CHAPTER FOUR: Detroit

  1. 58 percent of the children… and one-third of the housing: “Highland Park, MI,” Census Reporter, https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US2638180-highland-park-mi/.
  2. built in 1911: “George Ferris School,” Detroiturbex, http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/schools/ferris/index.html.
  3. bought it for $2,000… trying to raise: J.C. Reindl, “Entrepreneur’s big vision for empty Highland Park schools may die,” Detroit Free Press, January 28, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2019/01/28/detroit-arts-highland-park/2656154002/.
  4. 15 million Model Ts: “Ford Highland Park Plant,” Detroit Historical Society, https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/ford-highland-park-plant.
  5. zip code: 48203: The film Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route is a tender, insightful portrait of the adjacent area. America ReFramed, season 7, episode 3, “Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route,” directed and produced by Pam Sporn, aired January 29, 2019, on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/detroit-48202-conversations-along-a-postal-route-tzx2ee/.
  6. 120,000 Black homeowners: Edward Lynch et al., “The State of Economic Equity in Detroit,” Detroit Future City, May 2021, 98, https://detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-State-of-Economic-Equity-in-Detroit.pdf; “Progress Report 2016–2019,” Wayne County Treasurer’s Office, https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/treasurer/wayne-county-treasurer-s-progress-report.aspx.
  7. 64 percent lower: “Detroit City, Michigan: 2019 Population Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/detroitcitymichigan.
  8. twenty square miles: Detroit Future City, 11.
  9. fell from 900,000 to 171,000: “Analysis of the Detroit, Michigan Housing Market,” Department of Housing and Urban Development, October 1966, ii, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/scanned/scan-chma-DetroitMichigan-1966.pdf; “Detroit City, Michigan,” U.S. Census Bureau.
  10. a 25 percent fall in the number of homeowners: Detroit Future City: 2012 Strategic Framework Plan (Detroit: Inland Press, 2013), 210.
  11. 53 percent of its Black residents: Growing Detroit’s African-American Middle Class, (Detroit: Detroit Future City, 2019).
  12. eighty tenants were evicted per day: Robert Goodspeed, Margaret Dewar, and Jim Schaafsma, “Michigan’s Eviction Crisis,” University of Michigan Poverty Solutions, May 2020, https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2020/05/Michigan-Eviction-Project-policy-brief.pdf.
  13. 10,000 people a year: “2019 State of Homelessness,” Homeless Action Network of Detroit, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5344557fe4b0323896c3c519/t/5fa051f37ccdd221587af2d9/1604342268391/2019_HAND+ANNUAL+REPORT+%281%29.pdf.
  14. one-third: “Detroit City, Michigan: 2019 Population Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau.
  15. the following business model: Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour, The Eviction Machine: Neighborhood Instability and Blight in Detroit’s Neighborhoods (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2019), https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2019/07/Akers-et-al-Eviction-Machine-Revised-June-18.pdf.
  16. a median price of $1,300: Ibid.
  17. median Detroit rents of $820 per month: U.S. Census Bureau, “Population Estimates: July 1, 2019 (V2019),” accessed October 15, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/.
  18. a thousand low-wage jobs: Adrienne Roberts, “Amazon Looks to Open $400-Million Distribution Center at Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, August 11, 2020.
  19. “Detroit was, above all”: Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), 21, 23.
  20. Helicopter photography: Alex S. MacLean, “Detroit by Air,” New York Times, December 7, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/exposures-detroit-by-air-alex-maclean.html.
  21. an award-winning video: “Detroit ’67,” music video by Sam Roberts Band, October 8, 2009, on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNenEe0VcE. The video won the 2009 Video of the Year from the JUNO Awards, the Canadian Grammys.
  22. “Blacks went crazy”: “Reporter Charlie LeDuff Discovers His Black History,” accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31q5t3. Herb Boyd, Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017), cover. In his blurb reviewing Herb Boyd’s exceptional history of the city, Ta-Nehisi Coates put it this way: “Detroit has become a code for urban failure, which is to say, black failure.” For a vivid example of Detroit cast as urban failure, see Glen Beck, “Beck TV: Hiroshima vs. Detroit–Which City Really Embraced the ‘American Dream’?” The Blaze (Feb. 28, 2011), http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/02/28/beck-tv-hiroshima-vs-detroit-which-city-really-embraced-the-american-dream/.
  23. the white gaze on Detroit: Hadas Gold, “Detroit, the right’s perfect pinata,” Politico, August 18, 2013, https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/detroit-michigan-conservatives-095630; “Detroit at Crossroads 50 Years After Riots Devastated City,” NBC News, July 17, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/detroit-crossroads-50-years-after-riots-devastated-city-n783631. There is a cottage industry of writing that blames Black Detroit for ruining the city. From the right, figures like Ann Coulter (speaking on FoxNews) say things like: “[Detroit was] the gem of the United States of America. First, it was destroyed by the mob with the race riots. Then it was destroyed by the unions driving the jobs abroad.” More centrist writings similarly assume 1967 was the city’s demographic tipping point.
  24. “My city got a black eye”: Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty, “Black City,” Coming Out My Box (Detroit: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 5.
  25. shelter for… 5,000 people: “Doorway to Freedom–Detroit and the Underground Railroad,” Detroit Historical Society, https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/underground-railroad.
  26. Two-thirds of the 1,400 men: Boyd, Black Detroit, 36, 47; “Michigan in the American Civil War,” Michigan Legislature, October 2015, https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Publications/CivilWar.pdf.
  27. Ten percent would not survive: “1864: First Michigan Colored Infantry Mustered Into Service,” Michigan Day by Day, February 17, 2018, http://harris23.msu.domains/event/1864-first-michigan-colored-infantry-mustered-into-service/.
  28. “Colored Waiting Room”: “One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series,” Museum of Modern Art, accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/panel/12/history/.
  29. Detroit’s Black population grew more than 700 percent: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 29.
  30. “Five Dollar Day”… allowed Ford to grow: Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 23, 48–50.
  31. thirty-acre foundry: “Henry Ford’s Rouge,” The Henry Ford, accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/history-and-timeline/fords-rouge/.
