Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield is directing the city’s building and safety department to ramp up efforts – in 65 apartment complexes – to ensure seniors and people with disabilities are living in safe housing.
Sheffield announced the initiative, which includes fines and legal action, on Monday, Jan.26 as part of a 4-point-plan to address concerns raised by seniors about the often “deplorable conditions” they have been living in. The goal, she said, is to bolster accountability, communication between management and the city of Detroit and enforcement in all senior buildings.
“We do want to set the tone that this administration is not going to take disrespecting our seniors, not responding to complaints that they put in regarding the quality of their living conditions, that it is a new day,” Sheffield said at a news conference at the Village Center apartment in New Center. The apartment, which Sheffield called a “model building,” has a certificate of compliance, a requirement to ensure that a property has been inspected.
Detroit seniors have long raised concerns about poor rental housing conditions from mold infestation and vermin to lack of heat and inadequate security measures.
“Over the past several months, we’ve heard far too many reports of elevator outages,” said David Bell, director of the city of Detroit’s building safety engineering and environmental department (BSEED), at the news conference.
Sheffield is also launching a senior advocate program for all senior buildings throughout Detroit. The advocates, she said, will be working to form tenant councils and are meant to be a “safe space” for residents to report concerns. The mayor’s office will fund the advocates.
“We know that every building owner is not necessarily negligent or a bad actor and we want to ensure that we lift up those who are doing right, but also those who may want to do right but just need a little bit of help,” Sheffield said.
Here’s what the plan includes:
- Enhancing inspection protocols: The city plans to assign two property inspectors to conduct monthly senior housing inspections and five elevator inspectors to examine senior buildings four times each year.
- Ramping up inspection and enforcement actions: The city intends to increase the inspection schedule for all senior buildings and add “stronger enforcement,” Bell said in the form of fines up to $2,000 for non-compliance.
- Increasing consent agreements and legal tactics: BSEED and the law department plan to take legal action against property owners of three buildings by entering into “consent agreements with corrective action plans.” The addresses for those properties are: 430 East Warren Avenue, 99 East Forest Avenue and 1601 Robert Bradby Drive. The properties are missing reports meant to gauge how structurally sound the outside of a building is, Bell said. The addresses will be forwarded to the law department for further action, he said. The three properties do not have a certificate of compliance, according to the city of Detroit’s rental compliance map.
- The Free Press called phone numbers for the three properties associated with the addresses. Ashley Sinclair, a representative with Village Green Management, which manages the Williams Pavilion apartments located at 99 East Forest Avenue, said in an emailed statement that the report Bell is referring to was completed in 2022 and submitted to the city of Detroit but an inspector later said it wasn’t in the correct format. Village Green Management is in contact with that inspector to fix the issue, she said. The building’s certificate of compliance expired in late December and will be renewed after that report is completed, she added. Kris Landry, a representative of Preservation Management Inc., which manages the Warren Plaza apartments at 430 E. Warren, said Tuesday that the company’s records show a written confirmation from a city of Detroit building inspector in October that the report was received.
- Directly engaging with property management companies: The city plans to have quarterly meetings between city officials and property management representatives starting in February.
Residents with concerns about building compliance can call BSEED at 313-628-2451, city officials said.