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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Proposed transfer of 16,000 Detroit-owned properties raises questions
7:26 PM, April 10, 2014 |
By Joe Guillen
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s request to transfer up to 16,399 city-owned residential parcels to the Detroit Land Bank Authority cleared a legislative hurdle on Thursday, advancing the mayor’s rapidly developing blight elimination plans.
After extensive questioning about the land bank’s plans for the properties, a city council committee forwarded legislation to authorize the land transfer to the full council for an expected vote on Tuesday.
Duggan’s administration has asked the council to act quickly because the land bank — a legal entity separate from the city — needs more blighted properties under its control to make use of $52 million in federal funds allocated to it for demolition. The deadline to spend the money is next April.
Council members expressed both excitement and anxiety over the massive transfer of city-owned residential properties. The city acquired some of the properties after they went unsold at Wayne County tax foreclosure sales.
■ Related: Bill Pulte turns over Detroit blight removal efforts to city
■ Related: Duggan to target Marygrove area in crackdown on Detroit's neglected homes
While the mayor’s new blight reduction tactics raised hopes, Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins questioned why the land bank needed more than 16,000 properties when the available federal funds would only pay for between 4,000 and 5,000 demolitions.
“I’m still really nervous about this whole process,” Jenkins said.
Erica Ward Gerson, the new chairwoman of the land bank, said the authority needs so many properties because antiquated city records make it hard to determine which parcels need to be demolished. She said the new pool of properties will help ensure all $52 million is spent rather than returned to the federal government because the bank didn’t have enough properties to tear down.
The land bank plans to auction off the city’s properties that are salvageable. The land bank would keep two-thirds of the resulting profits for operating expenses and the city would get the remaining third. Gerson said the land bank has not yet projected potential profits.
Gerson, who chaired the board of DMC’s Children’s Hospital of Michigan, was appointed to the land bank in January.
“I don’t want to demolish a good house. I want to auction them first before we even consider them for demo,” she said.
The proposed property transfer is the second land bank initiative spotlighted this week. The land bank, now with Duggan appointees at the helm, is becoming a vehicle for the mayor to carry out his blight reduction plans.
On Wednesday, Duggan unveiled a program in the Marygrove neighborhood in which property owners of abandoned homes will be taken to court. The owners will be given a choice: fix up the properties and get them inhabited again or risk losing them to the land bank.
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s office is expected to review the land transfer proposal while the council prepares to vote on it next week.
Contact Joe Guillen: 313-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com. |
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Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:27 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Mike Duggan announces neighborhood revitalization ...: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan neighborhood revitalization plans around Marygrove College in Detroit during press conference.
By Matt Helms
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan kicks off his comprehensive neighborhood rebuilding plan during a press conference on Wednesday in front of a house on Roselawn in Detroit. The city will begin posting legal notices on 79 vacant homes in the Marygrove neighborhood as a prelude to filing suit against the owners.
Bob Schultz says the homes in his neighborhood south of Marygrove College on Detroit's west side are worth saving. He said the neighborhood was hit hard by the national foreclosure crisis in 2008 to 2009. / Matt Helms/DFP
Land Bank independent contractor Herb Alexander looks over addresses to put signs on the windows of vacant homes in the area south of Marygrove College, giving owners a 3 day notice to prevent the Land Bank Authority from filing seizure action. / Ryan Garza / Detroit Free Press
Talmer Bank is committing up to $1 million in forgivable loans for people who commit to buying homes in an area south of Marygrove College in Detroit in upcoming auctions.
Mayor Mike Duggan confirmed a program at a news conference today to control blight in a 16 block area. He made the announcement outside a home on the 16100 block of Roselawn on the city’s west side where windows were boarded up but the home was otherwise in good shape.
The individual loans from Troy-based Talmer Bank require that the recipient live in the home and would be up to $25,000, with $5,000 of the loan forgiven for each year the owner stays in the home, up to five years total. The money could be used to rehabilitate or renovate homes in the neighborhood. Bank officials were on hand today for the announcement.
City workers posted a sign on the first home notifying the owner that the city intended to pursue legal action. Under the program, the owners of the 79 vacant homes have until Monday to get in contact with the Detroit Land Bank and agree to fix up the homes and get them reoccupied within six months. Property owners who don’t agree will be taken to court for the title of their home, a process Duggan said usually takes about 90 days to complete.