  32. tuberculosis, deafness, dismemberment, or death: Bates, Making of Black Detroit, 64–65.
  33. “up South”: Gerald Van Dusen, Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot of 1942 (Charleston: The History Press, 2020), 12. “Up South” was not just a general nickname to capture Detroit’s culture. By World War II, white migrants from the South were the second-largest group in Detroit.
  34. “if they were white”: Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 3rd edition, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 153.
  35. Segregation cut across daily life: Jeremy Williams, Detroit: The Black Bottom Community (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 45; Ernest Borden, Detroit’s Paradise Valley (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 9.
  36. “ethnic hodgepodge”: Williams, Detroit: The Black Bottom Community, 11, 49.
  37. up to 150 percent of what white tenants paid: Bates, Making of Black Detroit, 33.
  38. most dilapidated buildings: Bates, Making of Black Detroit, 97; Van Dusen, Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot, 21, 25–30, 38–41.
  39. by 1926 about a third: Williams, Detroit: The Black Bottom Community, 50–52.
  40. a photograph from the eve of: Ibid., 31.
  41. In 1925, a man named Dr. Ossian Sweet: Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Picador, 2004). The facts of the Sweet trial are widely reported, but this is the richest telling of the story.
  42. “When I opened the door”: Ibid., 290.
  43. As a five-year-old: Ibid., 68.
  44. In closing arguments: Ibid., 334. After the second trial, Darrow told the jury: “These people are the children of slavery. If the race that we belong to owes anything to any human being, or to any power in this Universe, they owe it to these black men.”
  45. The case was one of: Ibid., 344–46. Ms. Sweet and one of their children, however, subsequently died from tuberculosis, which they had contracted while held in jail pending trial. Dr. Sweet went on to enjoy wide professional success, but troubled by grief and trauma, he took his own life in 1960.
  46. Black families purchased these lots: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot, 57.
  47. West Eight Mile: Gerald Van Dusen, Detroit’s Birwood Wall: Hatred & Healing in the West Eight Mile Community (Charleston: The History Press, 2019), 29; Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). West Eight Mile is one of hundreds of Black semi-rural and suburban communities that persevered in spite of exclusion from banking and infrastructure investments.
  48. In a photograph: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Birwood Wall, 117.
  49. the opinion cited: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 494 n.11 (1954).
  50. The Birwood Wall: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Birwood Wall, 170–72. The Birwood Wall is now a long line of murals along one side of the Alfonso Wells Memorial Playground, which honors a West Eight Mile resident who adopted and fostered neighborhood babies, obtained grants to renovate the homes of local senior citizens, and spent his own elder years active in local politics and civil rights causes.
  51. June 22, 1938: Kieran Mulvaney, “When Joe Louis Boxed Nazi Favorite Max Schmeling,” June 2, 2021, https://www.history.com/news/joe-louis-max-schmeling-match. Truth, as they say, is more interesting than fiction. Schmeling used the Nazi salute and socialized with Hitler and other Nazi officers, but he also refused to fire his Jewish-American manager and (just months after his fight with Louis) he sheltered two Jewish boys from the terrorism of Kristallnacht. Schmeling and Louis became friends after the war, and Schmeling was one of the pallbearers at Louis’s funeral in 1966.
  52. “White Americans”: Ibid.
  53. more than one hundred: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot, 114, 124.
  54. It took two months: Ibid., 131.
  55. One infamous photograph: I learned the back story of this picture from a presentation by Jamon Jordan, the official historian for the City of Detroit, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the city and an actor’s gift for bringing history to life. Black Scroll Network History & Tours, https://blackscrollnetwork.weebly.com/.
  56. Some white Detroiters were killed: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 29.
  57. Black veterans gave up on their hometowns: David H. Onkst, “ ‘First a Negro… Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944–1948,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 517–543.
  58. In the Second Great Migration from 1940 to 1970: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 23 (Table 1.1). By 1970, African-Americans represented 44 percent of the city’s total population.
  59. By the late 1940s, approximately 80 percent: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot, 20.
  60. “This property shall not be used”: Sipes v. McGhee, 316 Mich. 614, 620 (Mich. 1947).
  61. “I have seen Mr. McGhee”: Ibid., 621. This case resonates with Ian Haney López’s groundbreaking argument in White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996).
  62. The NAACP and Thurgood Marshall: In Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), the Supreme Court overturned Sipes v. McGhee as well as the eponymous companion case from Missouri.
  63. Blues, writes city historian Herb Boyd: Boyd, Black Detroit, 3.
  64. John Lee Hooker, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper: John Sinclair, “Mother City Blues through the Ages,” Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond, ed. M. L. Leibler (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 93.
  65. A segregated Black middle and high school: “Motown legacy eclipses a larger story about black music in Detroit,” NPR, February 15, 2017, https://www.michiganradio.org/post/motown-legacy-eclipses-larger-story-about-black-music-detroit.
  66. Langston Hughes called a “minor miracle”: Borden, Detroit’s Paradise Valley, 30.
  67. “OWN and MANAGE”: Ibid.
  68. For most of the neighborhood’s history: Wilson and Cohassy, Toast of the Town: The Life and Times of Sunnie Wilson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018), 102.
  69. A middle-class housing development: “Mies van der Rohe, Lafayette Park,” Detroit Historical Society, accessed October 22, 2021, https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/mies-van-der-rohe-residential-district-lafayette-park. This housing development, called Lafayette Park, was designed by Mies van der Rohe. It remains an architectural jewel, and it served as an early experiment in racially integrated housing. But the small number of high-cost units open to African Americans could not replace the wealth and housing that was lost in Black Bottom.
  70. Black families moved: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Birwood Wall, 59.
  71. Detroit lost more than half: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 144 (table 5.2); Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 137.
  72. 82,000 defense-industry jobs: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 140–41.
  73. Black unemployment nearly doubled: Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 146, 151.
  74. most decentralized of any big city: Elizabeth Kneebone, Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2009), 8. As a practical matter, what this means is that Metro Detroit had the highest share of jobs located more than ten miles from the urban center.
