Leverage all federal, state, and local housing and growth investments to increase housing quality and affordability, and ensure quick access to safe, affordable housing for people experiencing homelessness in Detroit.
Homelessness in Detroit is driven by the city’s massive and increasing gap in safe, inhabitable affordable housing. The lack of safe affordable housing option leads to a reliance on the homeless response programs to access safe, affordable housing, contributes to longer stays in homeless response programs, and to higher returns to homeless response programs when safe, affordable units cannot be identified for individuals and families.
Decades of harmful, racist housing policies and economic injustice have failed generation after generation of Black Detroiters, leaving far too many locked out of opportunities for stable housing and homeownership, increasing poverty and resulting in a disproportionate rate of homelessness among Black and African Americans in the city(1). At least one percent of the population experienced homelessness at any given time prior to the pandemic, while countless others experienced housing instability and couch surfing or doubling up with other households.
The hardest part is when you get into a shelter and they tell you there’s no funding for housing and now you have to figure out what you’re going to do. How are you going to do this if you don’t have income? Finding affordable housing and subsidized housing is the biggest challenge.
Homeless services provider
Low-income Detroit renters have few safe, adequately maintained, and affordable housing options while Black homeowners face the greatest home value disparities in the country, in addition to high rates of debt often due to outstanding property taxes(2). Those homeowners are struggling with low home values, high-cost repairs, low rental income, and high property taxes. In the last 20 years alone, policies and market dynamics have severely limited Black Detroiters’ access to capital, harmed their credit, and squelched hopes of economic mobility.
The community is long overdue in ensuring that it is livable for its people. To pursue its vision for housing justice, the community must increase access to affordable housing and proactively counter gentrification.
Though local plans currently commit to “reviving” downtown Detroit and “ensuring that those who have remained in Detroit benefit from its resurgence,” a myriad of local policies and public-private partnerships are still failing to meet the needs of Black and low-income Detroit residents.
To effectively counter gentrification, the city and its partners must quickly reprioritize deeply affordable housing preservation and development to meet the needs of low-income Detroiters.
Through community engagement and in the systems audit, several themes emerged:
- Stable housing is out of reach for low-income Detroiters leading to a reliance on homeless response programs for housing and a cycling back into homeless response programs due to the lack of affordable option once they become re-housed;
- Housing quality is a major concern for renters and there is a perception that is has not prioritized by the city;
- Individuals and families living on a fixed income have few if any options for safe, inhabitable affordable housing;
- The repercussions of white flight and divestment from Detroit still shape the city’s housing market and economy today; and
- The absence of mass transit further limits Detroiters’ access to affordable housing.
People are getting pushed out of downtown. Several buildings were converted to market rate, because of gentrification. Affordable senior housing became market rate.
A large, mostly white, affluent base of workers benefited from housing at rock-bottom prices. You got a lot of folks who moved into the city at a time when people are being displaced. No different from DC, San Francisco. There’s so much vacant property, so much flight that’s happened, people don’t think about gentrification, it’s happening at a different pace.
Adopt the local Detroit median income calculation community wide as outlined in the Detroit City Council’s resolution.
By using HUD’s Area Median Income (AMI) calculation and prioritizing affordable housing based on 50-80% of that AMI even outside of federal jurisdiction, developers and planners are holding stable housing out of reach for most Detroiters. In 2020, there was a difference of $18,874 between Detroit’s local median income ($31,283) and the federal AMI ($55,000) for the Detroit-Livonia-Warren region.
For example, low-income housing, and many of Detroit’s current affordable housing investments, are traditionally targeted at households with income at 51-80% of AMI. In Detroit, that would mean that households with incomes between $28,050 and $44,000 would be eligible for low-income housing. However, if eligibility was based on Detroiter’s median income rates, households with incomes between $15,954 and $25,026 would be prioritized for these housing opportunities.
In a city with such a high rate and history of poverty and exploitation, it is imperative that this issue is addressed. Adopting the local Detroit median income calculation(3) community-wide for affordable housing prioritization wherever possible will help reach the majority of Detroiters that are currently priced out of stability due to the city’s poverty levels.
Strategy in Action
The National Housing Trust Fund highlighted several communities’ strategies for developing and operating extremely low income housing. These strategies include public and private partners collaborating on cross-subsidization, capitalizing operating reserves, developing rent subsidies and operating assistance programs at the state level, supporting developers in reducing mortgage debt, and layering funding streams.
