press release

Intercity Visit panel focuses on housing and inclusive development

Rhett Morgan
Oct 15, 2024

Detroit has invested more than $1 billion into affordable housing since 2019

Detroit nonprofit executive Sonya Mays compares the real estate industry to an arcade game created in the 1970s.

“This work is like Whac-A-Mole,” said Mays, CEO of Develop Detroit. “You think you have figured out one thing, and then something else pops up over here.”

Mays appeared on a Housing and Inclusive Development panel discussion as part of the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s Intercity Visit to Detroit.

More than 125 attendees from across northeast Oklahoma – including city and county elected officials, business leaders, regional partners, education administrators and young professionals – participated in the three-day Intercity Visit, which ended Oct. 9.

Brandon Oldham, senior program officer for the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation, moderated the Housing and Inclusive Development dialogue, which included Cinnaire Senior Vice President Sherita Smith; Chase Cantrell, executive director of Building Community Value Detroit; and Victor Abla, regional preservation director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.

The development experts pointed out Detroit’s recent housing sector successes, many of which have ballooned under third-term Mayor Mike Duggan, who was elected in 2013. They include:

• A $1 billion municipal investment in affordable housing since 2019, representing 71 projects either built or under construction.

• A Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) ordinance expansion that offers fast-track property tax reductions on eligible projects in exchange for a 15-year commitment to affordable rents.

• The Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA), which was created in 2008 to return blighted and vacant properties to productive use. Thus far, more than 27,000 vacant properties have been sold, according to a 2023-24 fiscal year report.

“Detroit, through these public-private partnerships, has passionately been really good at responding to those (hurdles),” Mays said. “So, we’ve seen a number of programs that can be distilled down to a clear barrier, and the city says let’s see how we can overcome it.”

Many challenges, however, remain, and they start with money. The median household income in Detroit is around $38,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“When you’re in a city where that’s the median income, your housing strategy is only going to take you so far unless you’re willing to start to have not just a conversation about how we intentionally move more people to the middle class, but how those different ecosystems talk to each other,” Mays said.

Detroit has the largest Land Bank in the country, and about 61,000 of those 65,000 properties remain vacant, according to DLBA data. Moreover, about 70% of the residential units in the city are single-family homes, which is among the highest percentages in the country, Cantrell said.

“It’s a difficult battle trying to get the city to focus on a pool of single-family rehabbers who are doing this without a lot of subsidy or support, most of the time using their own cash, using their own equity,” he said. “So, my job is to make sure that people understand what they are getting into before they take on a project. We’re taking them through nuts-and-bolts training.”

Mays said organizations such as the Real Estate Association Developers (READ) have been helping ensure that the developer base more accurately reflects the city’s diversity and delivers projects that truly serve that population.

Smith also stressed that in terms of housing projects, neighborhood trust rises when steps are taken to involve residents.

“The closer that you get in terms of benefits of a development staying with the community, the stronger and more lasting the impact,” Smith said.

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