  75. On childhood trips: Diana Ross, Secrets of a Sparrow (New York City: Villard Books, 1993), 82.
  76. Dearborn’s mayor from 1942 to 1978: “Orville Hubbard–the ghost who still haunts Dearborn,” Detroit News, July 17, 2020, http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/2000/07/17/orville-hubbard-the-ghost-who-still-haunts-dearborn/.
  77. Detroit chapter of the NAACP: Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 20–21.
  78. Aretha Franklin’s father: “Franklin, Clarence LaVaughn,” Detroit Historical Society, accessed October 22, 2021, https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/franklin-clarence-lavaughn.
  79. League of Revolutionary Black Workers: Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying.
  80. James and Grace Lee Boggs: James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, “The City Is the Black Man’s Land,” Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker’s Notebook, ed. James Boggs (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 40.
  81. The death toll of forty-three: Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 259.
  82. telegraphed 3-777: Jon Lowell, “A Time of Tragedy,” Detroit News, August 11, 1967, 4, https://lsa.umich.edu/sid/detroiters-speak/detroiters-speak-archive/_jcr_content/par/download_1667472917/file.res/%22A%20Time%20of%20Tragedy%22%20Article%20from%20the%20Detroit%20News.
  83. More than two thousand buildings: Sugrue, Origins of Urban Crisis, 259.
  84. Seventeen thousand federal, state, and local: Thomas J. Sugrue, “Foreword,” Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies, ed. Joel Stone (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2017), ix.
  85. a summary of the problem: Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 14.
  86. STRESS unit alone killed twenty-two: Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 81–82, 91.
  87. protested police brutality… pro-police rallies: Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 94–98.
  88. Ninety percent: Heather Ann Thompson, “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City, Detroit 1945–1980,” Journal of Urban History 25, no. 2 (January 1999): 163–98, 189. Thompson’s extraordinary article analyzes the development of Detroit’s city politics in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, including the racial polarization that resulted from white Detroit’s reliance on harsh, anti-Black policing as an answer to rising unemployment.
  89. Black share of Detroit’s population grew: Thompson, “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight,” 163.
  90. Starting in the 1970s and consistently as late as 2018: Van Dusen, Detroit’s Birwood Wall, 121–23, 162–64.
  91. more than 20 percent of Detroiters: Detroit Future City: 2012 Strategic Framework Plan, 42, 160.
  92. In Milliken v. Bradley: 418 US 717 (1974).
  93. meaningless remedy: Joyce A. Baugh, The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy of Desegregation (Lawrence: University Press of Canvas, 2011).
  94. a systematic analysis of city finances from 1950 to 2013: Nathan Bomey and John Gallagher, “How Detroit Went Broke: The Answers Mmay Surprise You–and Don’t Blame Coleman Young,” Detroit Free Press, September 15, 2013, updated July 18, 2018, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2013/09/15/how-detroit-went-broke-the-answers-may-surprise-you-and/77152028/.
  95. When a city is at least 50 percent African American: Zoltan L. Hajnal and Jessica Trounstine, “Who or What Governs?: The Effects of Economics, Politics, Institutions, and Needs on Local Spending,” American Politics Research 38, no. 6, 1130, 1152 (2010).
  96. Hurricane HUD: Roger Biles, The Fate of Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945–2000 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 213.
  97. Housing legislation in the 1950s and 1960s: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 42–89, 171.
  98. Speculators took advantage: Taylor, Race for Profit, 145.
  99. A Detroit Free Press survey: Ibid., 182.
  100. “predatory inclusion” in these homeownership programs: Ibid., 5, 179.
  101. Real estate agents typically: Ibid., 181.
  102. Lenders’ losses were backstopped: Jennifer Szalai, “Two Histories of Financiers Profiting from Real Estate While Homeowners Go Belly Up,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/books/review-homewreckers-aaron-glantz-race-for-profit-keeanga-yamahtta-taylor.html.
  103. More than one hundred speculators: Taylor, Race for Profit, 198–200.
  104. Owners on fixed income: Ibid., 175.
  105. Foreclosures spiked: Ibid., 170.
  106. By the mid-1970s: Ibid., 224–225.
  107. Hoping to build a future: Jenny Nolan, “Auto plant vs. neighborhood: The Poletown battle,” Detroit News, January 26, 2000, http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/2000/01/26/auto-plant-vs-neighborhood-the-poletown-battle.
  108. After the resistance vigils: Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 208.
  109. “John’s Carpet House”: NPR, September 28, 2015, https://www.michiganradio.org/post/detroit-locals-love-neighborhood-blues-festival-city-not-so-much; William Schambra, “Saving John’s Carpet House, Saving Civil Society?” Nonprofit Quarterly, August 12, 2014, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/saving-john-s-carpet-house-saving-civil-society/.
  110. The Allied Media Conference: “The Black Lives Matter Convenes at AMC2015,” Allied Media Projects, August 4, 2015, https://alliedmedia.org/news/black-lives-matter-movement-convenes-amc2015.
  111. Caregivers at the New Light: Robert B. Jones, Sr., “Searching for the Son: Delta Blues Legend Son House in Detroit,” Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond, ed. M. L. Leibler (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 74.
  112. Wilson… established the Forest Club: Wilson and Cohassy, Toast of the Town, 104, 107.
  113. Staffed by Wilson and his last waitress: Ibid., 167–75.
  114. “why some people be mad”: Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 (Rochester: BOA Editions, Ltd., 2000), 38.
  115. 18 percent of people: Detroit Future City, 210.
  116. French photographers: Sean O’Hagan, “Detroit in ruins: the photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre,” The Guardian, January 1, 2011.
  117. the city had lost 25 percent of its population: Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour, The Eviction Machine: Neighborhood Instability and Blight in Detroit’s Neighborhoods (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2019), 8, https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2019/07/Akers-et-al-Eviction-Machine-Revised-June-18.pdf.
  118. “prolonged collapse”: Robert E. Scott, Manufacturing Job Loss: Trade, Not Productivity, Is the Culprit, Issue Brief #402 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2015), 1–2, https://files.epi.org/2015/ib402-manufacturing-job-loss.pdf; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, All Employees, Manufacturing [MANEMP], FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP. Between 1970 and 2000, the total number of manufacturing jobs rose and fell modestly within a range of 16.8 to 19.6 million jobs.
