Block By Block: Equitable Sales Strategies for Detroit's Claytown, Nardin Park, and Northeast

Abstract

The Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) owns nearly 90,000 properties throughout the city of Detroit. Of these properties, some 25% contain residential structures. DLBA-owned residential structures are largely concentrated in areas of the city with the highest rates of vacancy and lowest home values. To supplement its existing sales programs, the DLBA sought creative disposition strategies to help return vacant houses to productive use in three of the city’s most challenging housing markets: Claytown, Nardin Park, and Northeast.

A nine-member team of urban and regional planning graduate students at the University of Michigan executed a three-pronged approach to research and create socially just sales strategies for the DLBA: we analyzed area demographics, housing markets, and submarkets in the three geographic areas; we sifted through case studies of communities facing similar housing market challenges; and most importantly, we conducted interviews with residents, community organization leaders, and Detroit-based investors and lenders to obtain local knowledge. These efforts culminated in the creation of six strategies and several attendant recommendations. Undergirding these recommendations is a block typology analysis, created for this report. Ultimately, the team concluded that the DLBA should focus on block-level sales strategies. To inform our suggested strategies, we developed a block typology analysis, which categorizes blocks based on the percentage of DLBA properties and the percentage of vacant lots on each block.

Two months into this project, COVID-19 led to physical distancing efforts and DLBA budget cuts. The full social and economic impacts of the pandemic remain unclear. While some of the recommendations in this report may not prove implementable in the near term, we encourage the DLBA to begin community engagement efforts now.

No single overarching policy will ‘solve’ the slow sales issue in Detroit’s challenged housing markets. A block-level approach nevertheless represents a way forward.