Detroit City Council District 5 candidates pitched their vision for retooling the city’s land bank at a candidate forum Wednesday inside Eastern Market’s Shed 5 hosted by BridgeDetroit.
Esther Haugabook, Michael Ri’chard, Renata Miller, Michael Hartt, Tatjana Jackson and George Adams Jr. participated in the event. Write-in candidates Whitney Clarke, Quincy Hyatt and Kevin Jones also attended and made their pitch to voters.
Voters in District 5 will elect a new council person for the first time since 2013, when City Council president Mary Sheffield became the youngest person ever elected to the body. The district spans across the city’s west and east sides, including Midtown and downtown. More development is happening in District 5 than any other council district.
Candidates said they would tackle property tax reform and work to increase the city’s affordable housing stock. Like the candidates running for mayor, investing resources not just downtown but in neighborhoods was also a theme Wednesday evening.
One part of the discussion focused on what candidates would do with the Detroit Land Bank. A recent report from BridgeDetroit highlighted issues many Detroiters say they encounter when dealing with the land bank, like questionable price adjustments and strict compliance guidelines that aren’t levied against large developers.
“I worked at the city for 32 years,” Ri’chard said. “If my department in the city was ran like the land bank, somebody should’ve got fired. The land bank is a good idea, we’ve got vacant homes, we need people in those homes. Stop tearing down and lets build up.”
Ri’chard also worked for former Congressman John Conyers as a legislative assistant, and served Wayne County as former commissioner Joel Ware’s legislative director. He said one of his neighbors who works at the land bank tells him what goes on, and he said what’s been happening over the last several years is “horrible.”
“Too many outsiders sit on that land bank,” Miller said. “They have special interests and give land to their friends, family and outsiders and profit off the land — it’s not right.”
Miller brought up the many parcels of land maintained by developer John Hantz, who planted trees on vacant lots across the east side.
“They gave all the land in one area of the east side to one developer, he threw trees on it and now he’s selling it piece by piece,” Miller said.
Haugabook, who currently works for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, argued the land bank can be an “excellent tool” to clear titles and sell properties. She pointed to land banks in Genesee County and Muskegon as examples of successful land banks in Michigan. She said when the land bank was created, City Council was two years behind in reviewing property sales.
“We had so many problems before the land bank came — we need to have a big picture, historical picture,” Haugabook said. “We need to retool the land bank and change the brokers that they use to so we have a more equitable disposition of land and management.”
Clarke, a write-in candidate, said he would file a federal lawsuit against the land bank.
“One of the stipulations for me would be no new homes can enter the land bank,” Clarke said.
Hartt said one of the main issues is transparency, while Jackson, the president of the Arden Park-East Boston neighborhood association, pointed to the constant complaints with the entity she hears from her neighbors, saying the entity must be more responsive.
Adams, founder of Detroit 360, said he’s OK with restructuring the land bank or getting rid of it completely, but says City Council should have greater control of who is appointed to its board.
“If we get rid of it, we need to have a department at the city to manage all the properties and the sales of the properties in each district,” Adams said.
Adams recommended set asides in each district for community land trusts to make certain parcels permanently affordable. Community land trusts are nonprofit corporations that develop land in the interest of the surrounding residents.
Adams spoke about his experience dealing with the land bank in his Virginia Park neighborhood, saying he fought for four years to get it to sell him properties he helped save on West Euclid.
“I boarded it up in 2014 and I bought it in 2023. 28 units of affordable housing will be complete this year.”
BridgeDetroit’s next candidate forum is June 26 at the Hispanic Development Corporation on Trumbull. Candidates on the ballot in District 6 include incumbent Gabriela Santiago-Romero and state Rep. Tyrone Carter, D-Detroit. With just two candidates, there’s no primary in District 6.
The general election is Nov. 6.
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