  119. 2014 manufacturing jobs total: Ibid.
  120. 400,000 jobs: Detroit Future City, 44.
  121. unemployment rate nearly quadrupled: In re City of Detroit, Mich., 504 B.R. 97, 119 (Bankr. E.D. Mich. 2013).
  122. more likely to live in poverty: Detroit Future City, 44.
  123. Total tax revenues sank: Wallace C. Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy (New York: Demos, 2013), 17, https://www.demos.org/research/detroit-bankruptcy. The city’s total tax revenues fell 20 percent between 2008 and 2013.
  124. Municipal income tax revenues fell: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 118.
  125. Sales tax revenues fell: Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 18.
  126. a 35 percent drop in property tax revenues: Ibid.
  127. the state cut aid to Detroit: Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 20; City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 118. The city’s falling population drove more than one-third of these state aid cuts, due to a population-based state aid formula. The balance of the cuts to state aid were discretionary state political choices.
  128. These reductions were not worse: Nathan Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), 13. This source documents state aid reductions to all municipalities by 31 percent between 2000 and 2010.
  129. “[T]he City lost”: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 116.
  130. Some lawyers and financial analysts: Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 5.
  131. $300 million in termination payments: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 114–18; Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 26–32; Bomey, Detroit Resurrected, 21–29, 91–93.
  132. $1 billion to $3.5 billion: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 113–14.
  133. $18,000 per year… $30,000 for police and fire: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 113–14.
  134. an additional $4.3 billion: Oral Opinion on the Record of Judge Steven Rhodes, In Re City of Detroit, November 7, 2014, https://www.mied.uscourts.gov/pdffiles/dboralopinion.pdf.
  135. twice as many retirees: Steven Yaccino and Monica Davey, “Detroit’s Emergency Manager Offers Dire Report on City,” New York Times, May 12, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/us/detroit-fiscal-problems-are-severe-report-says.html.
  136. fallen by 77 percent: Nathan Bomey and John Gallagher, “How Detroit Went Broke: The Answers May Surprise You—and Don’t Blame Coleman Young,” Detroit Free Press, Sept. 15, 2013, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2013/09/15/how-detroit-went-broke-the-answers-may-surprise-you-and/77152028/.
  137. Seventy-two sites qualified for the federal Superfund program: Ibid.
  138. Detroit entered bankruptcy: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 120.
  139. Sixty-one percent of employed city residents: Detroit Future City, 42.
  140. In 2011, the city’s violent crime rate: Ibid., 210.
  141. more than doubled: Mark Hatzenbuehler et al., “The Collateral Damage of Mass Incarceration: Risk of Psychiatric Morbidity Among Nonincarcerated Residents of High-Incarceration Neighborhoods,” American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 1 (January 2015):138–143.
  142. an average of sixty-nine per year: Tresa Baldas, “Detroit Police Finally Rid of Federal Oversight,” Detroit Free Press, March 31, 2016, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/03/31/detroit-police-finally-rid-federal-oversight/82491776/.
  143. 50 percent more likely to die: Detroit Future City, 210.
  144. Detroit cut its public workforce: Michelle Wilde Anderson, “Needing and Fearing Billionaires in Cities Abandoned by Wealth,” Yale Law & Policy Review 35, no. 1 (2016): 235.
  145. The city closed: Detroit Future City, 272; City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 120.
  146. only 35,000 of the city’s 88,000 street lights… 27 percent of its roads: Detroit Future City, 160.
  147. about one-third… 250,000 miles… Archaic IT systems: City of Detroit, 504 B.R. 97, 120–21.
  148. Unpaid income taxes: Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 20.
  149. controversial law… 57 percent: Michelle Wilde Anderson, “Democratic Dissolution: Radical Experimentation in State Takeovers of Local Governments,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 39, no. 3 (2012): 577–623. As I wrote even before the Flint Water Crisis, the reforms raised serious concerns about accountability. The law gave an unelected official new powers that the displaced elected officials had lacked. Misappropriations and conflict-of-interest concerns about emergency managers in Pontiac and Highland Park had offered a grim reminder that everyone, including state officials, needed checks and balances.
  150. Just about every decision: Bankruptcy litigation is highly technical, as the court confirms how much each creditor is owed, the city assets that can be sold or transferred to creditors, and what percentage of the city’s debt will be forgiven. In Detroit’s case, creditors disputed nearly every one of these decisions. In Detroit Resurrected, cited above, reporter Nathan Bomey memorializes the full chronology of the bankruptcy’s participants and controversies.
  151. cut dramatically: Susan Tompor, “Even 5 years later, retirees feel the effects of Detroit’s bankruptcy,” Detroit Free Press, July 18, 2018, https://www.freep.com/story/money/personal-finance/susan-tompor/2018/07/18/detroit-bankruptcy-retirees-pension/759446002/.
  152. Grand Bargain: James M. Ferris, “Detroit’s Grand Bargain: Philanthropy as a Catalyst for a Brighter Future,” June 2017, https://cppp.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IHI_Digital_2017.pdf.
  153. $50 million: Aaron Mondry, “Big changes are in the works at Belle Isle, Detroit’s favorite park,” Detour Detroit, January 26, 2021, https://detourdetroiter.com/big-changes-are-in-works-at-belle-isle-detroits-favorite-park/.
  154. Detroit’s bankruptcy plan: The Challenges of Meeting Detroit’s Pension Promises (Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable Trusts, March 2018), https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2018/03/challenge_of_meeting_detroits_pension_promises_report_v6.pdf; City of Detroit, “Overview of Detroit’s Plan of Adjustment,” release CLI-2187394v4, February 2014, https://detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/docs/EM/Announcements/Summary_PlanOfAdjustment.pdf.
  155. “I urge you”: Oral Opinion on the Record of Judge Steven Rhodes, In Re City of Detroit, November 7, 2014, https://www.mied.uscourts.gov/pdffiles/dboralopinion.pdf.
  156. 15 percent increase: Christine Ferretti, “After Detroit Bankruptcy: Optimism, but ‘challenges are real’,” Detroit News, July 18, 2018, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/07/18/detroit-bankruptcy-optimism-but-challenges-real/772729002/.
