Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Signe Smith’s father, Diallo Smith, is employed by Life Remodeled.
For Toyia Watts, it was a sunny day in Detroit’s Islandview neighborhood when she walked out her front door, looked around, and said, “Where are my people at?”
Toyia has lived in Detroit all her life, currently residing in her parents’ old home. In the past two decades, she has seen drastic changes in her neighborhood but has only recently pinpointed why. In an interview with the HPR, Toyia recalled, “Somebody handed me an article about gentrification, and that’s what made me start figuring out what the hell was going on.”
Toyia Watts, president of the Charlevoix Village Association, a Detroit neighborhood organization that combats displacement, overtaxation, and unaffordable housing, has been involved with her community’s fight against gentrification since 2000.
That’s 25 years of organizing against unethical urban development, disrupting city council meetings, and amplifying Detroiters’ voices when changes are made without their input. Their foremost opponent is gentrification, a problem that exists throughout the country. Gentrification can be defined as the process that occurs when higher-income residents move into a historically marginalized neighborhood. This happens by physically transforming said neighborhood through higher-end construction, causing raised housing costs and overtaxation. Often, gentrification results in the displacement of current residents due to raised rent and taxes and further contributes to changes in a neighborhood’s cultural character.
In Detroit, overtaxation has become a norm. The city has been continuously called out for its over-assessment of property taxes, which are relied on to estimate property value.
These over-assessments, typically in low-income areas, have resulted in homeowners struggling to pay their property tax and a record number of foreclosures, which can reduce property value. To give this some perspective, an investigation by The Detroit News estimated that Detroit residents have been overtaxed by almost $600 million since the Great Depression.
Many developers have taken advantage of the reduced property values in some neighborhoods, buying homes at low prices and turning them into fast-growing profits. This results in an increase in tax rates as the development in the area demands a sharp rise in revenue. As more developers transform the city, this trend has become better known among residents as the cycle of gentrification.
In short, high taxes make housing unaffordable for many residents, leading to foreclosures and cheap land grabs. This results in the development of high-value properties, which raises taxes for the rest of the neighborhood — continuing the cycle. As this cycle has grown in Detroit, the term gentrification has started getting thrown around, and communities have started taking action.
Fighting against the cycle, the CVA made waves at a city council meeting when they challenged a new development project in 2020. At that meeting, the developer conceded that the rates were too costly for residents, even though community consultations had been made beforehand.
For Toyia and other organizers, this is emblematic of the absence of community input in spaces where decisions about them are being made. Toyia notes that despite mass organization from CVA and other groups, Detroiters’ voices are still not centered in conversations about revitalization. It is important here to clarify the difference between revitalization and gentrification. Revitalization refers to efforts to improve the city through development practices. Gentrification is, among other things, the result of unethical revitalization that occurs when the livelihood of current citizens is not taken into account when administering revitalization efforts.
However, this has not always been the case for citizens like Toyia. She affirms that at the end of the day, residents share the same goal: “To make something happen,” she says, envisioning “a big explosion in our community” that would spark significant change around preventing gentrification.
The Path to the Present
While property overvaluation is perhaps the most direct source of today’s tensions, Detroit’s history has also played a major role.
Much of the tensions that face the city today can be traced back to the Detroit 1967 riots. A central point in Detroit’s history, the riots were spurred by the abundance of police brutality within the city and resulted in a wealth of White residents fleeing to the suburbs — the “White Flight” — leaving Detroit and its chances for economic prosperity in the dust. Structural oppressors like redlining, a government loan practice that negatively appraised areas based on the number or proximity of Black residents, further solidified this financial situation. Houses were devalued, and chances for generational wealth became bleak. On top of the economic ramifications, this extensive history of redlining has led to Detroit being one of the most segregated cities in the United States.
Despite this reality, Detroit still had chances for financial reconciliation due to the automakers General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, which provided job security and economic dependence for decades. However, after several business failures, this, too, ended in economic decline. These circumstances, combined with the unprecedented number of foreclosures, unemployment, and the 2008 financial crisis, created deep financial struggles for Detroit’s nearly four million residents. The outcome of this economic cataclysm was a city full of cheap land that developers could easily take advantage of — in other words, the Detroit that residents like Toyia know today.
To top things off, for decades, Detroiters have seen their city marred with what Mayor Mike Duggan calls “Ruin Porn,” an obsession with the city’s faults with no acknowledgment of its wins. It is commonplace to hear associations of desolation, ghost towns, and decline, with Detroit, despite many of these being made by individuals who have never visited the city or understood its reality.
In a recent fall campaign rally in Detroit, President Donald Trump proclaimed, “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if [Kamala Harris is] your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands”. Though nothing new, this rhetoric does not inspire optimism for any resident who wants to see the optics of their home changed. Trump’s 2024 win, fueled by divisiveness, only deepens concerns about quelling negative messaging about Detroit and other urban cities.
All in all, Detroiters are fighting multiple battles: unethical development, external and internal perceptions of the city, and the city’s history of racialized oppression that still lingers today.
