Brewster site now sellable? Midtown growth has some optimistic

[corktownyuppie]

However rather than concentrate the poor in Oakland County, why can't the metro area work to spread the burden?

It's a good question, and it's not just a Detroit question. I think there is a universally human condition that transcends time, place, race, etc...and it's that we are a dichotomy:

[[1) No one wants to be responsible for problems caused by someone else. We all resent when we work with 2 co-workers, and one of them gets paid the same even though they do half the work that we do. That's normal.

...but at the same time...

[[2) The more we witness people suffering, the more we hurt for them. This is why movies and stories captivate people in way that transcends almost all boundaries. Whether or not you care for Harry Potter, you must admit that something very universally powerful must exist in the stories that allow people to connect to them from all parts of the world, young and old.

I'm not an urban planning historian by any stretch of the imagination. But I'd have to believe that when the wealth that is now Oakland County resided in the city, there existed a greater level of awareness -- if not compassion -- for the poor. When cars and highways made it possible to buy 3x as much land for the same price, while also adding 20 miles of distance between you and the poor and suffering, you can't blame people for taking the deal.

Urban sprawl has allowed us to isolate ourselves from the many social problems all around us. Even the concept of the attached garage + air conditioned homes has turned neighbors into strangers.

So, there's the explanation of how it happened. I think that what will change in the future is the internet. The internet, while it certainly has a way of isolating us, also allows information to be exchanged freely without geographic limitations. Before the internet, we mostly learned from whoever was around us....narrow perspective, at best....the ignorant blind leading the more ignorant blind at worst.

In any case, poverty will always exist., but I hope that over the next 50 years I think you'll see the region becoming less polarized, not more. Demographics, social, and economic trends seem to moving that way.

[/endspeculationandphilosophizing]

[Hypestyles]

destroy these monstrosities! "housing projects" have mainly developed intergenerational poverty for the past 50+ years.. Better to raze them and leave no traces. In their place, there can be:

public park space/forest land
a modest sized, mixed-income housing development- http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/c...m2/success.pdf and include room for a grocery store.
Entertainment district with movie house and/or a live theater venue.
Other retail and services.. how many exercise gyms are downtown?

[jsmyers]

I have an idea for the site, but it's crazy.

Why not take the land and plat it back into small city blocks?

If the city blocks allow the buildings to stand, maybe we let them, but the rest of it should be small lots, small streets, small alleys, small everything. And it should integrate with the rest of the city as much as possible.

I fear that by just "giving it over to a developer" we're going to get something that turns its back on the city and lasts 30 years.

I think this is a great idea. Many of the Hope VI projects, and the Woodbridge Estates almost do that.

[Bham1982]

destroy these monstrosities! "housing projects" have mainly developed intergenerational poverty for the past 50+ years..

A building doesn't create intergenerational poverty. Programs may, but a building certainly doesn't.

I know these "monstrosities" are unbeloved at this point in history, but blaming public housing for urban ills is nonsense.

And Detroit barely has any public housing. It has among the lowest proportions of any city east of the Mississippi. Yet Detroit has tons of intergenerational poverty.

BTW, the cities with the most public housing [[by %)- NYC, Boston and SF. Three of the healthiest cities in the country.

[rb336]

BTW, the cities with the most public housing [[by %)- NYC, Boston and SF. Three of the healthiest cities in the country.

trying to confuse people with facts?

[Melocoton]

Interesting stats above from BHam. I didn't know that.

I find it ironic that so many posters rightly excoriate public housing towers like Brewster-Douglas for concentrating and segregating the poor, and then turn around and demand that the site be reserved for "high-income professionals" because, well, the land is nice and the views are good. You can't wag your fingers at the architects of public housing and then in the same breath demand that HUD ship Detroit's poor off to Brightmoor or Oakland County.

[j to the jeremy]

trying to confuse people with facts?

Those are also 3 cities which have capped or demolished freeways in their downtown areas, something Detroit has not done. The way in which the Brewsters are relatively isolated from Downtown by freeways didn't help them.

[Brian1979]

It seems like everything is isolated from downtown simply because of the freeways.

[Brian1979]

If there is so much demand for public housing in the city of Detroit then why did Brewster-Douglas close in the first place? Wouldn't the demand for public housing keep them open? I think Brewster-Douglas is in the wrong location, that property that it sits on should be a mixed development neighborhood. Everything is such a slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww process in Detroit that they'll probably still be standing 20 years from now. They can demolish Tiger Stadium but they leave a housing project that is never going to be a housing project again standing, makes no sense.

