Reflections on Landbank Seizure: After a Deep Breath

In the last few days, my Open Letter to the Detroit Land Bank has gotten almost 400 views. That's hardly breaking the internet. On the other hand, it's a lot of attention that the land bank didn't have before, and judging by the diverse nature of my friends, the post has probably reached the eyes of people that had never heard of the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

And here's my concern: my post about the resolution of our situation hasn't been read that many times.

In the midst of the fear and chaos surrounding #fixerupperdetroit and the seizure notice and my justifiable haste to resolve the situation, I didn't provide as much background as I should have. Of course, you can Google the land bank, read their website, like them on facebook, etc. So this isn't intended to be exhaustive. But here are some things I have put together for you to help you understand:

Detroit is roughly 137 square miles. You could fit Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston within Detroit city limits. It's huge.

The city is designed to be occupied by two million people or thereabouts, primarily in single-family homes, and at its peak probably had about 1.5 million Detroiters.

It's now occupied by about 700,000.

That population drop wasn't caused by a natural disaster or a war or an epidemic, at least not a standard version of any of those things. It was caused by a confluence of factors. I recommend picking up The Origins of the Urban Crisis to learn more, or digging into Detroit's history.

In any case, the city has far more space, far more homes, than it has people to live in it. And in the housing crisis, some awful people bought up a lot of property in a land grab that resulted in gambling on Detroit neighborhoods.

[This is where the notion of urban farming in Detroit comes from - farms could fill in many of the areas that are short on people, short on groceries, and long on available space. In the most simplistic version of this, the city somehow convinces everyone to move out of certain neighborhoods and into others, rezones the empty areas for farms, and makes a bunch of money while watching food deserts disappear.]

Enter the land bank.

With so much vacant housing stock, such low housing prices (though the $500 house is a myth, and here's why we didn't buy one), rampant real estate speculation, and no instruction manual, the city and county started land banks to try to get houses occupied.

The programs have varied. As the economy improves and prices rise, they've been able to flip some homes and sell them as move-in ready, and auction other homes as fixer-uppers (some total gut jobs and others more manageable). Mayor Duggan wanted to make sure President Obama saw the progress. I know a couple people that work there, and they are well-intentioned, hopeful individuals.

Unfortunately, with the mess Detroit's in, the amount of bureaucracy, and the state of democracy (or non-democracy) in the city, the land bank, like much else, doesn't work as well as it could. In the middle of our mess, I heard from friends of friends about their own struggles.

Once our situation worked out, a few of those struggling seemed to hope that there is a secret to negotiating with the land bank, that I know the magical thing to say or do. I wish I did. A little part of me wishes that we'd let them file a lawsuit so that we could have drawn even more attention to the issues.

In our case, it's possible that our home was never supposed to be targeted, and so notifying them of the discrepancy was all that was necessary - I still don't have the straight story on why exactly we received a seizure notice or why the city would have the right to seize our property when we're not behind on taxes or utilities.

It's also possible that the amount of attention from my posts on this blog and social media raised our profile enough that #fixerupperdetroit was removed from the possible seizure list using less than standard procedure.

In either case, there seems to be one key: make the house look as occupied and maintained as possible. Since some of the seizure notices result from neighborhood drive-through monitoring, and others result from complaints from the neighbors, the best bet to avoid or fight a seizure notice seems to be evidence that the home isn't vacant. Given the age of the housing stock, the economic realities of the city, and the arbitrary nature of some of this, that isn't always possible, and a perfectly manicured lawn leading up to a perfect picket fence shouldn't be required for people to keep their homes.

But that seems to be the number one visual distinction between an owner holding a vacant home as a gamble and an actual city resident, or someone truly investing.

In short, the land bank exists for a reason, and like almost everything in life, it isn't perfect. I hope that it will see the reforms it needs very, very soon. I hope that all of the other homeowners who have been unfairly targeted see a resolution soon.

And in the long run, I hope Detroit returns to being a place where many, many people fulfill dreams of homeownership.