Where is all started...
I had never been formally introduced to gentrification itself. However, I’ve come to believe I encountered pressures of it several times throughout my life. Gentrification was more identifiable to me as a feeling. The eerie feeling you get when something is wrong but the adults around you want to protect you. Coincidentally, you get the watered-down version of what’s going on.
So, I would have to read the look on my mother’s face when we almost lost our home in 2008.The financial crisis of 2008 resulted in a lot of mortgages going into foreclosure as well as people losing their jobs. This was especially the case if you worked on wall street or for the government like my mother. My 4 story, brick childhood home, right down the street from the Detroit River, built in 1924 had purchased with my father as newlyweds in 1987 was at risk of being taken away from my family.
In the 1990’s there was a federal push for banks to give mortgages to people who had been denied equal homebuying opportunities. The new loans given by these banks, however, were poorly structured. What seemed like a great idea to give balloon mortgages to people with less assets and lower credit scores turned into one of the biggest financial crises in America. What was intended as an attempt to close the racial motivated wealth gap that exist for hundreds of years worsened in less than 20 years later. This crisis directly affected my community. In fact, my mother lost her job working for the local government and which led us to almost losing our home. I’m glad to say my childhood home is still a part of our story but majority of Detroit’s population wasn’t so lucky.
Post 2008 crisis, 56 percent of Detroit mortgages foreclosed and are now blighted or abandoned. As of 2015, there were 36,400 vacant homes in the city the Detroit news reported. Of those homes, at least 13,000 were slated for demolition. A project that would cost the city $195 million, The News found. The city lost another $300 million in tax payments from foreclosed homes that Wayne County, where I lived, seized for nonpayment of taxes. Homeowners and lenders alike believed during those times home values would only appreciate and there would be no loss. 2008 showed us overzealous lending in a heated housing market can cause tremendous loss.
Those families that lost their homes not only had to rebuild financially, but had to regroup emotionally, and replant their roots. Displacement of any kind is difficult. Living through the decline and watching the luster evaporate from my community was heart breaking. This was the initial experience that intrigued me about the concept of “home” and what it meant to possibly lose it physically and what effects it could have psychologically.
Although the housing crisis was and still is a tragic event, this later presented an opportunity for new homeowners in Detroit. The downturn of the city’s housing market became a revitalizing program in the form of a land bank. The Detroit Land Bank Authority, started in 2010, has sold more than 15,000 structures and more than 20,000 land plots. Of the total investments made, about 70% of the investment was made by Detroit residents. The majority of the properties controlled by the Detroit Land Bank are most frequently acquired via the Wayne County tax foreclosure auction. Property owners can buy adjacent vacant lots from the Detroit Land Bank for $100. Homes on the online auctions or the “Own It Now” program can be bought “as is” for as little as $1,000.
The low prices are paired with a “compliance program” which requires the homeowner to occupy the structure within 6 months of purchase. This program was made to ensure the speediness of the rehabilitation of the property and brought up to code thus continuing the clean-up of neighborhoods. However, the popularity of the program has risen and caught the attention of high-priced investors and developers. Average income homebuyers are being consistently outbid for homes that are meant to be affordable. They are being refurbished and placed back on the market less in than a year. In turn, this is driving up the housing prices in Detroit and even the starting bids are high as soon as the auction opens. The program was created make the city better but it’s not clear as for whom.
The controversies surrounding Detroit Land Bank have made it breeding grounds for gentrifiers. Detroit Land Bank reports 59% of home sales are for personal use but accessibility to “desired” neighborhoods continues to be a common complaint (ref). The same energies are wrapped around the changes happening in the neighborhoods. There are complaints about losing the essence of the city along with possibilities of displacement. In figure _, signs hang on the fence around the Atlanta building on Cass Avenue where people gathered to raise awareness about the value of preserving historic building and asked that a group of buildings including the Atlanta and Hotel Ansonia not be demolished in Detroit on August 24, 2017. These fears still echo in the streets of Detroit.