[animatedmartian]

Maybe Dan Gilbert should buy the space and build a basketball area so the Pistons can move into Detroit and he can finally own them.

[Bham1982]

If there is so much demand for public housing in the city of Detroit then why did Brewster-Douglas close in the first place? Wouldn't the demand for public housing keep them open?

The demand for public housing has nothing to do with the relative condition of public housing units.

Public housing tenants pay a tiny fraction of the actual cost of their units.

Public housing units have been neglected in Detroit for decades. This means there's a massive backlog of repairs and structural issues. In some cases, it's cheaper to just demolish and rebuild.

And HUD has programs in place, such as Hope VI, to assist municipalities in rebuilding their public housing stock and/or converting complexes to a mixed income format.

I don't know what specifically happened at Brewster, but I'm guessing the complex went to hell, the repairs were too daunting to tackle. So they vacated the complex, and are awaiting money from the feds to demolish and rebuild.

[royce]

Ok, so why would HUD be concerned with what will be developed on the site, if the Detroit Housing Commission is selling the land outright? If HUD is giving DHC permission to sell, then why should it care about what happens to the land? I'm not understanding this article. Is it saying that as long as a developer comes along and tears down what's there, without asking for money from HUD to do that, the developer can do whatever it wants with the land. Or is the developer still required to build affordable housing units if the developer wants to built market rate homes? Which one is it?

[Bham1982]

Ok, so why would HUD be concerned with what will be developed on the site, if the Detroit Housing Commission is selling the land outright?

DHC can't sell the land outright. They can't do a thing without HUD approval. This is federal urban renewal land. The feds run the show.

If HUD is giving DHC permission to sell, then why should it care about what happens to the land? I'm not understanding this article. Is it saying that as long as a developer comes along and tears down what's there, without asking for money from HUD to do that, the developer can do whatever it wants with the land. Or is the developer still required to build affordable housing units if the developer wants to built market rate homes? Which one is it?

I don't know what the article is trying to say, but any scheme that lacks an affordable housing component is a non-starter.

[Brian1979]

The DHC's long term plan is to demolish the buildings and to redevelop the site as a mixed-income neighborhood. Trust me there will not be public housing built on that site like you think there will be, it sounds to me like you think they are going to replace the structures with the exact same thing. I very highly doubt that.

[Brian1979]

Ok, so why would HUD be concerned with what will be developed on the site, if the Detroit Housing Commission is selling the land outright? If HUD is giving DHC permission to sell, then why should it care about what happens to the land? I'm not understanding this article. Is it saying that as long as a developer comes along and tears down what's there, without asking for money from HUD to do that, the developer can do whatever it wants with the land. Or is the developer still required to build affordable housing units if the developer wants to built market rate homes? Which one is it?

If DHC sells the property which they are trying to do then I agree with you I don't see why they would care what's built on the site. There is no one living in any of the buildings so what is there to replace? That is what I want to know. I guess when you demolish an abandoned building your suppose to replace it with a brand new abandoned building.

[royce]

[QUOTE=Bham1982;259954]DHC can't sell the land outright. They can't do a thing without HUD approval. This is federal urban renewal land. The feds run the show.

Ok, so you're saying that if Detroit wants to let Ilitch build the new Red Wings arena on that site that it can never get the land back from HUD?

[BVos]

Bham1982,

I don't know who you are, but your statements about Brewster-Douglass having to have affordable housing as a component are completely wrong. DHC has either constructed or has under contract all HUD required replacement units as part of the MROP, HOPE VI and RHF programs.

The only restriction on the sale of the Brewster-Douglass property is that it be sold at or above appraised value, per HUD. Whomever buys the property will have no restrictive covenants placed on the property. It will be free and clear title. HUD does have a say so over the sale of the property and the one and only restriction they've put on it is the appraised price. Those are the terms DHC was able to negotiate with HUD.

DHC does have a long waiting list for public housing. However DHC does not have funds beyond those already obligated for replacement units. Furthermore the federal budget doesn't look promising for constructing new public housing any time soon. DHC wouldn't object to more units, but there's no money to do it with.

As far as size of PHAs [[Public Housing Authorities) DHC is one of the largest in the country and has the most units of housing under construction of any PHA and is currently constructing more housing units at a single time than any PHA in the history of the HOPE VI program.

