Latest news with #DetroitPublicSchools
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Detroit anger justified, but shouldn't steal the show at mayoral forums
If there's one takeaway from the recent forums for mayoral candidates, it's this: Far too many Detroit residents are extremely frustrated and need to vent before they can get down to business and elect the next mayor. I'm not pushing for any candidate in this race. What I am advocating for is less yelling, and more searching for the person who will make this city better. But I understand the anger. Residents have been frustrated over how their voices were stripped away, as far back as during the bankruptcy proceedings that permeated through nearly every government function in more than a decade. They're mad because 12 years ago, they were promised that every neighborhood in Detroit had a future, and now they step outside their homes only to see the same mess they saw previously. 'I look around my neighborhood, and it's sad that this is the future they felt we deserved,' Ken Whittaker said in a recent social media post. He added downtown and Midtown are great, and credits the city for building four neighborhoods from the ground up, but it still hasn't reached his doorstep. 'I've owned a home in this city for 27 years and very little has gotten better around me,' Whittaker says. 'This is the two Detroits we speak of. It's not hyperbole. It's the truth.' At some of these forums, the frustration of residents takes center stage, more than what candidates have to say. It takes some of the substance away. What we're seeing is a byproduct of what happened during the bankruptcy in 2013. (I would also contend that it started even earlier, if you add in the takeover of the Detroit Public Schools in 1999). During Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's regime, residents' voices were silenced, despite issues such as city pensions being cut, contracts to outsource services such as trash pickup and Belle Isle being leased to the state for it to run as a state park. Orr essentially stripped the council from a legislative body that could advocate for residents to a group that could only pass contracts under $30,000. It didn't help that the bill for 17 firms of restructuring consultants and bankruptcy lawyers soared to more than $63 million. That's not to say Mayor Mike Duggan has not done a tremendous job in developing downtown, Midtown and several neighborhood strips during his tenure. It's just there's still a group of Detroiters who are not reaping the benefits, whether that's real or perceived. Almost everyone on the 11th floor has had to deal with that criticism, including 'Da Mayor,' Coleman Young, for expanding what was then called Cobo Conference Center in 1989 at a $225 million cost. 'The frustration we're facing is actually in something a little bit even foundational to what people are feeling that goes beyond just the situation of bankruptcy, state intervention in Detroit public schools, because a lot of folks don't have a lot of muscle memory,' says political consultant Eric Foster, who adds there had been state intervention in the schools and the city dating back as far as 1937. Other residents echo Whittaker's disdain when they hear the police statistics that Detroit has the lowest crime rate since the 1960s, when the city had 1.5 million people and a substantially larger police department. The crime rate may be lower, but residents don't feel safer, particularly when some had to deal with the aftermath of a mass shooting last summer. Young folks can't even enjoy their prom send-off – at one such festivity, without 20 rounds being fired at Martin Luther King High School late last month. The yellow tape around the school says a lot. Let's also not forget homeowners were overtaxed by at least $600 million between 2010 and 2016. And despite the jobless rate being about 7.5%, Detroit's poverty rate of 31.5% is more than double the state rate of 13.5%, according to U.S. Census data. But all it takes is reading the room to know that the frustration is real, which makes public forums a place to vent. More opinion: Detroit has everything to lose in mayoral race Foster says it's all rooted in that Detroiters have not accepted that the city hasn't remained what it once was. 'We've never really dealt with that trauma,' Foster says. 'It's like a divorce, and you haven't dealt with the trauma of the divorce. You had the white flight, and then you had Black middle class flight. 