Duggan at ribbon-cutting for start of push to have 'people of every income living together'

It’s only an eight-unit building, but Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan hailed the renovation of the 1927 structure at a ribbon-cutting Thursday, calling it a symbol of the city’s accelerated effort at turning vacant apartment buildings into affordable housing.

The units will be available at subsidized rates to low-income renters, but the idea is to make them fully appealing to those able to pay the normal rents, Duggan said.

“This is the future of this city — rebuilding our beautiful architecture and having people from all walks of life living together,” Duggan said, adding: “We believe this city should have room to have people of every income, living together.”

That pattern of residency stands in stark contrast to the usual tendency of communities to develop clumps of housing aimed at narrow ranges of income, a tendency that grew vivid in the last half-century as the nation’s big cities saw most of their white residents leave to settle in suburbs that have been defined by income levels.

Standing outside the building on Marlborough near East Jefferson, four blocks from Grosse Pointe Park on Detroit’s far east side, Duggan spoke to a crowd of officials involved in the project sharing doughnuts with residents, praising the surrounding neighborhood, known as Jefferson Chalmers. He called for restoring "these beautiful houses" as well as aging apartment buildings in Detroit.

“And in the next six months, we’re going to have a long-term plan to stop the flooding here,” he said, alluding to the high lake levels in the area’s canals, and its history of basement-flooding sewer backups blamed, the Great Lakes Water Authority says, on unprecedented volumes of rain. After last year's flooding on June 26-27 that ruined tens of thousands of basements across metro Detroit, flooding in the basement of the renovated apartments on Marlborough delayed the ribbon-cutting by a year, said Josh Elling, CEO of Jefferson East Inc.

Most of the damage was covered by insurance after the Ford Fund stepped in on short notice to pay a $50,000 deductible, Elling said. A lot adjoining the building will be left vacant to soak up rain in future storms, said Marcus Huff, construction director for the development arm of Jefferson East Inc., called EJ Dev

Duggan stood on a temporary stage, thanking organizations that funded the renovation of the building, which had been vacant for four decades. Among them were the nonprofit growth corporation Jefferson East Inc., Troy-based Kresge Foundation and the Maryland-based Enterprise Community Loan Fund. Standing with Duggan were members of the Detroit City Council who have pushed the city to use newly acquired federal funds to accelerate efforts at providing low-income residents with affordable housing.

Last month, Duggan and city councilmembers Mary Waters, Angela Calloway and Latisha Johnson unveiled a $203 million affordable housing road map that they say will develop affordable housing in Detroit using new strategies. Several of the fresh approaches are being funded by the city’s share of federal funds in the American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden.

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Detroit’s road map to affordable housing includes converting long-vacant apartment buildings and Land Bank homes into affordable rental housing, supplemented by down-payment assistance to buyers of houses and placement services to put newly settled Detroiters into jobs that will let them afford their rent or monthly mortgage payment, officials at Thursday's event said.

The announcement comes at a time when Detroit’s ongoing revitalization and rising property values are driving up rents for many with lower incomes. The $203 million investment is for 2022 alone, and city officials expect to add annual allocations to create a long-term surge in the city’s number of affordable housing units.

Nationwide, rents have soared in the last two years, starting in big cities but spreading to small towns and suburbs, as landlords played catch-up after the COVID-19-induced recession. Rents asked of new residents in the second quarter of this year were 23% higher nationwide compared with the same period in 2019, according to census data released earlier this month.

At the same time, federally funded housing assistance is running out. At Detroit-based Matrix Human Services, the program to assist clients needing help to make rent or mortgage payments is closed, with the website stating, "Funds are currently exhausted for this program.”

At the Salvation Army's metro Detroit headquarters in Southfield, director of communications Sharon Tatom Garcia said of a similar program, "We still have some money to prevent evictions, but that is running out."

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Duggan hails push to have 'people of every income living together'