  157. “skyscraper sale”: David Segal, “A Missionary’s Quest to Remake Motor City,” New York Times, April 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-quest-to-remake-downtown-detroit.html.
  158. fifty richest people: “Bloomberg Billionaires Daily Index: Dan Gilbert,” Bloomberg, accessed November 10, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/daniel-gilbert/.
  159. fifteen buildings: Michael Wayland, “Dan Gilbert Purchases Five More Detroit Buildings,” MLive, December 18, 2012, https://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/2012/12/dan_gilbert_purchases_five_mor.html.
  160. “I made a prediction”: Paige Williams, “Drop Dead, Detroit! The Suburban Kingpin Who Is Thriving off the City’s Decline,” New Yorker, January 19, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/27/drop-dead-detroit.
  161. 18 million: “What We Do,” Bedrock Detroit, accessed November 14, 2021, https://www.bedrockdetroit.com/about/.
  162. 250 properties: Anderson, “Needing and Fearing,” 241.
  163. State and local taxpayers invested: J.C. Reindl, “Ilitch Organization to Get $74M Bonus for Hitting Arena District Goal,” Detroit Free Press, May 11, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2019/05/11/ilitch-organization-arena-detroit-district-goal-bonus/1157439001/.
  164. A third billionaire: Akers, Eviction Machine, 22; Tom Perkins, “How the Morouns Became Detroit’s Least Trustworthy Billionaire Family,” Curbed: Detroit, January 6, 2020, https://detroit.curbed.com/2020/1/6/21051665/moroun-family-detroit-history-michigan-central-station.
  165. “Detroit hit rock bottom”… “Detroit finally had hope”: Bomey, Detroit Resurrected, xv.
  166. A stunning 48 percent: Akers, Eviction Machine, 10; Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour, “Instrumental exploitation: Predatory property relations at city’s end,” Geoforum 91 (May 2018), 132.
  167. The rate of homeownership: Carl Hedman and Rolf Pendall, Rebuilding and Sustaining Homeownership for African Americans (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 2018), 4, https://www.urban.org/research/publication/rebuilding-and-sustaining-homeownership-african-americans. This rate of decline was much higher than for white Detroiter or Michigan as a whole.
  168. a majority renter city by 2016: Macdonald, Christine. “Black home ownership plunges in Michigan.” Detroit News, July 10, 2018. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/2018/07/10/black-home-ownership-drop-largest-michigan/767804002/.
  169. Discrepancies in subprime lending: Debbie Gruenstein Bocian, Wei Li, and Keith S. Ernst, Foreclosures by Race and Ethnicity: The Demographics of a Crisis (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Responsible Lending, 2010), 8, https://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/research-analysis/foreclosures-by-race-and-ethnicity.pdf.
  170. Nearly half of the mortgages: Ashton, Philip, “CRA’s ‘Blind Spots’: Community Reinvestment and Concentrated Subprime Lending in Detroit,” Journal of Urban Affairs 32, no. 5 (2010), 586–87.
  171. six times as high: Joe Guillen, “Detroit leads the nation in reverse mortgage foreclosures,” Detroit Free Press, June 14, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/14/detroit-leads-nation-reverse-mortgage-foreclosures/1442186001/.
  172. Homeowners used: Ibid.
  173. “value gap”: Alexa Eisenberg, Connor Wakayama, and Patrick Cooney, Reinforcing Low-Income Homeownership Through Home Repair: Evaluation of the Make It Home Repair Program (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2021), 3.
  174. Small purchase prices: Matthew Goldstein, “Detroit: From Motor City to Housing Incubator,” New York Times, November 4, 2017.
  175. As global real estate investment: Josh Akers and Eric Seymour, “Instrumental exploitation: Predatory property relations at city’s end,” Geoforum 91, no. 1 (May 2018), 127–140.
  176. Demand grew in all kinds of broke towns: Greg Jaffe, “The Strange Summer Land Rush in Peoria’s Dying South End,” Washington Post, August 14, 2021.
  177. A buyer could get land: Akers, Eviction Machine, 19 (2005–2014 numbers).
  178. Average rents in the city: Julie Cassidy, Detroit: The Evolution of a Housing Crisis (Lansing: Michigan League for Public Policy, 2019), 2, https://mlpp.org/detroit-the-evolution-of-a-housing-crisis/.
  179. in weak land markets: Desmond, Evicted, 74–76.
  180. speculator could clear a profit: Akers, Eviction Machine, 6.
  181. The city’s tax assessment office: Bernadette Atuahene and Christopher Berry, “Taxed Out: Illegal Property Tax Assessments and the Epidemic of Tax Foreclosures in Detroit,” U.C. Irvine Law Review 9 (2019): 862.
  182. Thirty years had passed: Ibid.
  183. The city estimated: Turbeville, The Detroit Bankruptcy, 20.
  184. A majority of Detroit homes: Atuahene, “Predatory Cities,” 109.
  185. The lower the property value: Ibid., 113.
  186. Detroit has one of the highest: Bob DeBoer and Adam H. Langley, 50-State Property Tax Comparison Study for Taxes Paid in 2020 (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, June 2021), 2, https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/50-state-property-tax-comparison-for-2020-full_0.pdf. Aaron Twait, 50-State Property Tax Comparison Study (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, April 2015).
  187. relatively high tax rate: Ibid.
  188. Wayne County was also teetering: Eric D. Lawrence, “How Wayne County navigated its financial crisis,” Detroit Free Press, October 20, 2016, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2016/10/20/wayne-county-ends-consent-agreement/92469844/.
  189. If a landowner falls behind in Detroit: Bernadette Atuahene and Christopher Berry, “Taxed Out: Illegal Property Tax Assessments and the Epidemic of Tax Foreclosures in Detroit,” U.C. Irvine Law Review 9 (2019): 870–71 (enumerating these fees in detail).
  190. a “pageant of misery”: Akers and Seymour, Eviction Machine, 21.
  191. $52.3 million: Claire Herbert, A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), 213.