'Those are traumatic events. It's impacted the city in a lot of ways financially and has negatively impacted services, (which) has led to different tensions from race and the class dynamic. One thing I would hope that everybody running for (office) would invest time in actually ... (dealing with) Detroit and trauma that Detroit has gone through.' Don't believe the trauma is real? Just go back and look at the failed Charter Commission Revision proceedings, or the non-work by the Reparations Commission. Or any given Tuesday during public comment at the Detroit City Council. The Charter Revision Commission's weekly meetings devolved into shouting matches, and their antics even resulted in a police report being filed. The charter revision sought to address water access, affordable housing and busing, increased citizen input and responsible contracting. After nearly three years of work, the measure failed. Former Congressman John Conyers, City Council member JoAnn Watson and 'Reparations' Ray Jenkins are looking down from above, knowing the commission is dying a slow death in the city that led the charge on the issue. Compare that Los Angeles, which brought a significant plan with 115 recommendations to the state to compensate those harmed by slavery. It included a 400-page report on how to deal with the issue. Instead, the group turned into an ineffective, non-elected body that didn't bring in any experts from Los Angeles, Evanston, Illinois, which came up with a plan to compensate Black residents $25,000 from cannabis sales or Tulsa, whose mayor just announced a plan to launch a $105 million private charitable trust for descendants of the 1921 race massacre. It would provide housing and scholarships. It was an issue I kept my eye on, knowing what other those places have done. I'm left in disgust that a real opportunity in Detroit — one of the Blackest cities in America — couldn't get past infighting to send a report, while Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is in office. More opinion: Democrats better hope Michigan Gov. Whitmer changes her mind about presidential run My worst fear is people will be so caught up in their feelings that they either don't vote, or just simply hold their nose and vote for any candidate, rather than searching for the one that meets their needs. A more robust voter turnout will help too. The voter turnout that elected Mike Duggan as mayor in 2013 was 17% in the primary and 20% in the general election. The trends for municipal elections have remained the same. The primary election turnout in 2021 was 14%. About 47% voted in the presidential election last year. It's about moving past the campaign rhetoric and understanding what their elected officials can actually do. 'People have bad information inflow, and that's a part because of the people who have been elected not actually communicating what their actual job is, and the candidates running not communicating what the functions are of the job that they're running for,' Foster says. 'So people have impressions of what the city can and can't do that go beyond just the actual charter ability of a city.' To paraphrase Michelle Obama, stop yelling, find your candidate and vote. Darren A. Nichols, named one of Michigan's most recognized media figures, is a contributing columnist at the Free Press. He can be reached at darren@ or his X (formerly Twitter) handle @dnick12. Like what you're reading? Please consider supporting local journalism and getting unlimited digital access with a Detroit Free Press subscription. We depend on readers like you. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroiters are angry, and I'm worried about the mayor's race | Opinion
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit joins race for Michigan attorney general
Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit is running for Michigan attorney general, he announced May 13. Savit, a Democrat, pledged to fight corporate polluters, scams and rip-offs that harm Michigan consumers, and constitutional overreach and associated funding cuts by Republican President Donald Trump. He said another priority would be fighting "wage theft" by employers who fail to pay required overtime or avoid paying benefits by improperly classifying workers as independent contractors. "I'm running to stand up for the people of the state of Michigan, no matter who is screwing them over," Savit said in a May 12 interview with the Free Press. Savit, 42, of Ann Arbor, joins former federal prosecutor Mark Totten in the race for the Democratic nomination. On the Republican side, Birmingham attorney Kevin Kijewski has announced his candidacy. The current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, can't run again in 2026 because of constitutional term limits. Savit is completing his second four-year term as Washtenaw County prosecutor, where he campaigned to reduce racial and socio-economic inequities in the criminal justice system and increase support for mental health and addiction services. Since he was first elected prosecutor in 2020, Savit established an economic justice unit focused on issues such as worker and consumer protection. He has also sought to eliminate, to the extent possible under current law, the use of cash bail in criminal cases, saying a defendant's financial resources should not dictate whether they remain free pending trial. "If you're dangerous, you should be held pending trial." Savit said. "You shouldn't be able to buy your way out, if you are wealthy." Before that, he worked for the city of Detroit as senior legal counsel under Mayor Mike Duggan, suing the opioid industry and directing the city's legal efforts in winning, along with interest groups, a nearly $100-million settlement for Detroit Public Schools in a right-to-literacy lawsuit against the state of Michigan. Savit, who grew up in Ann Arbor, graduated from Kalamazoo College and the University of Michigan Law School. In between, he worked as an eighth-grade history and special education teacher. After law school, Savit clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, and Sandra Day O'Connor, who died in 2023. Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Washtenaw Prosecutor Eli Savit joins Michigan attorney general race
