The Power of Incremental Change in Detroit (Part 2)

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series Mac Farr began yesterday. You can read Part 1 here.

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Image credit: The Villages of Detroit (Facebook)

Sometimes, when you start with a goal, you find out you have more foundational work to do before you get to directly address that goal. Such was the situation we found when we wanted to begin eliminating blight in Indian Village, our neighborhood on the East Side of Detroit. (See Part 1.)  By focusing on a program of what Strong Towns readers will know as “small bets”—things like storm drains, sidewalks, trees, fire hydrants, lighting and alley cleanups—we were able to build trust to be able to get back to code enforcement.  Residents felt like the City of Detroit had stepped up and were beginning to make good on their part of the bargain.

However, when we finally did return to code enforcement, we did not approach the topic the same way we had started.  We had built trust, and we wanted to maintain that trust.  Instead of going after each and every single building code violations, we decided to pursue a much more gradual and incremental approach.  We opted to pursue the following principles:

• Having the neighborhood association direct the efforts.  By empowering the leaders of the neighborhood to direct what goes first, there is more buy-in and consensus around the overall effort.  This helps with transparency and being frank about what’s happening in the neighborhood.

• Focus on what matters.  Severe structural blight—such as when there are collapsing garages, holes in roofs, or porches that were detaching from the main structure—are situations that are pretty clear to the community and don’t generate much controversy.  This is the sort of blight that exists on one end of the spectrum.

• Focus on easily correctable issues.  This is the sort of blight that exists along the other end of the spectrum.  At this end are issues like cars parked in yards, people putting garbage out days in advance and not bringing their dumpsters back in after collection, or not mowing their yards frequently enough.  Some of these are environmental code issues that some residents have forgotten about because the municipality hasn’t enforced them in a long time.  In our experience, just simple reminders about the local ordinance, along with some conversations, have a tendency to clear most of these matters up and don’t require further interventions.

• Focus on vacancy.  Some of the strongest pushback against code enforcement comes from trying to enforce on owner-occupied structures the owner just can’t keep up on, either due to advanced age or lack of resources.  People tend to be sympathetic to their plight.  Focusing on vacant houses nobody is using tends to generate more community support. 

Indian Village, Detroit. Image credit.

In situations where you have a lot of blight, it is tempting to catalogue everything, and put it in one master list and expect the buildings department to address it all at once.  Keep in mind that if you live in an area where there is a lot of blight, it’s likely not just in your neighborhood,  but the whole municipality.  Often in these settings it’s impossible to deliver on all of the targets at once, so talk first with your buildings department to see what their capacity is.  It’s important to generate buy-in on their part, and if they’re resistant, I suggest things like baked goods to kick off a meeting.  What free desserts get people to do has always amazed me.

It was also important to keep in mind that our goal wasn’t to enforce on each and every single code violation.  It was to rebuild a culture within the neighborhood of upkeep and preservation.  By focusing on either end of the spectrum of blight, it was our goal to change the culture so that people could return to more normal maintenance practices and behaviors.  In some cases, this will take your neighborhood years.  By the same token, it probably took years for some of these problems to appear.

Lastly, where possible, try to connect residents with resources—either through your local historic district, preservation organizations, housing nonprofits, local government or community development corporations.  There is nowhere near enough funding available for the scope and scale of need to upgrade old houses. But making an effort and connecting residents with available resources builds on the goodwill generated with the foundational infrastructure work.

Cover image via The Villages of Detroit (Facebook).

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About the Author

Mac Farr is the executive director of the Villages Community Development Corporation, a position he has held since 2015.  Originally from Jackson, Michigan, attended Michigan State University’s James Madison College.  He returned to Michigan in 2012, after nearly a decade in New York.  After a stint in local politics during the period City’s bankruptcy in 2013-14, he started to push for reforms to neighborhood policy in Detroit.