August, 2005

Crisis of Housing: Detroit Housing Commission Taken Over By US Government

By People's Tribune Staff

Editor’s note: This is based on an interview with Ruth Williams, a Detroit Housing activist.

Ruth Williams was born and raised in Detroit. She graduated from Detroit Public Schools. She is the mother of 8 children and raised 12. She has 21 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren. She has been involved in housing struggles for 30 years. Her interest in housing dates back to the civil rights struggles around 1967. She worked on the Human Rights Committee of the Black Panthers. Later, she worked on various human rights struggles through the early 1980s. By 1989, she began working in the Housing Now March. In 1990 she joined the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, and she noticed that housing seemed to be a low priority in the meetings and workshops around welfare rights.

"If you don't have a space in the corner to lay your head on, what good is all the rest?" she said. Ruth felt from that point on that, "Housing is a right, housing is not a privilege."

The Homeless Union led housing takeovers in 1992 and 1993 to draw attention to the vacant housing and the waiting lists of homeless needing homes.

The Detroit Housing Commission showed up on the Federal Government’s troubled housing list in 1990 due to high vacancy rates and poor maintenance. Many units cannot be occupied due to overdue maintenance requirements.

In the early 1990s, the federal government sent in a HUD investigator, Obie Benson, to audit the performance of Detroit Public Housing. He discovered unfulfilled maintenance requests from eight years earlier, along with very high vacancy rates. He soon published an article concluding that slum hotel housing was better than Detroit Public Housing.

Since 1990, under several HUD Directors — Jack Kemp, Henry Cisneros and Carl Green — there has been a history of destruction of Detroit Public Housing units without adequate replacement. Since 1992, Detroit Public Housing has gone from 12,500 units to 4,200 and it is still dropping. Starting in 1996, Carl Green, HUD director, got Detroit off of the troubled housing list. The strategy to reduce vacancy rates was to demolish vacant units.

Detroit received Hope 6 housing grants which were designed to improve public housing through "mixed development" — public housing with diverse income people living in the same developments. In Detroit, the net effect has been loss of more units since the rules specify that for every 100 units demolished, they must replace only 40. Entire developments have been vacant for years. Meanwhile there are 29,000 people on various waiting lists for public housing units.

The housing rules are stringent, mandating eviction of tenant families for violations such as allowing a convicted felon to live in, having a guest commit a crime after visiting a tenant, etc. Eligibility rules have been tightened such that disabled people under 62 years of age cannot qualify for Detroit Public Housing. These policies are directed at moving people out of Detroit Public Housing. The policy continues today as a recent fire destroyed six public housing units in the Jeffries East project, adjacent to the new casino. The Fire Department did not respond until it was too late. Why? The fire department was under orders not to respond to the fire due to being "on hold" for the 2005 Detroit All Star Game.

Due to Ruth's strong advocacy on the behalf of Detroit residents for the right to housing, the Federal Government decided to take over the troubled Detroit Housing Commission on July 14, 2005. The Federal Government has taken the last 10 months compiling information to support the takeover. There have been public hearings and investigations.

These federal actions are entirely the result of the Detroit housing fighters' steadfast action over a 30-year period. Ruth feels that this takeover is good for the residents of Detroit and cites positive experiences of other housing struggles in Boston and Kansas City where federal management along with stronger inputs from residents has allowed public housing to benefit the public as it is designed to do.

For more information, please call the Detroit People's Tribune staff at 313-438-6115.