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Detroit's Lack of Affordable Housing Pushes Families to the Edge – and Children Sometime Pay the Price
This article was originally published in The Conversation. As outside temperatures dropped to the low- to mid-teens Fahrenheit on Feb. 10, 2025, two children died of carbon monoxide toxicity in a family van parked in a Detroit casino parking garage. We are political scientists who study urban and housing public policies, and in the months since this tragedy, we took a deep look at the trends in homelessness and housing policies that foreshadowed the events of that night. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter One important trend is that the number of homeless children in the city reached a record high in 2024. This is true even though the overall numbers of people experiencing homelessness in the city is declining overall. According to the Point-in-Time count, 455 children were experiencing homelessness in Detroit on Jan. 31, 2024, up from 312 the year before. The count captures data for one night each year. Most of these children were unhoused but considered sheltered because they had a place to sleep in an emergency shelter or transitional housing, or were able to temporarily stay with family or friends. Nineteen of the kids were unsheltered – meaning they were sleeping in places not designed for human habitation, like cars, parks or abandoned buildings. A different set of data comes from the Detroit Public Schools. The district looked at the entire 2022-2023 school year and found that roughly 1 in 19 students were unhoused at some point during that nine-month period — more than double the number in the 2019-2020 school year. The lack of adequate funding and staffing in the city's shelter system means unhoused people often struggle to access temporary shelter beds. That includes kids. Even though the city prioritizes giving beds to the most vulnerable, the number of unsheltered children of school age has nearly tripled in three years, rising from an estimated 48 in the school year beginning in September 2019 to 142 in the school year beginning in September 2022. These figures align with the rise in unsheltered children recorded in the one-night Point-in-Time count, which increased from four in 2016 to 19 in 2024. The end of COVID-era funding that prevented many evictions is likely to increase the need for shelter and put additional strain on Detroit's response to the crisis. Children who experience housing insecurity are often caught in the middle of bureaucracy and failed regulation. The mother of the children who died in February had reached out to the city in November 2024 when they were staying with a family member. The mother noted that she wanted to keep all five of her children together. According to a report issued by the city, the Detroit Housing Authority did not follow up with her. Her situation was not considered an emergency at the time of contact since she was sheltered with family. At the time of the call, the family was a Category 2: immediate risk of homelessness – in other words, not the highest priority under the emergency shelter grants guideline. If the city had deemed the situation an emergency, protocol would be to dispatch immediate support for the family. The mother moved her family to the van after the request for help failed to provide a solution. The Detroit mayor's office admitted that the family fell through the cracks and promised to expand available shelter beds and require homeless outreach employees to visit any unhoused families that call for help. 'We have to make sure that we do everything possible to make sure that this doesn't happen again,' Deputy Mayor Melia Howard told local media. According to records from the Coordinated Assessment Model Detroit, the system responsible for connecting individuals to shelters, 82% of calls do not result in immediate help but rather being placed on a shelter waitlist. Similar to instances across the country, the wait time is long. Families in Detroit face an average wait of 130 days, while unaccompanied youth typically wait around 50 days. The long wait for shelter has contributed to the rise in people living on the streets or in their vehicles. The number of unsheltered individuals — including both adults and children — doubled from 151 in 2015 to 305 in 2024. This trend of increasing unsheltered homelessness contrasts with the overall decline in the total number of homeless people in the city, which is down from a peak of 2,597 in 2015. Children need safety and security to thrive. Their access to stable housing depends on their parents and what the adults in their life are able to provide. As rents increase in the city, some children are left vulnerable. Over the past decade, Detroit, like many other U.S. cities, has experienced rising housing costs while wages fail to keep up, particularly for long-term residents. Since 2021, the number of rentals in the city has increased by 51%. Rents are also up. Since 2017, the average rent in Detroit has increased 55% for single-family