Detroit's blight-removal campaign ramps up

DETROIT — Softening an international reputation as the home of urban ruin porn, the campaign to rid Detroit of blighted eyesores is at last showing results, with the city demolishing about 200 vacant houses a week, four times the level of a year or so ago.

The city believes it can sustain a rate of 200 demolitions a week. At that pace, it could soon be tearing down as many as 10,000 structures a year. Much of the work has been concentrated in about 20 neighborhoods considered the city's tipping points — places such as Marygrove and Bagley on the west side that have enough homeowners and assets that blight removal would have an immediate, positive effect.

"The idea is to strengthen the strong neighborhoods," said Kevin Simowski, director of the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which holds, maintains and sells property taken by the city from tax foreclosures.

The land bank has filed close to 1,200 lawsuits this year against owners of nuisance properties, so far winning judgments or consent agreements in more than 500 cases. And sales of city-owned side lots to neighbors, which used to take at least six months, are now completed in less than an hour, with 85 selling last weekend in a fair sponsored by the city.

Paula and Douglas Rogers, who live in southwest Detroit, just bought their fifth side lot in several years, paying $100 to the land bank. All the lots they've purchased are adjacent to their house and all became vacant after the houses were demolished. The Rogerses plant trees there and otherwise keep them up.

The ease with which the Rogerses bought the most recent lot compared to the earlier ones astonished Paula.

"Oh, good Lord, I'll tell you what. I did it on the computer," she said Friday. "You don't have to do anything. They do it all for you. The city is just making leaps and bounds. I love my city. Things are getting done."

CHALLENGES AHEAD

To be sure, progress this year under Mayor Mike Duggan only dents the vast inventory of blighted buildings and vacant lots. With about 3,000 structures demolished this year, the city still faces tens of thousands, a job that will take years to finish.

Shortages of trained workers, trucks, bulldozers, and even enough clean dirt to fill the basements left behind after a house is demolished challenge the city's efforts.

Last summer, demolition crews planned to use dirt scoured by an interstate highway reconstruction project to fill up basement holes. But road salt deposited on the freeway over the years contaminated the dirt too much to meet legal standards for residential neighborhoods. Demolition crews have had to buy sand and other fill from quarries at increased cost and inconvenience.

Even something as simple as putting up fences around demolition sites can present challenges. One contractor complained that Detroit's notorious scrappers were stealing the metal stakes used to hold up the fences around work sites, slowing progress.

But if logistical challenges remain daunting, demolition contractors agree the city is moving at a speed never before seen in the blight effort.

John Adamo Jr., CEO of the Adamo Group, a major Detroit-based contractor that already has razed about 1,000 properties under a contract with the city, estimated the campaign has accomplished "a year's worth of work in four, five months."

And Wendy Sitek, office manager with Able Demolition of Shelby Township, which has razed about 300 properties, echoed that.

"We have been doing work nonstop," she said. "Busy busy, busy."

HOW IT HAPPENED

Detroit has been demolishing vacant and dilapidated structures for decades. But the effort could never keep pace with the need, with derelict factories, burned-out houses and trash-heaped lots becoming the subject of "ruin porn" viewed around the world.

But the effort to rid itself of blight ramped up earlier this year thanks to several related efforts.

-- Blight database: Newly elected Duggan made blight removal a pillar of his administration. The semipublic Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, headed by Quicken Loans founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert, Detroit Public Schools Foundation President Glenda Price and U-Snap-Bac director Linda Smith, mapped out the city's roughly 380,000 parcels in the Motor City Mapping effort, producing the best digital database ever compiled of the condition of properties.

-- Bankruptcy: The city's bankruptcy reorganization plan crafted by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr envisioned $500 million spent on blight removal over five years.

-- Detroit Land Bank Authority: This year's progress would not have been possible without the transformation of the little-known Detroit Land Bank Authority. When Duggan took office in January, the small agency — an entity through which municipalities can hold, improve and sell tax-foreclosed properties — had just a handful of employees and a few hundred parcels in its inventory.

LAND BANK POWERS UP

Under Duggan, the land bank has muscled up, taking advantage of powers granted under state law. Its inventory of properties has soared to more than 30,000. Another 17,000 or so properties are expected to transfer to the land bank in early 2015.

The agency's legal team now includes seven attorneys, four paralegals and three administrative assistants. Since May, the legal team has won every judgment from lawsuits filed against owners of nuisance properties, with more than 500 default judgments in court or consent agreements so far.

"We have not lost a single case yet," said Craig Fahle, the former National Public Radio host for WDET who now serves as the land bank's director of public affairs.

The agency also employs four urban planners who map land-use tactics. Other staffers focus on sales of side lots to neighbors and auctions of livable homes to Detroiters. The land bank auctions two houses per day, totaling more than 250 homes so far.

For blight removal, the land bank readies derelict properties for demolition by clearing up any legal issues, then hands off a list to the Detroit Building Authority, which works with private demolition contractors to raze the structures.

The logistical coordination required by this effort is complex. It involves multiple agencies at the city, county, state and federal level, as well as the cooperation of private companies like DTE Energy, which has ramped up its effort to shut off gas and electric service to houses on the demo list.

Every two weeks, demolition contractors meet with city departments at Detroit's police headquarters to brainstorm and chew over challenges.

"We've got people rowing the same direction," Fahle said.

The first and biggest challenge is money. The city used $50 million in federal money known as the "Hardest Hit" funds to pay for blight removal this year. That money is now exhausted. The city hopes to find similar funding elsewhere, but most of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to rid the city of blight will have to come from the city's general treasury.

Under the city's bankruptcy reorganization plan, the city would spend $500 million over five years to tear down blighted buildings. That money would come from savings achieved through the bankruptcy. But if those dollars do not materialize, either because city revenues fall short or because savings are less than anticipated, the blight effort could suffer.

WHAT COMES NEXT?

But perhaps the biggest question confronting Detroit's blight campaign is what to do with all the cleared land. The city already holds a vast inventory — variously estimated from 15% to 30% of the city's land mass.

The city's blight campaign will, at least in the short run, add to that inventory of vacant land by removing thousands more structures.

Duggan has answered queries about the future of all that vacant land, saying the neighborhoods involved will decide what's next. Gilbert has offered a different take, saying that the land will be so valuable once cleaned up that developers will be happy to build on it.

With no clear consensus on what will or should happen with the land, organizations like the Detroit Future City Implementation Office and philanthropic organizations like the Kresge Foundation promote alternative land uses, including urban agriculture and reforestation.

Maggie DeSantis, leader of the Eastside Community Network and Lower Eastside Action Plan, which encourages alternative land uses, said Detroit must continue to look for creative and environmentally sustainable ways to use vacant land.

"In the absence of demand for new housing and commercial development, open space can and should be converted to uses that create beauty, generate jobs, produce tax revenue from private investment and clean our air, land and water," DeSantis said Friday.

"That is what we are working for as a way to stabilize all of our neighborhoods — those with high populations as well as those that have lost people."