Thread: Detroit Task Force Says Blight Cleanup Will Cost $850 Million, for 40,000 buildings

Detroit Task Force Says Blight Cleanup Will Cost $850 Million

By MONICA DAVEY and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS MAY 27, 2014


A new report estimates that blight removal in the city of Detroit will mean dealing with thousands of decayed buildings.CreditJoshua Lott for The New York Times

DETROIT — Saying that Detroit needed to rid itself of its vast collection of dilapidated houses, junk-filled lots and empty shops, a task force examining the city’s blight said Tuesday that the price tag for the cleanup would be at least $850 million, including the likely demolition of 40,000 buildings scattered around the city.

The price tag came in a report by the Blight Removal Task Force, an organization formed to catalog and come up with ways for Detroit to rid itself of the decay that has become one of the bankrupt city’s most defining features.

The task force also suggested that the city must deal with the hulking factories that dot Detroit — crumbling reminders of the manufacturing prowess of a city far larger, wealthier, and more vibrant than it is today.

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The report, however, warned that demolishing industrial structures would add hundreds of millions more to the cost, in part because of the need to remedy likely environmental degradation that the buildings have left behind.

DOCUMENT

Detroit Blight Removal Task Force Plan

The Task Force’s report is a detailed accounting of the extent of Detroit’s blight, including recommendations for how to both clear up the decay and prevent it from happening again.


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The report — perhaps the most elaborate and detailed survey of decay conducted in any large city — found that 84,641 parcels among the city’s more than 377,000 properties are plagued by blight. Of those, some 40,000 buildings or parts of buildings should be torn down, according to the study.

“Detroit needs to act aggressively to eradicate the blight in as fast a time as possible,” the report concluded. “Other cities contending with high levels of blight have never addressed more than 7,000 structures a year. At that pace, it would take Detroit more than 11 years to address” its disintegrating buildings and rubble-strewn lots.

The report added that “because blight creates more blight,” the city’s deterioration would continue “without swift remedies.” It called for eliminating blight in Detroit within five years.

The survey grew out of a task force convened in September by the Obama administration, which was seeking options as to how Detroit might remake itself after it became the nation’s largest city to file for municipal bankruptcy.

Despite concerns about the cleanup cost, city, state and federal authorities, along with foundations and private business leaders, backed the study’s remedy.

Kevyn D. Orr, Detroit’s emergency manager, said Tuesday that the city’s problem with blighted buildings had been mounting since the Depression and had been the subject of multiple studies over many previous city administrations.

The current report, Mr. Orr said, was finally an answer. “This is an unprecedented time and an unprecedented day,” he said. “Here we are, 83 years later, with the tools to address it.”

The data — a compilation of gloomy statistics about the state of the city’s real estate — was gathered by 150 resident surveyors and volunteer drivers who divided the city into quarter-mile squares, which were nicknamed “microhoods.” The front of each property was photographed and surveyors filled out forms related to the condition of each property. The information was then uploaded via a live-stream feed and confirmed by surveyors comparing it to other databases.

Among other figures in the survey, it was revealed that 30 percent of Detroit’s parcels of land are now uninhabited — a total of 114,000 vacant lots.

The report defined blight, generally, as properties that are deemed a nuisance; that have been vacant for five consecutive years or more without being kept up to code; or that constitute an immediate health or safety threat.

About 22 percent of the city’s parcels are troubled by blight, the study found, and of those lots with buildings on them, the percentage rose to 30 percent, according to the survey.

City officials said Tuesday that they have plans for how to pay for about $450 million of the massive demolition effort. Some of that is already dedicated federal funding. The bulk would come from the city’s pool of money that officials hope a federal bankruptcy judge will allow them to spend fixing the city. Still, that leaves the city nearly $400 million short, without even considering tearing down the old factories, officials said.

Among properties held by private homeowners, 53,500 parcels — or 23 percent of all privately owned lots — were decayed enough to be deemed troubled by blight. But a far higher percentage — 93 percent — of the nearly 27,000 parcels that are publicly owned were found to be suffering from blight, the survey found.

Correction: May 27, 2014
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of the headline on the home page gave an incorrect figure for the estimated cost of ending blight in Detroit. It is $850 million, not $850 billion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/us...n.html?hp&_r=0

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