DETROIT, MI (WXYZ) — The city of Detroit is working towards becoming blight free by 2024! It's a proposal so beloved by the community that $250 million was poured into it.
But, the city is now more than a year into its demolitions and some Detroiters say they are growing frustrated with the pace of progress.
"After the older people passed away it started sliding down,” Moses Brown said.
Moses Brown lives on Larchmont Street in Detroit. He's been there for four decades and some say he's like the mayor of the block.
"What was the neighborhood like when you moved in," 7 Action News reporter Kiara Hay asks.
"Beautiful, beautiful," Brown responds.
Brown says 15 years after moving into his Larchmont home, his neighbor moved out. That home has been sitting vacant ever since.
Despite Brown’s efforts to cut the grass, board up the home, and at one point, plant flowers, the abandoned home remains an eye sore and a danger.
"It was on the demolition list about 15 years ago. It was on the list and [was] supposed to be torn down that November and I waited and waited but nothing ever happened," Brown said.
That was until a week ago when the long-awaited yellow demolition sign appeared. Nonetheless, the process may not be as quick as he would hope.
“You don’t build a house in a day. You can tear it down in a day, but you don’t want to,” Rashad Montgomery the Environment Field Superintendent for Detroit's demolition department said.
According to Montgomery, the process of knocking down a home from start to finish could take months. And abatement, an important step to the city, tends to slow this process down.
“What you see there is a clean room,” Rashad Montgomery said.
Abatement is the removal of toxic materials from inside a home. These items can include lead paint, old TVs, radios, and thermostats.
The abatement treatment is in addition to a wet treatment done during the demolition process. This prevents toxic materials from entering into the environment and impacting neighboring homes.
“We have the safest demos in the country,” Lajuan Counts the director of the Detroit Demolition Department said.
The proposal and demolitions started at the beginning of 2021. So far the city has torn down 2,500 abandoned homes and has stabilized 1,500 others. The goal is to tackle 14,000 blighted homes by 2024.
Counts' message to Detroiters—trust the process.
"So the property may be abated, but it may take a month or two before we actually come back and start the demo,” she said.
Brown says that's no problem.
“A month is good compared to 30 years," he said.
When the city knocks down these homes, neighbors have first dibs to purchase the lot for a few hundred bucks. Brown says he plans on taking advantage of that deal.