  192. most Detroit applicants: Michele Oberholtzer, “Myth-busting the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis,” Detroit Metro Times, September 13, 2017, https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/myth-busting-the-detroit-tax-foreclosure-crisis/Content?oid=5552983.
  193. started reappearing: Rachel Monroe, “Gone Baby Gone,” The New Republic, October 2017; Matthew Goldstein and Alexandra Stevenson, “Market for Fixer-Uppers Traps Low-Income Buyers,” New York Times, February 20, 2016.
  194. In Detroit, land-installment contracts: Akers and Seymore, Eviction Machine, 12.
  195. generally treated as an eviction: Ibid.
  196. After a protracted battle to regulate… Texas is home: Monroe, “Gone Baby Gone”; Genevieve Hébert Fajardo, “ ‘Owner Finance! No Banks Needed!’ Consumer Protection Analysis of Seller-Financed Home Sales: A Texas Case Study,” Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy 20, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 429–48.
  197. Local scholars Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour: Joshua Akers and Eric Seymour, The Eviction Machine: Neighborhood Instability and Blight in Detroit’s Neighborhoods (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2019).
  198. In a multiyear study: Ibid.
  199. “Exit Strategy April 2013, LLC”: Oberholtzer, “Myth-busting the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis.”
  200. “tax-wash” their inventory: Akers and Seymour, Eviction Machine, 9.
  201. 150,000 Detroit properties: Hedman and Pendall, Rebuilding and Sustaining Homeownership, 8.
  202. 45,000 parcels… 41% of them: Detroit Future City, 272.
  203. Nearly 30 percent: Carl Hedman and Rolf Pendall, Rebuilding and Sustaining Homeownership for African Americans (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 2018), 8.
  204. Another 70,000 households: Seymour and Akers, “Building the Eviction Economy,” 43.
  205. Nearly 30 percent: Ibid.
  206. between 2013 and 2017: Joe Guillen, “Detroit leads the nation in reverse mortgage foreclosures,” Detroit Free Press, June 14, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/14/detroit-leads-nation-reverse-mortgage-foreclosures/1442186001/.
  207. As the mortgage market dried up: Joel Kurth, “Land contracts trip up would-be homeowners,” Detroit News, February 29, 2016, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2016/02/29/land-contracts-detroit-tax-foreclosure-joel-kurth/81081186/.
  208. grew more in Detroit… and were disproportionately concentrated: Eric Seymour and Joshua Akers, “Portfolio solutions, bulk sales of bank-owned properties, and the reemergence of racially exploitative land contracts,” Cities 89 (June 2019): 51, 54.
  209. nearly 30,000 eviction filings per year: Robert Goodspeed, Margaret Dewar, and Jim Schaafsma, “Michigan’s Eviction Crisis,” University of Michigan Poverty Solutions, May 2020, https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2020/05/Michigan-Eviction-Project-policy-brief.pdf.
  210. Countywide, more than one in five: Ibid., table 1.
  211. By 2019, nearly half: Alexa Eisenberg, Connor Wakayama, and Patrick Cooney, Reinforcing Low-Income Homeownership Through Home Repair: Evaluation of the Make it Home Repair Program (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2021).
  212. An estimated 24,000 homes: Ryan Ruggiero, Josh Rivera, and Patrick Cooney, A Decent Home: The Status of Home Repair in Detroit (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2020), 8–9, 14, https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2020/10/The-Status-of-Home-Repair-in-Detroit-October-2020.pdf.
  213. nearly 9 percent: Christine MacDonald, “Detroit kids’ lead poisoning rates higher than Flint,” Detroit News, November 14, 2017, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/11/14/lead-poisoning-children-detroit/107683688/.
  214. In one ZIP code, 22 percent: Ibid.
  215. Asthma rates: Detroit Future City, 160.
  216. An aging housing stock: Alexa Eisenberg, Eric Seymour, Alex B. Hill, Joshua Akers, “Toxic structures: Speculation and lead exposure in Detroit’s single-family rental market,” Health & Place 64 (July 2020).
  217. Between 2014 and 2019, 141,000 people: Joel Kurth, “Detroit says no proof water shutoffs harm health. Get real, experts say,” Bridge Michigan, February 26, 2020, https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/detroit-says-no-proof-water-shutoffs-harm-health-get-real-experts-say.
  218. households below the poverty line: Dahlia Rockowitz, Chris Askew-Merwin, Malavika Sahai, Kely Markley, Cria Kay, and Tony Reames, Household Water Security in Metropolitan Detroit: Measuring the Affordability Gap (Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2018), https://poverty.umich.edu/10/files/2018/08/PovertySolutions-PolicyBrief-0818-r2.pdf.
  219. an average of about 3,800 people: Homeless Action Network of Detroit, “Sheltered Homeless Persons in Detroit (MI) 10/1/16–9/30/2017,” 6, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5344557fe4b0323896c3c519/t/5a7c751608522985c2a3c780/1518105882011/2017+AHAR+All+Persons+Report+FINAL+from+HDX.pdf.
  220. 195 Detroit Public Schools closed: John Grover and Yvette van der Velde, A School District in Crisis Detroit’s Public Schools 1842–2015 (Detroit: Loveland Technologies, 2016), https://app.regrid.com/reports/schools.
  221. During the 2015–2016 school year: Erin Einhorn and Chastity Pratt Dawsey, “The children of 8B: One classroom, 31 journeys, and the reason it’s so hard to fix Detroit’s schools,” Chalkbeat Detroit, October 2, 2018, https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2018/10/2/21106013/the-children-of-8b-one-classroom-31-journeys-and-the-reason-it-s-so-hard-to-fix-detroit-s-schools.
  222. Less than 5 percent of Detroit tenants: Christine MacDonald, “Study: Tenants in 1 out of 6 Rentals Faced Evictions in Michigan,” Detroit News, May 20, 2020, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/20/study-tenants-one-out-six-rentals-faced-eviction-michigan/5227452002/.
  223. a “predatory city”: “Predatory Cities,” California Law Review 108, no. 1 (2020): 107–82.
