Thread: Detroit: 15,084 blighted houses demolished. Cost $265M U.S. taxpayers

Last Detroit house demolished in $265M blight-removal effort

Christine Ferretti The Detroit News
View Comments

Detroit — For nearly a decade, Stephenie Lee has been fearful and embarrassed over the burned-out house across from her eastside rental.

On Friday morning, it took mere minutes for a demolition team to topple it down.

The property on Waveney off Cadieux was the final house of 15,084 knocked down with $265 million in federal Hardest Hit Fund dollars in Detroit since spring 2014.


"There's a lot of abandoned houses in this city that need to be torn down," said Lee, 49, who last saw the house occupied prior to a 2011 fire, apart from squatters. "It's a safety issue."

The federal dollars enabled Detroit to raze about 3,000 properties per year. Officials estimate 22,000 vacant houses in the city remain.

But the progress, officials said, is at a standstill since the federal funding ran out and $50 million per year allocated for blight removal in the city's bankruptcy plan was diverted to stave off a $350 million-plus budget shortfall tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.

City voters in November will decide a $250 million bond proposal to continue Detroit's efforts to remove another 8,000 blighted structures. The plan — Proposal N, as in neighborhoods — also would stabilize another 8,000 vacant but structurally sound houses.

"We at the land bank literally have no dollars," said Tammy Daniels, deputy director of Detroit's Land Bank Authority, on Friday as she watched the final federally funded demolition. "There are 8,000 other houses that need this level of attention.

Proposal N is critically important to finishing what we've started."


The demolition of the structure on Waveney cost $16,200.

A divided Detroit City Council voted in July to send the measure to the Nov. 3 ballot one week after Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan introduced it. The panel's 5-4 approval came amid worries over a lack of public awareness and unanswered questions.

The council rejected a separate bid from Duggan last fall. At that time, the proposed initiative sparked contentious debate and a packed town hall that drew upward of 500 residents, activists, clergy and lawmakers.

Critics then cited worries over a long-running federal criminal investigation into the city's demolition program and the need for more guarantees for the hiring Detroit workers.

The city's demolition program has been controversial for years after it fell under scrutiny in fall 2015 over bidding practices and soaring costs. It later became the subject of city, state and federal reviews and investigations. In spring 2019, two men involved in the program pleaded guilty to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes and rigging bids.

A Detroit News investigation last fall found a lack of controls allowed contractors to charge whatever they wanted for dirt to fill holes left behind from demolitions during the initial years of the program.

Daniels on Friday acknowledged there have been "hiccups" along the way. The goal of the program, she said, is and has always been to make the city a better place.

"In a program that's operating at this scale, there are going to be problems. This is something that was never done before," she said. "We did not have a road map, and so yes, there were mistakes and there will continue to be issues. But we have a strong team that's committed to making Detroit better."

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...al/3349213001/

5/27/2014

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

5/26/2014

25,000 vacant homes in Philadelphia, 600 torn down each year