While the City already leverages many of these strategies, they have not been used to develop housing at the affordability levels needed in the city.
Develop a community-driven comprehensive affordability plan that meets the needs of Detroiters at all income levels in every Detroit neighborhood.
A community-driven affordability plan should be co-created in partnership between:
- Neighborhood leaders
- Hyperlocal community development agencies
- Representatives of people with lived experience of homelessness, eviction, and foreclosure;
- Local government agencies; and
- Other existing coalitions dedicated to this goal.
This plan and its creators should have at their disposal all affordable housing development and preservation tools currently available. This is including, but not limited to: public-private partnerships, the Detroit Land Bank, the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund, Rehabbed & Ready, all applicable state and federal funding streams, as well as local tax abatements, tax-exempt bond financing, tax credits that are currently supporting mid-income affordable housing development and preservation in Detroit, though they are billed to be low-income housing(4). The plan should be informed by data from across the spectrum of Detroiters’ housing realities and income and should situate housing within the framework of social determinants of health, interdependent with other determinants of health. Such a plan should also include funding and resources for capacity building for community development organizations to then lead the plan’s implementation in all of Detroit’s neighborhoods.
We really need to focus on maintaining the integrity and the equity of our communities and really looking at having a safe place and a place for Detroiters to remain Detroiters so they don’t feel pushed out and they don’t have to fear that the family that’s moving in next door. ‘I won’t lose my house if I miss one tax payment’
Community Organizer
Strategy in Action
A comprehensive housing affordability study in King County, Washington mapped the housing needs of the community across income bands to demonstrate the strain the local housing market puts on extremely low-income residents. These research methods would be valuable to Detroiters in assessing needs, as well as in building a shared understanding of the role that both the public and private sectors have played in exacerbating the city’s housing affordability crisis.
Prioritize new federal COVID relief and stimulus funding for quality, deeply affordable housing and homeless services based on community-led priorities.
To address the immediate unmet housing needs of low-to-middle income Detroiters, the city, state, and county should prioritize those who are priced out of current local affordable housing development and preservation priorities when planning for new federal relief and stimulus funding.
People experiencing homelessness are generally not exiting the homeless response system with increases in income (through employment or entitlements) and so the housing stock currently under development in Detroit is not likely to increase the community’s ability to quickly and safely house people experiencing homelessness. There is also a lack of quality existing low income rentals across the city, contributing to the difficulties in being able to safely and quickly exit the homeless response programs.
As additional homelessness, rental assistance, and community development block grant resources become available from the federal government, Detroit must fill the current gap in resources for Detroiters who are experiencing homelessness and those making less than $32,000 per year by targeting rental assistance resources and by utilizing the funding to address the housing quality issues across rental units in Detroit. The programs and services derived from those funding streams should be identified and/or designed by people with lived experience of homelessness and housing instability in Detroit, focusing on addressing the hardships facing historically marginalized communities in the city.
Housing priorities – in city of Detroit it is around developing affordable housing but not deeply affordable so not helping people experiencing homelessness. Their real focus is ‘bringing Detroit back’ and redeveloping in a way that isn’t inclusive of the homeless population. That’s a huge thing that we’re working against.
System Leader
Strategy in Action
The Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Response includes prioritization guidance for emergency rental assistance, a matrix of funding sources, and guidance for meeting the needs of children and families, all of which can be used to help ensure that Detroit’s ongoing COVID-19 response and recovery centers the needs of Detroiters who have limited resources to address their challenges.
Increase access to homeownership for Detroiters at lower income levels.
In the short term, local leaders can support Detroiters in accessing home ownership while interest rates are low by pairing credit repair services with supports to navigate the variety of homeownership assistance programs and discounts available to them. Partners should leverage existing local and statewide down payment assistance programs with FHA home loans (Detroit Home Mortgage, MI Home Loan Flex, MI Home Loan and Detroit Land Bank Discount Programs) to facilitate homeownership. Credit repair services are a necessary component of any such initiative given the impact of tax foreclosures and debt on Detroiters over the last two decades.
Strategy in Action
American Consumer Credit Counseling offers credit counseling, debt management, credit repair services, classes for first-time homebuyers, and a myriad of other resources that are helpful to individuals and families navigating homeownership opportunities.