  224. “Detroit has had”: Joel Kurth and Christine MacDonald, “Volume of Abandoned Homes ‘Absolutely Terrifying,’ ” Detroit News, May 14, 2015, http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2015/05/14/detroit-abandoned-homes-volume-terrifying/27237787.
  225. other transformative long-form: For example, see: Mark Betancourt, “Detroit’s Housing Crisis Is the Work of Its Own Government,” VICE News, December 29, 2017, https://www.vice.com/en/article/kznzky/detroits-housing-crisis-is-the-work-of-its-own-government; Ross Jones, “A Detroit Landlord Is Being Sued for ‘Predatory Contracts.’ The City Forgave $1M in Unpaid Property Taxes,” ABC News: Detroit WXYZ, November 7, 2019, https://www.wxyz.com/longform/a-detroit-landlord-is-being-sued-for-failing-to-maintain-homes-the-city-forgave-1m-in-unpaid-property-taxes.
  226. Detroit-based scholars: Margaret Dewar, Eric Seymour, and Oana Drută, “Disinvesting in the City: The Role of Tax Foreclosure in Detroit.” Urban Affairs Review 51, no. 5 (2015): 587–615; Lan Deng, Eric Seymour, Margaret Dewar, and June Manning Thomas, “Saving strong neighborhoods from the destruction of mortgage foreclosures: The impact of community-based efforts in Detroit, Michigan,” Housing Policy Debate, 28, no. 2 (2018): 153–179; Bernadette Atuahene and Christopher Berry, “Taxed Out: Illegal Property Tax Assessments and the Epidemic of Tax Foreclosures in Detroit,” U.C. Irvine Law Review 9 (2019): 847–886; A People’s Atlas of Detroit, ed. Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky, and Tim Stallman (Detroit: Waye State University Press, 2020); Claire W. Herbert, A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021). Other examples of this important work are cited elsewhere in this chapter and in this book’s bibliography.
  227. counseling and workshops: “Tax Foreclosure Prevention,” United Community Housing Coalition, https://www.uchcdetroit.org/tax-foreclosure-prevention.
  228. the Make It Home program: “Make It Home,” United Community Housing Coalition, https://www.uchcdetroit.org/make-it-home. To qualify, residents must live in a home being foreclosed by the Wayne County Treasurer as their primary residence, own no other homes, and pass a home inspection and a criminal background check, among other requirements.
  229. ranged from $2000 to $5600: Roshanak Mehdipanah, Margaret Dewar, and Alexa Eisenberg, “Threats to and Opportunities for Low-Income Homeownership, Housing Stability, and Health: Protocol for the Detroit 2017 Make-It-Home Evaluation Study,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (October 2021): 3, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111230.
  230. 1,100 occupied homes: “Make It Home Helps 1,157 Detroit Families Stay in Their Homes,” City of Detroit, February 27, 2020, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/2018/07/10/black-home-ownership-drop-largest-michigan/767804002/ https://detroitmi.gov/news/make-it-home-helps-1157-detroit-families-stay-their-homes.
  231. An accompanying repair program: Eisenberg, et al, “Reinforcing Homeownership,” 4.
  232. a research foundation to understand: Bernadette Atuahene and Timothy R. Hodge, “Stategraft,” Southern California Law Review 91, no. 2 (2018): 263–302; Bernadette Atuahene, “ ‘Our Taxes Are Too Damn High’: Institutional Racism, Property Tax Assessments, and the Fair Housing Act,” Northwestern University Law Review 112, no. 6 (2018): 1501–64.
  233. pushing the Mayor’s office: Christine MacDonald, “Activists propose Detroit fund for overtaxed homeowners,” The Detroit News, July 27, 2020, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/07/27/activists-propose-detroit-fund-overtaxed-homeowners/5482828002/.
  234. “Nobody Moves”: “About,” Detroit Eviction Defense, https://www.detroitevictiondefense.net/about/.
  235. DED organizers have proactively identified: Joshua Akers, Eric Seymour, et al., “Liquid Tenancy: ‘Post-crisis’ Economies of Displacement, Community Organizing, and New Forms of Resistance,” Radical Housing Journal 1, no. 1 (2019): 19–21, https://radicalhousingjournal.org/2019/liquid-tenancy/.
  236. DED has developed campaigns: Akers and Seymour, Eviction Machine, 23–28.
  237. protest outside the private home: Christine Ferretti and Christine MacDonald, “Protesters Call on Treasurer to Save Family Homes,” Detroit News, August 21, 2017, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/08/31/protesters-assessments-wayne-county-treasurer/105151692/.
  238. 23,000 eligible households: Seymour and Akers, “Building the Eviction Economy,” 45.
  239. property tax exemption program: “Housing Information Portal,” accessed April 21, 2021. https://hip.datadrivendetroit.org/pages/info-action-briefs/what-do-we-know-about-tax-foreclosures-and-evictions-detroit/.
  240. fell 94 percent: Louis Aguilar, “New Detroit Tax fforeclosure Data Reveal Hopeful Signs—with One Exception,” Bridge Detroit, January 25, 2021, https://www.bridgedetroit.com/new-detroit-tax-foreclosure-data-reveal-hopeful-signs-with-one-exception/; Neighbor to Neighbor: The First Detroit Property Tax Foreclosure Census (Detroit: Quicken Loans Community Fund, 2019), https://www.foreclosureoutreach.org/wp-content/themes/foreclosure-outreach/resources/neighbor_to_neighbor-detroit.pdf.
  241. took three years and cost $10 million: Charles E. Ramirez, “Tax Justice Group Calls on Detroit to Fix ‘Unfair’ Property Assessments,” Detroit News, July 7, 2021, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2021/07/07/tax-justice-group-calls-detroit-fix-unfair-property-assessments/7881010002/.
  242. an average total of $3,800: Christine MacDonald and Mark Betancourt, “Detroit Homeowners Overtaxed $600 Million,” Detroit News, January 9, 2020, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/housing/2020/01/09/detroit-homeowners-overtaxed-600-million/2698518001/.
  243. assessed her house as worth $57,000: Ibid.
  244. In 2018 and 2019… She began to advocate for: Kat Stafford, “Detroit City Council Aims to Address Big Issues Facing Detroiters with ‘People’s Bills,’ ” Detroit Free Press, September 30, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019/09/30/detroit-city-council-water-affordability-plan/3814833002/.
