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Professor Bernadette Atuahene: "Blight has followed the growing number of derelict properties. Prosperity has not." (Facebook photo)
Detroit is being emptied out by illegal property assessments.
That's according to Bernadette Atuahene, a law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law, a research professor at the American Bar Association and a visiting professor at Wayne State University Law School.
"What this comeback story omits is that although Detroit is 143 square miles, only 7.2 square miles are part of the revival," she writes in a New York Times commentary about Detroit's revival.
"The real story is a tale of two cities. In downtown and surrounding areas, developers receive tax breaks, incentives and subsidies to renovate the portion of the city inhabited by newcomers. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods peopled by the residents who have been holding the city together through its economic turmoil are subject to monumental tax injustice."
Between 2011 and 2015, Wayne County foreclosed on a quarter of Detroit homes, emptying the city, decimating neighborhoods and bringing poor and working class residents to their knees. Blight has followed the growing number of derelict properties. Prosperity has not.
"We have not witnessed this number of property tax foreclosures in American history since the Great Depression," Atuahene writes for the ACLU of Michigan.
But here's the catch: Those county foreclosures were based on illegally high property value assessments, Atuahene finds.
Michigan's Constitution says properties can't be assessed for more than 50 percent of their market value, but Atuahene says the city did that for between 55 and 85 percent of Detroit properties from 2009-15.
It's a vicious cycle. As the city emptied out and neighborhoods decline, officials didn't adjust, and continue to tax properties like they're still in thriving, bustling neighborhoods. Residents can't pay, and are forced to foreclose on their homes, adding to the city's blight problem, and further bringing down the property value of those that remain.
By law, the city is supposed to assess every taxable property annually.
Atuahene and co-author Timothy Hodge published a preliminary draft of their study with all the data. She also shares the research's implications through op-eds in The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, The New York Times, the ACLU of Michigan and on Michigan Radio.