Where The Policy Meets The People
In the past few years, Detroit has seen a transformation in infrastructure and development from Downtown to Midtown. To some, this transformation is a welcome shift given the harsh and often insensitive way Detroit has been depicted in the past. To others, this is a harmful development. A large consensus remains that most of the financial benefits only lie within the small Downtown-Midtown area. Moreover, these economic changes contribute to the “racialized poverty” seen throughout the city, a term which refers to the disproportionate amount of poverty that people of color experience within Detroit compared to their White counterparts.
Causes for this siloed development and racialized poverty can be traced to the spread of company power and money, as well as internal racial fractures within the city, which originated from housing and workplace discrimination. Malik Yakini, former executive director of Detroit Black Community Food Security Network — an organization focused on bolstering food activism, policy engagement, and urban planning within the Black community — states, “The core of the city is where the majority of the finances are put in, and we develop that with the hope that then, somehow, that wealth and prosperity will trickle down to the rest of the population in the neighborhoods.” So, in short, to many Detroiters, the city is stuck in an era of corporate dominance reminiscent of the 1980s. The ruling methodology? Reaganomics.
Former President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies, coined “Reaganomics,” typically refer to ‘trickle-down economics,’ a controversial methodology with tax cuts and lower rates for wealthy businesses and individuals. These economic principles continue to shape Detroit’s infrastructure as most tax breaks are given to developers and large corporate entities. This would theoretically lead to higher employment, market growth, and innovation, with the benefits “trickling down” to all residents.
In reality, this modern version of Reaganomics has largely failed to benefit the real people of Detroit. Studies on the correlation between gentrification and displacement in Detroit show that in many Detroit neighborhoods, there is a direct line between new capital redevelopment and the displacement of individuals. A large portion of this comes from removing rent-assisted housing in pockets of Downtown, leading to higher levels of relocation and grief among residents.
When it comes to the residential areas of the city, however, people have different opinions. A Brookings Institute study on neighborhood changes due to gentrification shows that while there is a decrease in Black residents, displacement from rising housing costs is not as prevalent compared to Midtown and Downtown. A large part of the study, which looked at a small sample size of Detroit neighborhoods, perpetuates the narrative that investment does not always result in displacement. In fact, in one neighborhood, Livernois-6 Mile, most of the displacement occurred due to a sheer lack of investment. Notwithstanding, residents of these areas are still wary of change. When organizations started making changes in the neighborhood, one resident confessed, “…people explicitly said, ‘Don’t make us like Midtown.’”
The Brookings study also emphasizes the differences in experiences across neighborhoods, which Toyia’s experience in Islandview conveys. She argues that the housing costs in Islandview have skyrocketed: “If you build new homes, who can afford what you [are] telling us y’all want for these apartment buildings in a low-income area?”
Islandview is one of the many pockets of gentrification within Detroit and the victim of a high level of mortgage and tax foreclosures. “I mean our property tax, you know, who can afford it when your income has not changed?” Toyia says, “And that hurts a lot of people when your income has not changed to keep up with the new era of gentrification.”
Who Does (And Doesn’t) This Benefit?
The biggest rebuttal to naysayers of gentrification is that without this sort of revitalization, Detroit will never recover from its previous socioeconomic ruins. Some studies find that gentrification is beneficial to Detroit, noting that in neighborhoods where gentrification has occurred, educational opportunities, upward mobility, and retention of residents increased. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (FRBP) conclude that while gentrification does lead to some displacement, especially for renters with less education, it’s not a huge increase compared to normal moving patterns.
The question here remains: Who are these less-educated renters, and should their misfortunes, though statistically small according to this study, be ignored? Moreover, doesn’t this create an unfair advantage for those with better access to ‘renter’s education’ than to those without?
High-profile figures within Detroit have been weighing in on this debate for decades. For example, economic mogul George Jackson Jr. would readily concur with the FRBP. When he spoke at a forum regarding Detroit’s future in 2013, a time in which eviction rates for low-income renters were high, he proclaimed: “…when I look at this city’s tax base, I say bring on more gentrification, I’m sorry, but I mean bring it on. We can’t just be a poor city and prosper.” Jackson is not the only one with this belief. Detroit has acquired many financial gains within the past years due to significant economic investment in the city. Mostly, these investments lie within a very small group of people across multiple enterprises. Their supposed intent is to have this prosperity spread to the broader population. The reality? Well, Detroit’s Reaganomics becomes even more clear.
So, who is in this small group of people? Dan Gilbert and Mike Ilitch are two individuals often blamed for the city’s mixed results. Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, controls most Downtown real estate. Late billionaire Ilitch, who owned the Detroit Tigers, Red Wings, and Little Caesars Pizza, significantly transformed the city. In 2019, The Illitch Family and Dan Gilbert’s businesses amassed $968 million in tax breaks in exchange for the promise of development. However, despite mass financing and praise, they have faced their respective criticisms for not doing more within Detroit: the Ilitches for their large ownership of undeveloped and stagnant land, Gilbert for controversial mortgage practices, and both for tax breaks that could have gone back to the city. Their tales represent the stark reality of real-estate control in the city, as well as where the focus of revitalization lies.
