Making good on a promise

Mayor Mike Duggan is making good on a campaign promise. Take care of your property, pay your property taxes…act like a homeowner or watch the city take it.
The Mayor has introduced a program that will not only address the vacant home and blight problem, but he hopes will get people back to city as he prepares to auction off thousands of properties. The Detroit Land Bank Authority’s Building Detroit auction site has listed several city-owned homes in East English Village, with starting bids of $1,000 each. The auction for each property will last one day only, the dates will be staggered throughout the month of May.
Sixty-two thousand properties have faced foreclosure in Detroit this year over unpaid taxes. Buying dilapidated and vacant homes sounds great right now, after all, look at New York: Decades of crime and decay gave way to a real estate boom that has gentrified even outlying working-class neighborhoods. Properties that sold for thousands in the bad old days are now worth millions. Unfortunately, looting and vandalism are also major problems. Homes under renovation risk having fixtures ripped out and tools stolen if the property is not lived in and secured. Needless to say, it’s not going to be as easy as it sounds.
Most of these homes are of significant size and need an enormous amount of work. Once you win a bid, then the work begins. The homes have to bring it up to code within six months — nine months for historic properties. The idea is to discourage outsiders from buying and leaving property unattended. After the rehab is finished, someone also has to occupy the home. That’s right – you have to live in it.
When people go to buy these properties, they must also be prepared for such an over haul to have an immediate toll on the psyche. Most of these houses have to be completely rebuilt. Thieves have stripped them of basic infrastructure. Most of them have mold, require all new electrical, plumbing, ductwork, drywall, many times a roof, all new windows, doors, cabinets.  Essentially everything.  Anything that can be taken and sold, has been. It’s nearly impossible to describe how aggressive the city’s thieves have become in some of these neighborhoods.
“I bought my house in the golf community for a $172,000 and it has been broken into four times during the rehab,” said a recent homeowner of a rehabbed home that was not bought at auction. “Now just imagine how out of control the situation for people who have bought homes at such a price.”
Once you buy these homes, the new property owner has to understand that it really is an investment and they have to do the right thing, because if they don’t, Mayor Duggan has vowed to make them do the right thing not only by the property, but the residents who occupy the neighborhoods throughout the City of Detroit as well.
“It’s no longer acceptable to leave behind a vacant property in the city of Detroit,” the mayor’s office said in a statement earlier in the month. “Either you can fix it up, or the city will seize the property and get it into the hands of someone who will.”
Zack Burgess is an award winning journalist, the Editor-at-Large for the Michigan Chronicle and Real Times Media. He is the Director/Owner of OFF WOODWARD MEDIA, LLC, where he works as a Writer, Editor and Communications Specialist. His work can be seen at zackburgess.com. Twitter: @zackburgess1