live in the cities that employ them, and soon 53% of police officers moved to the suburbs leading to further empty homes. East English Village was formerly a neighborhood where many Detroit police officers lived. The Mayor feels very strongly that public safety and police-community relations would be greatly improved with Detroit