Overall, the sticking point to these vast renovations is that almost all of the economic prosperity and mobilization exists within the small bounds of Detroit’s downtown area: Little Caesars Arena, Comerica Park, Quicken Loans, Bedrock Detroit’s 100+ properties, and businesses maintained District Detroit are just a few to note. That’s over 100 properties, businesses, and investments just within the downtown area. For context, Downtown Detroit is around 7.2 square miles, but Detroit as a whole makes up around 139 square miles.
Jackson, Gilbert, or the Illitch Family would contend that despite this, the money would find its way back into greater Detroit. Even so, most of the tax dollars collected within Downtown stay Downtown due to a tax law that allows the Downtown Development Authority to obtain these collections. Coupled with the fact that the city relies on income tax more than property tax in the first place, cracks in this logic begin to show. The outcome of these policies is ultimately the Detroit we know today, where efforts to rebuild are not equal, and the spread of benefactors is inequitable.
More importantly, the benefits of these investments do not negate the fact they lead to many low-income individuals, many of whom are seniors, being kicked out of their homes, often rent-assisted housing. The argument that investments in the Downtown-Midtown area benefit everyone is weakened by the fact input does not match the output. Rent has increased by almost half since 2017, but the average income has yet to be raised to the same level. The majority of the city’s residents are renters, so this affects almost everyone.
To top things off, many of the high-earners in these spaces are workers from the suburbs, or new residents, who have been rapidly moving into these renovated areas. In an interview with Metro Times, CEO of Detroit-centered think tank Detroit Future City, Anika Goss, heeded, “The jobs that you would think of as middle-wage or higher-wage are not being occupied by Detroiters.” She goes on to clarify, “The jobs are either going to people who are moving here from other places or suburbanites. They are not Detroiters.”
So really, who does gentrification benefit in the end? If these studies and intellectuals are to be believed, it is a small portion of residents and a jumble of suburbanites. Is that enough to justify the misfortunes of the Detroiters it harms?
So What’s The Verdict?
The fact of the matter is that while Detroit has made waves with monetary gains and public perceptions, it’s still not doing well by its residents. A large majority of Detroit’s residents are not reaping the benefits of the investments those in power continue stubbornly defend. However, the rebuttal remains: what would be the alternative? Well, for starters, talking to residents.
Sharing about her work with the Charlevoix Village Association, Toyia expressed the hurt she and others in her community have felt, exclaiming, “It hurts still, that we’re not sitting at the table when they come up with the issues of programs in the city…And that’s what burned us out: what programs really work for us?” She reiterates, “It’s not uplifting us at all. … And we’re still not sitting at the table.”
Neighborhood revitalization can indeed be possible while keeping community members at the forefront. One such example is a Detroit-based non-profit, Life Remodeled. Life Remodeled works with communities to repurpose property into “community hubs.” In an interview with the HPR, Life Remodeled’s former CEO Chris Lambert stated, “Detroiters have all the talent they need. But many don’t have access to all the opportunities they deserve.”
What makes Life Remodeled different from other organizations? Well, the first is that they understand the historical context. Chris emphasizes, “Systemic racism has created an environment … where many predominantly Black communities throughout the country are experiencing less access in educational opportunities [and] economic mobility.” Life Remodeled uses this fact as motivation for their approach of bringing neighborhood non-profits into an accessible space within the community, on top of making it a priority to constantly meet with community members before, during, and after any projects being made.
The broader narrative surrounding this work is that for a large percentage of developers within Detroit, it appears that they care more about appealing to the people who left Detroit post-’67 riots rather than those who stayed. There are two teaming narratives of Detroit: one of blight, foreclosures, and crime; and one of a rising comeback story. Nonetheless, both these narratives fail to center the voice of the one group that is most affected: its residents. Detroiters have always seen the city’s rich beauty and history. To say that their disapproval of developer tactics is counterproductive to the goal of reimagining Detroit completely erases the years of hurt and resilience that they have endured. Take a look at the clothing company David’s Vintage, which transformed the phrase “Detroit Never Left,” and turned it into a brand that Detroiters could wear proudly: “Despite newfound success in the City, one thing is quite evident – Detroit Never Left™ – we just took a break from being great, but now we’re ready to reclaim our throne.”
Developers, intellectuals, and regular citizens reading the news alike all need to rethink the way they talk, think, and discuss intercity and urban areas. For too long, rhetoric has bordered on dehumanization, almost as if people forget that human beings live, love, and enjoy life there. Detroit is not the only city that has experienced the consequences of gentrification, and it will not be the last if things continue the way they are. Cities have to grow economically, but they also need to care for their citizens. The issue here is whether or not human beings can warrant one injustice for the ‘greater good.’
While the conversation surrounding revitalization efforts is far from simple, addressing these problems starts with identifying that there is one. Residents and activists like Toyia need to feel that those in power are hearing them, and developers like Gilbert need to understand that they cannot work without accountability. Unless these practices change, the next time Toyia walks out her front door, she won’t ask, “Where are my people at?” but rather ‘Where is the humanity at?’