  245. Janee Ayers: Sarah Cwiek, “Detroit ‘Bans the Box’ on Most Rental Applications,” Michigan Radio, February 14, 2019, https://www.michiganradio.org/politics-government/2019-02-14/detroit-bans-the-box-on-most-rental-applications.
  246. 15 percent of adults: City of Detroit, Fair Chance Ordinance Overview, April 2018, https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-04/FairChanceOrdinance.pdf.
  247. one-fifth of its general fund: Kristen Jordan Shamus, “Michigan Spending One-Fifth of Its General Fund Budget on Prisoners,” Detroit Free Press, December 12, 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/12/19/prison-michigan-corrections-jail/2230794002/; Heather Ann Thompson, “Unmaking the Motor City in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Journal of Law in Society 15 (December 2014): 41–61.
  248. eventually raising $65,000: Rhonda J. Smith, “Detroit Black Farmers Land Fund Selects 30 Farmers for Cash Grants to Buy Land,” Planet Detroit, October 28, 2020, https://planetdetroit.org/2020/10/detroit-black-farmers-land-fund-selects-30-farmers-for-cash-grants-to-buy-land/.
  249. It has not been easy: Annamarie Sysling, “Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund Launches Second-Year Crowdfunding Campaign,” WDET, June 22, 2021, https://wdet.org/2021/06/22/detroit-black-farmer-land-fund-launches-second-year-crowdfunding-campaign.
  250. An estimated 2,400 owner-occupied homes: “Wayne County Circuit Court Extends Redemption for Occupied Properties Until March 2022,” Wayne County Treasurer’s Office, accessed January 23, 2022, https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/treasurer/wayne-county-treasurer-s-office-halts-property-tax.aspx.
  251. “Halloween in the D”: Meira Gebel, “So Long Angels’ Night: Halloween Fun Returns to Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, October 10, 2018, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/10/10/halloween-detroit-angels-night/1593180002/.
  252. “Angels’ Night”: City of Detroit, accessed October 22, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20131029191414/http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/angelsnight/default.htm.
  253. Groups of orange-clad volunteers: “Angels’ Night Poster and Oratorical Contest,” City of Detroit, accessed October 22, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20131030022348/http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/angelsnight/ContestGuidelines07.htm.
  254. “museums are unable to compete”: Expert Witness Report of Michael Plummer, In re City of Detroit (July 8, 2014): 25–26, https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-05/Expert%20Witness%20Report%20of%20M%20Plummer.pdf.
  255. Buyers with enough capital: Ibid., 26.
  256. associated with the Latin phrase: “Catholic Prayer: Litany of Saint Yves,” Catholic Culture, accessed December 15, 2021, https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=1477.
  257. “An advocate and not a bandit”: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=1477.
  258. says something about our culture: Nathan Bomey, Joe Guillen, and Brent Snavely, Detroit Free Press, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/detroit-bankruptcy/2014/12/30/detroit-bankruptcy-advisers-jones-day-miller-buckfire-ernst-young-conway-mackenzie/21072715/.
  259. about $2 million: “About Us: Our Financials,” https://www.uchcdetroit.org/who-we-are.
  260. “Detroiters teach the rest of the world”: “History,” Allied Media Conference, https://amc.alliedmedia.org/about/history.

Chapter 5: Facing Forward

  1. traveled across the country as a labor organizer: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906–1926) (New York: International Publishers, 1955), 37, 83, 81–83, 97, 102, 125.
  2. “bread and roses”: This is a reference to a poem and a strike, described in greater detail in Chapter 3.
  3. Nine out of ten children: Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, et al, “Executive Summary: The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” Equality of Opportunity Project (Palo Alto: Stanford, 2016), http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/abs_mobility_summary.pdf.
  4. Both across and within states: Estelle Sommeiller and Mark Price, “The Increasingly Unequal States of America Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2011,” Economic Analysis and Research Network, February 19, 2014, https://www.epi.org/publication/unequal-states/.
  5. Communities of color skipped over: Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005).
  6. The share of Americans living: Mallach, The Divided City, 37.
  7. “[G]eography,” wrote journalist: Phillip Longman, “Bloom and Bust: Regional Inequality Is Out of Control. Here’s How to Reverse It,” Washington Monthly, November 2015, 29.
  8. In thirty-three states: Estelle Sommeiller and Mark Price, The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2011 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Analysis and Research Network, 2014), 4.
  9. By 2013: Trends in Family Wealth, 1989–2013 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 2016), 1, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51846-familywealth.pdf.
  10. Obion officials had resorted: “No Pay, No Spray: Firefighters Let Home Burn,” NBCNews, October 5, 2010, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346.
  11. “These waters receive sewage”: Michelle Wilde Anderson, “Losing the War of Attrition: Mobility, Chronic Decline, and Infrastructure,” Yale Law Journal Forum 127 (2017), https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/losing-the-war-of-attrition; Michael Lynch, “ALCOSAN Creates Subcommittee to Develop Customer Assistance Program,” 90.5 WESA, http://wesa.fm/post/alcosan-creates-subcommittee-develop-customer-assistance-program (March 27, 2015). Thomas Jefferson called the Ohio River “the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken.” Notes on the State of Virginia (1781).
  12. “If we have learned nothing”: Kate Ascher, “Has the Pandemic Changed Cities Forever?” New York Times Book Review, September 10, 2021.
  13. “[I]f there has been a single problem”: Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
  14. Michigan Supreme Court intervened: “In Detroit, 36th District Court Reform a Success Story,” Detroit News, October 6, 2014, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/10/06/detroit-th-district-court-improves/16824031/.
  15. Nearly 12,000 people: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Arrests Offense Counts in Detroit Police Department: 2019” accessed December 15, 2021, https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/arrest.
  16. Federal immigration enforcement: Milton J. Valencia, “Five arrested at Lawrence immigration office,” Boston Globe, March 31, 2017, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/31/five-arrested-lawrence-immigration-office/SUeBGCVTiNxKerc1C84nhM/story.html.