EDGE Spotlight: Demolition Partnership Is Making a Difference

The war on blighted and abandoned homes continues in the city of Detroit.

Wayne County is in the midst of a demolition project in partnership with the city of Detroit and faith-based groups. The county has allocated $4.5 million for the effort.

The county had knocked down some 150 abandoned homes in the city. The goal for the Wayne County operation is 450. The city of Detroit wants to tear down 3,000 in the next two years. The 450 houses targeted by Wayne County are among the 3,000 on Detroit’s demo list.

Faith-based groups picked the houses to be demolished, targeting ones that were particularly dangerous to communities and families.

“Abandoned homes attract crime,” said Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “When we knock them down, we are able to stabilize the neighborhood and the kids feel safer walking to school, and the parents feel better as well.”

Ficano and Wayne County Commissioner Keith Williams were on the 15000 block of Fairfield, near the Lodge Freeway and Linwood, as a demolition crew began tearing into an abandoned home.

Jason Bryant, 58, who lives across the street, said that house had all kinds of “underhanded” activities occur there through the years.

“There were a couple of rapes in that house,” he said. “Knocking it down will eliminate the chances of a blind spot [where someone can jump out and assault a resident].”

“This is a great day for this community,” said Commissioner Williams. “I grew up in this community so this makes it more gratifying for me. Anytime you can come back and help the community you grew up in, it’s a wonderful thing.”

In less than 30 minutes, the stripped and vacant home on Fairfield was a massive scrap heap, waiting to be loaded in a dump truck and hauled to a landfill.

Willie Whittis, 70, said she was glad to see it go. “I walk by that house every day. Sometimes you are afraid. But I have no alternative [to walking].”

Recently, demolition crews were on the 13000 block of Piedmont, between Schoolcraft and Davidson W, readying to tear down another “problem” house.

Duane Barwick, 52, who grew up across the street from the demolition remembers the alleys, where he used to play, being as tidy as the front lawns, flowers planted around the homes, a safe middle-class neighborhood.

“I have childhood memories from this neighborhood,” he said. “But I’m glad [it was demolished] because of the degeneration [it created on the street],” he said.

“Nothing but trouble,” said Ray Hall, 62, referring to the home on Piedmont. A retired Ford worker, he’s lived on the street for 15 years, which has a half dozen over grown, weedy lots with empty houses.

One abandoned home had the skeletal frame from an older model Cadillac on blocks in the garage. It was picked clean.

Officials from Detroit said there are approximately 33,000 abandoned structures in the city.

The demolition goals the city and the county set compared to the vast number of blighted structures that exist seem like a drop in the bucket.

But not to the residents on Piedmont, who have to put up with wild dogs that den in the houses, the dope dealers who use them to peddle drugs, and others that use them for a chop-shops or dumps.

“Ports of violence” was how one Detroit pastor characterized these structures that dot the Detroit landscape. The house demolished on Piedmont had 70 mattresses in the basement, according to one of the workers on site that day.

“I’m loving it,” said Piedmont-resident Terence Jackson, 28, holding his 2-year old son. When asked what he’d like to say to Mayor Dave Bing and County Executive Ficano, he said: “Keep it going and make Detroit look better. We need it. I get tired of seeing this every morning.”

The money used for this partnership is part of Wayne County’s $25.9 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) allocation from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Pat Dostine is deputy press secretary for Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and a regular contributor to the EDGE newsletter

Photos were provided by James Wallace, who works in the Communication Division of the office of the Wayne County Executive.

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