[English]

It's a good question, and it's not just a Detroit question. I think there is a universally human condition that transcends time, place, race, etc...and it's that we are a dichotomy:

[[1) No one wants to be responsible for problems caused by someone else. We all resent when we work with 2 co-workers, and one of them gets paid the same even though they do half the work that we do. That's normal.

...but at the same time...

[[2) The more we witness people suffering, the more we hurt for them. This is why movies and stories captivate people in way that transcends almost all boundaries. Whether or not you care for Harry Potter, you must admit that something very universally powerful must exist in the stories that allow people to connect to them from all parts of the world, young and old.

I'm not an urban planning historian by any stretch of the imagination. But I'd have to believe that when the wealth that is now Oakland County resided in the city, there existed a greater level of awareness -- if not compassion -- for the poor. When cars and highways made it possible to buy 3x as much land for the same price, while also adding 20 miles of distance between you and the poor and suffering, you can't blame people for taking the deal.

Urban sprawl has allowed us to isolate ourselves from the many social problems all around us. Even the concept of the attached garage + air conditioned homes has turned neighbors into strangers.

So, there's the explanation of how it happened. I think that what will change in the future is the internet. The internet, while it certainly has a way of isolating us, also allows information to be exchanged freely without geographic limitations. Before the internet, we mostly learned from whoever was around us....narrow perspective, at best....the ignorant blind leading the more ignorant blind at worst.

In any case, poverty will always exist., but I hope that over the next 50 years I think you'll see the region becoming less polarized, not more. Demographics, social, and economic trends seem to moving that way.

[/endspeculationandphilosophizing]

What a great post. I'm thinking through and struggling with these issues, too. I'm not an urban planner or an entrepreneur but I'd love to be part of something that helps out with perpetual poverty in metro Detroit. I know we've got lots of great organizations who do this work, but is there any way to institutionalize it? Or did we lose our will after we "lost" the War on Poverty?

Part of what I'm considering is the role of mental health and addiction. The problem is that there's really no funding to expand mental health care for those most in need of it. So they will continue to wander.

[royce]

Bham 1982, what's your response to Bvos?

[j to the jeremy]

Bham1982,

I don't know who you are, but your statements about Brewster-Douglass having to have affordable housing as a component are completely wrong. DHC has either constructed or has under contract all HUD required replacement units as part of the MROP, HOPE VI and RHF programs.

The only restriction on the sale of the Brewster-Douglass property is that it be sold at or above appraised value, per HUD. Whomever buys the property will have no restrictive covenants placed on the property. It will be free and clear title. HUD does have a say so over the sale of the property and the one and only restriction they've put on it is the appraised price. Those are the terms DHC was able to negotiate with HUD.

DHC does have a long waiting list for public housing. However DHC does not have funds beyond those already obligated for replacement units. Furthermore the federal budget doesn't look promising for constructing new public housing any time soon. DHC wouldn't object to more units, but there's no money to do it with.

As far as size of PHAs [[Public Housing Authorities) DHC is one of the largest in the country and has the most units of housing under construction of any PHA and is currently constructing more housing units at a single time than any PHA in the history of the HOPE VI program.

And that, my friends, is how you cover all the bases.

[animatedmartian]

^^^^So essentially the debate with what to do with the poor has nothing to do with the future development of the site?

I just get from the article that they say site is pretty expensive for any developers who want it.

[hybridy]

a little birdie told me a developer is working on a plan to save the towers and rehab them into apartments [[similar to the towers on the lodge) ...the remaining townhomes would be demo'd and the remaining site redeveloped. i have no doubt the downtown views are awesome from the towers, but they are pretty brutal.

[Bham1982]

a little birdie told me a developer is working on a plan to save the towers and rehab them into apartments [[similar to the towers on the lodge) ...the remaining townhomes would be demo'd and the remaining site redeveloped. i have no doubt the downtown views are awesome from the towers, but they are pretty brutal.

If they're renovated, they'll be renovated back into subsidized housing, just like at the Jeffries projects. You can't just take public housing and turn it into market rate housing.

I would suspect, though, that they'll be demolished. I can't imagine those ruined towers would be cheaper to renovate than to build lower scale housing anew.

[Hypestyles]

something needs to be done with it. Soon.

[Jason]

Anyway, I hope they do a good job of redeveloping the site. In the last 10 or so years there's been tons and tons of units built in midtown but they've almost all been those weird suburban apartment complexes.