Now that Detroit has been ruled eligible to declare bankruptcy, it can start looking for ways to get out of the financial hole it is in. Detroit’s most basic problem is actually quite simple: it has no tax base. Of Detroit’s slightly more than 700,000 residents, over 44% live in poverty. Without a tax base, Detroit doesn’t have enough money to maintain streetlights, repair roads, pay police and firefighters or compete academically with schools in its more prosperous suburbs. Because Detroit has no capacity to make the city more appealing, almost nobody willingly moves there and practically everyone who has the ability to move someplace else does so. Detroit has been stuck in this negative feedback loop for a long time, but it is just possible that now, having hit rock bottom, Detroit’s fortunes can turn the corner and start to improve.
The idea that I am going to put forth probably doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at seeing the light of day, but I am going to put it out there anyway. I have spent many years living in Metro Detroit and have seen and felt the effects of the city’s decline firsthand. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of my proposal, a few notes on Detroit, for those not familiar with the city. First, Detroit is a huge city. One could fit the island of Manhattan, the city of San Francisco and the city of Boston within its boundaries with room to spare. Second, Detroit has thousands of empty lots, which has given rise to a phenomenon known as “urban prairie”, empty grassland plots surrounded by roads and crumbling houses. This has led to the urban farming movement taking root in Detroit, using some of those empty lots as small, sustainable farms. However, this has met with considerable resistance from the Detroit City Council and farming within city limits is technically illegal. Third, Detroit is currently under the purview of an emergency financial manager, an unelected appointee and a staggeringly undemocratic invention that guts the elected city government.
What I am proposing would most accurately be described as an Urban Homesteading Program for Detroit. At its most basic level, it would be a government program that would give homesteaders permission to occupy vacant or unclaimed houses, lands and other residential properties within city limits. The program would require enrollees to complete a simple four-step procedure: 1) take up residence on a vacant piece of residential property within the city; 2) file an application; 3) improve the land; and 4) file for deed of title.
The program would allow any U.S. citizen who has never been convicted of any violent or financial crimes and is at least 18 years old to file an application to claim and lease a city lot for no more than $1,000. (I chose this amount at random, but I meant it to be emblematic of how easy it should be for a family to get a lease under the program.) The occupant and his-or-her family then has to reside on the land for at least 3 years (with exceptions possibly made to account for years of military service) and show evidence of having made improvements (mostly by either putting a house onto the land or by significantly improving the existing house: cleaning up the interior, fixing the appliances, putting up or fixing walls, paths, fences, gates, planting trees and looking after the land, landscaping, etc.) before taking ownership of the land.
Occupants would not need to pay any mortgage or property or income taxes for the duration of those three years. These homesteads can be a regular home lot (a lot with a house already on it), an empty lot, or a regular home lot with at least one additional empty lot contiguous with the home lot, in which case the homestead would be designated as a subsistence homestead and the land within the empty lot(s) could be used either for a home-based business or agriculture that "settles a family on a plot of land where it can grow most of its food and make many of its goods, plus a part-time paid job for cash income." Any food production on the land could be either for home consumption or for commercial sale.
Homesteaders would be encouraged to participate in a collective mutual housing association, contributing some money and a lot of sweat equity to rehabilitate the reclaimed houses. Paid, government-sponsored community improvement work programs would be offered to provide work for residents. The government would also provide adult education and jobs catering to single parents.
After three years of positively contributing to the homestead, the applicant could file for the deed to the property, at which point it would become theirs, free and clear, and the new owner of the property would start paying property and income taxes again. Further tax breaks would be available to families that strive for more sustainable homes.
Groups specifically targeted in this “urban reclamation” program would include families that had lost their homes in the recession crisis to foreclosure and those who are currently struggling with debt or loan payments. Families that take a lease on a piece of land through the homesteading program and who are financially underwater due to home loans would be eligible to have their debt frozen or even reduced for the three years they are part of the homesteading program.
Other groups that might be encouraged to participate in the program could include rural families from economically struggling areas and families from congested urban areas that have lost their livelihood due to the economic downturn. Homesteaders would be expected to work for the good of the community as well as for their own families.
The purpose of all this is quite simple: to give people who are struggling with home ownership a fresh start, as well as bringing an influx of people to Detroit to expand the tax base. That critical mass of new people would in turn bring businesses back into the city, which would encourage others to give Detroit a try, thus creating a positive feedback loop that would start to undo the damage caused by the decay of the past 40 years.
This is an unfinished idea, and there are a lot of holes in it that need to be sewn up. As I said before, there is no way that Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s emergency financial manager, or Rick Snyder, Michigan’s Governor, would want anything to do with it. I’m putting it out there for the sake of putting it out there. I’d appreciate comments and like to hear your ideas too on how to fix the D.