homes and 43% for multifamily homes. While inflation and increased maintenance costs contribute to this rise, stricter rental regulations like the heightened enforcement of housing codes, expanded tenant protections and higher compliance cost for landlords have played an important role. Some landlords pass the expense of these regulations on to tenants, making housing less affordable. Others leave their properties vacant, pushing up prices by lessening the supply. The current average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Detroit is $1,314 per month. For the typical household in the city, this basic shelter cost, not including utilities, makes up 41% of the household income. For the lowest-income households, any unexpected expense can disrupt a delicate financial balance and lead to eviction and homelessness. Children in these situations often face major instability, moving between shelters – or, as in the case of the children who died in February, sleeping in cars. This kind of displacement disrupts education, strains mental health and increases exposure to danger. Detroit's stricter housing regulations may have improved conditions for some renters, but a report by Outlier Media shows that only 8% of landlords are in compliance, leaving legacy residents in subpar rentals at higher prices. And these new rules have victims who are too often ignored until tragedy strikes. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Detroit's lack of affordable housing pushes families to the edge
Kypros/Getty Images As outside temperatures dropped to the low- to mid-teens Fahrenheit on Feb. 10, 2025, two children died of carbon monoxide toxicity in a family van parked in a Detroit casino parking garage. We are political scientists who study urban and housing public policies, and in the months since this tragedy, we took a deep look at the trends in homelessness and housing policies that foreshadowed the events of that night. One important trend is that the number of homeless children in the city reached a record high in 2024. This is true even though the overall numbers of people experiencing homelessness in the city is declining overall. According to the Point-in-Time count, 455 children were experiencing homelessness in Detroit on Jan. 31, 2024, up from 312 the year before. The count captures data for one night each year. Most of these children were unhoused but considered sheltered because they had a place to sleep in an emergency shelter or transitional housing, or were able to temporarily stay with family or friends. Nineteen of the kids were unsheltered – meaning they were sleeping in places not designed for human habitation, like cars, parks or abandoned buildings. A different set of data comes from the Detroit Public Schools. The district looked at the entire 2022-2023 school year and found that roughly 1 in 19 students were unhoused at some point during that nine-month period — more than double the number in the 2019-2020 school year. The lack of adequate funding and staffing in the city's shelter system means unhoused people often struggle to access temporary shelter beds. That includes kids. Even though the city prioritizes giving beds to the most vulnerable, the number of unsheltered children of school age has nearly tripled in three years, rising from an estimated 48 in the school year beginning in September 2019 to 142 in the school year beginning in September 2022. These figures align with the rise in unsheltered children recorded in the one-night Point-in-Time count, which increased from four in 2016 to 19 in 2024. The end of COVID-era funding that prevented many evictions is likely to increase the need for shelter and put additional strain on Detroit's response to the crisis. Children who experience housing insecurity are often caught in the middle of bureaucracy and failed regulation. The mother of the children who died in February had reached out to the city in November 2024 when they were staying with a family member. The mother noted that she wanted to keep all five of her children together. According to a report issued by the city, the Detroit Housing Authority did not follow up with her. Her situation was not considered an emergency at the time of contact since she was sheltered with family. At the time of the call, the family was a Category 2: immediate risk of homelessness – in other words, not the highest priority under the emergency shelter grants guideline. If the city had deemed the situation an emergency, protocol would be to dispatch immediate support for the family. The mother moved her family to the van after the request for help failed to provide a solution. The Detroit mayor's office admitted that the family fell through the cracks and promised to expand available shelter beds and require homeless outreach employees to visit any unhoused families that call for help. 