Progress on Blighted Houses - A Message from the President
Each day I try to drive around several blocks of MorningSide to keep up with current conditions. Lately, I have been encouraged to see the number of formerly vacant houses now being rehabbed. Many of the new rehabs are happening in the eastern part of our neighborhood. Back in the February edition of The MorningSider, I wrote about the work of the city’s Nuisance Abatement Program (NAP) that focused on three of our streets.
In November and December of 2020, NAP attorneys from the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) sent notices to owners of 42 vacant houses on Courville, Three Mile and Bedford. These owners were ordered to repair their houses or face legal action. An early September review of the 42 NAP properties reveals that about 60 percent (24 out of 42) have been or are currently being rehabbed. As a “glass-half-full” kind of person, I believe these results show that the NAP program is at least a partial success.
During a recent interview with Giuseppe Palazzolo, an attorney with the DLBA, Mr. Palazzolo acknowledged that progress on the MorningSide properties is “slower than anticipated.” He stated, however that the City is planning to file lawsuits “soon” against owners of the NAP houses who have not signed consent agreements. One especially bad actor owns five vacant eyesores on Courville and Bedford. Your MorningSide board leaders will be closely following the legal proceedings against these non-compliant property owners.
Neighbors can assist the DLBA and the City in fighting blight in our community. If you have a vacant house near yours that displays:
missing or boarded doors or windows
uncut front yard grass
visible holes in the roof
overgrown trees or bushes that obscure the house
Please document the situation and send the information to me at ericduew@gmail.com or to our District 4 Department of Neighborhoods Manager Rod Liggons at rodney.liggons@detroitmi.gov. We will need the following information in order to follow up:
address of the problem house
your name, address, and phone #
a photo of the front of the house
Although the NAP program currently only applies for Courville/Three Mile/Bedford, more evidence will help us lobby the DLBA to expand their enforcement to additional streets next year. Such documentation may also be useful to DLBA attorneys in future court cases against negligent property owners.
Despite the obvious progress we can all see on most streets, over 300 vacant houses remain standing in our community. Not every vacant house is blighted, and with neighbors and government agencies working together I believe we can be “blight free by ’23.”