Duggan’s administration will target the owners of 79 abandoned homes that are still in good condition in a west-side Detroit neighborhood as he begins going after negligent landlords who leave houses to rot in a city flush with blight.
The administration will go after the owners of those homes in the Marygrove neighborhood, taking the property owners to court to force them to either fix up the properties and get them inhabited again or risk losing them to the city and its Detroit Land Bank.
The properties that aren’t fixed up would be sold at auction to people looking for homes, with preference for families or others looking to occupy the homes.
The targeted area covers about 16 blocks due south of Marygrove College, a Catholic liberal arts school.
■ Video: Mike Duggan announces neighborhood revitalization plans
■ Metromode: Restoration is the missing piece of Detroit's blight puzzle
■ Related: Bankruptcy judge OKs $120-million loan to fund Detroit public services
The neighborhood features stately two-story brick homes but, like much of the city, it was hit hard by the national housing crisis and related foreclosures.
“Even the vacant homes in the neighborhood are in pretty solid condition, so they lend themselves to being rehabilitated rather than torn down,” said the person familiar with Duggan’s plans.
Duggan often spoke of a program he began as Wayne County prosecutor in 2003 that brought more than 3,000 nuisance abatement lawsuits against absentee landlords and property owners who left homes abandoned. The end result? More than 1,000 homes were renovated and occupied and more than 900 drug houses were shut down.
■ Related: Paperwork, squatters, dirt just a few hurdles in Detroit blight blitz
■ Related: Recycling Detroit’s building past: How do you save bricks, wood from landfills?
■ Related: Monumental effort to tear down blight would improve neighborhoods and Detroit's image
Owners of the abandoned homes were given a choice: sign a court order to fix up and reoccupy the home or deed it to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to be sold at auction to families looking for a home.
Marygrove College President David Fike said Tuesday that the college welcomes the effort to prevent blight from destabilizing a promising neighborhood with strong ties to the private liberal arts school.
Fike said that Marygrove has a high percentage of faculty and staff as well as students who live within a one-mile radius of the school.
“We think that, like anchor institutions in the Midtown area that continue to play a role in revitalizing the neighborhood, we believe that Marygrove can play a role as part of a strategy to stabilize” the city, Fike said. “It’s going to take a lot of different types of work to do it, and we know the mayor’s focused now on blight removal. We’re very excited about the mayor’s initiative.”
Brenda Stith, a retired public school teacher who has lived in a home on Ohio near Marygrove for 44 years, said Tuesday that the neighborhood was stable before the national housing crisis hit Detroit, with unemployment and balloon-payment mortgages forcing people out of their homes.
“After the people moved out, the houses would be vandalized and stripped,” Stith said. “It’s very disturbing, and it’s still going on. These are well-built houses, and I would like to see them restored, with people taking care of them.”
Bob Schultz, an executive security and protection provider, lives in a two-story home next door to a home his parents had lived in since 1980 on Cherrylawn. Other relatives now live in that home, and he bought the neighboring house from an elderly person who moved out.
Schultz said he and others in the neighborhood are on the lookout for scrappers and other criminals damaging houses.
“You’ve got a lot of history in these homes,” Schultz said. “They’re beautiful homes, and they’re in good enough shape to renovate them and bring them back.”
Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com |
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Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:38 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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This concept is interesting for several reasons.
Duggan indicates he has implemented this type of seizure in the past. What legal basis is he using?
Duggan is targeting specific areas for complete rehab. This is not the dividing up of random homes per ward. Plus the photos show quite elegant brick homes and not the typical factory worker homes built in many areas of Flint.
The City of Detroit is talking ways to reuse construction materials and not dump them all into landfills. However, the Genesee Institute demonstrated how many Flint homes have small value for deconstruction.
It is interesting that the goal is for placing people back into homes that can feasibly rehabbed and not just demo for cheap land at a future time. Note how the bank came up with a Million for rehab.
Detroit also has issues with property ownership. Many homes in Flint are recorded in the Register of Deeds at the county but they don't register the home in Flint. For example, a home on Mackin is shown in the name of a man who died over ten years ago despite multiple ownership changes recorded. Other homes show taxes due in the name of the person who sold the home on an unrecorded land contract. |
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Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:59 pm |
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