'We have to make sure that we do everything possible to make sure that this doesn't happen again,' Deputy Mayor Melia Howard told local media. According to records from the Coordinated Assessment Model Detroit, the system responsible for connecting individuals to shelters, 82% of calls do not result in immediate help but rather being placed on a shelter waitlist. Similar to instances across the country, the wait time is long. Families in Detroit face an average wait of 130 days, while unaccompanied youth typically wait around 50 days. The long wait for shelter has contributed to the rise in people living on the streets or in their vehicles. The number of unsheltered individuals — including both adults and children — doubled from 151 in 2015 to 305 in 2024. This trend of increasing unsheltered homelessness contrasts with the overall decline in the total number of homeless people in the city, which is down from a peak of 2,597 in 2015. Children need safety and security to thrive. Their access to stable housing depends on their parents and what the adults in their life are able to provide. As rents increase in the city, some children are left vulnerable. Over the past decade, Detroit, like many other U.S. cities, has experienced rising housing costs while wages fail to keep up, particularly for long-term residents. Since 2021, the number of rentals in the city has increased by 51%. Rents are also up. Since 2017, the average rent in Detroit has increased 55% for single-family homes and 43% for multifamily homes. While inflation and increased maintenance costs contribute to this rise, stricter rental regulations like the heightened enforcement of housing codes, expanded tenant protections and higher compliance cost for landlords have played an important role. Some landlords pass the expense of these regulations on to tenants, making housing less affordable. Others leave their properties vacant, pushing up prices by lessening the supply. The current average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Detroit is $1,314 per month. For the typical household in the city, this basic shelter cost, not including utilities, makes up 41% of the household income. For the lowest-income households, any unexpected expense can disrupt a delicate financial balance and lead to eviction and homelessness. Children in these situations often face major instability, moving between shelters – or, as in the case of the children who died in February, sleeping in cars. This kind of displacement disrupts education, strains mental health and increases exposure to danger. Detroit's stricter housing regulations may have improved conditions for some renters, but a report by Outlier Media shows that only 8% of landlords are in compliance, leaving legacy residents in subpar rentals at higher prices. And these new rules have victims who are too often ignored until tragedy strikes. Meghan Wilson, Assistant Professor of American Politics and Public Policy, Michigan State University and John Kuk, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
CBS News
28-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Donavan McKinney announces run for Congress, seeking to oust Shri Thanedar
Michigan State Rep. Donavan McKinney has announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress, seeking Michigan's District 13 seat in the 2026 election cycle. With that move, McKinney, 32, of Detroit, would be a primary challenger to incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar, a Democrat who won that seat in the 2022 and 2024 elections. In his campaign materials, he said Thanedar has more in common with President Trump and Elon Musk than he does with the people of the Congressional district. District 13 includes portions of Detroit and some of its suburbs, including Lincoln Park and Hamtramck. "I'm not running for Congress because I'm a millionaire or a billionaire. I'm running because I'm not," McKinney said in his campaign announcement. "I'm running because our community deserves to have someone fighting back against the Trump-Musk administration who knows our struggles of housing insecurity, of wages that haven't kept up with the cost of living, of environmental racism, and more — someone who has lived those struggles, and will fight for us with the urgency that this moment demands." McKinney's campaign announcement included a video, social media and website launch. "People across this country and even the world know Detroit – or they think they do. They know our music, our sports, our struggle. But what people always forget is none of this is possible without our people," his video script said. "This district is one of the poorest places in America. But the mighty 13th knows hard work better than anyone. It's the people who clock in, generation after generation, shift after shift, who get forgotten first. ... I'm running for Congress because we deserve better." His platform includes bringing economic security to those who have been adversely affected by high utility costs and other expenses. He is focusing on environmental quality and pollution mitigation so that children living in Metro Detroit have healthier air, citing his own history of an asthmatic cough developed while growing up in Detroit. He also emphasizes quality public education and a robust public transit system. In Lansing, McKinney represents the poorest legislative district in the state, with a median income of less than $20,000 among the residents. In that role, he sought funding for community violence intervention programs, community recreation centers and lead water pipe replacement. McKinney attended Detroit Public Schools and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.
