DRIVING DETROIT PART 2 OF 5
2 of city's worst problems creep into some of its upscale areas
December 17, 2007
BY BILL McGRAW
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Palmer Woods never really looked like the rest of Detroit.
It has baronial homes, gently curving streets with such names as Suffolk and Argyle Crescent, and flourishing Norway maples and red oaks that cast a sun-dappled screen across much of the neighborhood.
That's why it was a shock to drive by the house at 1830 Balmoral.
It has sagging gutters, chipped paint and overgrown greenery. A wide-eyed doll lay across the crumbling front steps.
The history of the home's most recent occupants was splayed across the front and back yards: Golf clubs, canceled checks, prescription medicine bottles, toys, Scientific American magazines, birthday cards, an undated photo of the house looking lovely in winter and a fraternity paddle inscribed, "To Barbara, from Benny." A 1973 Lincoln with four flat tires sat in the street.
In Palmer Woods.
This is a 2 1/2 -story Tudor mini-mansion with a winding driveway and a 4-car garage in one of Detroit's most exclusive neighborhoods.
The owner, an elderly physician, lost the home to foreclosure, according to real-estate records and neighbors. She was evicted in November.
Hers is not the only vacant home in Palmer Woods.
And Palmer Woods is not the only elite neighborhood in Detroit that finds itself fighting an escalating battle with the kinds of cancers that rarely existed there before and, over time, have destroyed large swaths of the city.
Adjacent to Palmer Woods and only slightly less majestic are Sherwood Forest and the University District. Those neighborhoods, similarly, are battling blight and the pathologies that accompany it: crime, stripping, squatting and fires.
From North Rosedale Park on the west to East English Village next to Grosse Pointe on the east, Detroit's best neighborhoods are under siege like never before. Even the home in Russell Woods once occupied by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick before he moved to the Manoogian Mansion has boards on the windows. The latest owner defaulted on his mortgage, records show.
Of 298 homes in Palmer Woods, 20 are empty, said Rochelle Lento, a neighborhood resident and attorney who specializes in housing issues. That's a small figure compared with most of the city, but unusually high for Palmer Woods.
"Our goal is to protect the assets here," Lento said. "We're talking about historical jewels in Palmer Woods."
Sherwood Forest has 30 vacant homes out of about 435 houses, said Lois Primas, president of the neighborhood organization.
"If one house is looking lost and deserted, it means the whole neighborhood is looking bad," Primas said. "It just hurts your heart."
South of Sherwood Forest, across 7 Mile Road, is the University District, with about 1,250 homes. As of September, 130 were vacant, said John Autrey, the neighborhood association president.
These communities are at 7 Mile and Livernois, one of the six areas selected for bolstering by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as part of his Next Detroit neighborhood revitalization initiative announced in May. Despite their problems, the elite districts continue to look stunning overall, featuring homes with distinctive architecture, remarkable size and memorable landscaping.
Some of the abandonment in these three neighborhoods stems from the mortgage crisis, which has left empty houses in its wake in cities across the region and nation. But most suburban neighborhoods are not as fragile as those in Detroit, where history shows a few empty houses can become havens for crime and ignite a decades-long downward spiral.
Of Palmer Woods' 20 empty homes, six to eight are because of foreclosures, Lento estimated. She isn't certain about the others, but said some homes simply have been for sale for years.
The house next door to 1830 Balmoral also is empty, having gone through two foreclosures in recent years. A large Dumpster sits on what used to be the front lawn. A blue tarp blows from the roof. There are weeds and junk in the backyard, and the entire first floor is in shambles.
"We're working with the city to condemn it," Lento said. "It's probably the only house in the neighborhood that needs to be demolished."
The plague spreads
George Galster lives in Palmer Woods. He's also an expert on neighborhoods and has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a professor at Wayne State University.
Galster said the housing crisis hitting Detroit in 2007 is "fundamentally different" from the long-term problem, which has occurred mostly in marginal areas of the city and which he attributes to metro Detroit building more housing units over the years than it can fill.
It's a regional problem, but Detroit's older housing stock bears the brunt of it, and the city is powerless to control the situation, Galster said.
He added: "It's like playing a game of musical chairs in reverse."
Instead of taking away chairs -- or houses -- "we keep adding chairs, so there's a whole lot of chairs that people are not sitting in at the end of each round."
Historically, the least desirable houses are the ones that nobody is living in. After the owner can't find anyone to rent or buy the house, he or she often simply walks away from it.
What's different now, Galster said, is that for the past couple of years "we're seeing the abandonment of some of the city's most desirable housing."
Palmer Woods has experienced problems with squatters and scrappers stripping homes of valuable metals from pipes and wiring.
Said Galster: "All of a sudden, neighborhoods that are well up the food chain in Detroit are subject to the same desperation, or desperadoes -- the insurance burning, the stripping, the mortgage scams, the occupancy by inappropriate individuals."
Neighbors in Palmer Woods have tried to fight back by researching real-estate records, reaching out to banks, pressuring the city to cite owners whose properties are violating ordinances and working with the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office over possible mortgage fraud on two or three properties. They've had a couple of success stories, including the sale and rehab of the city's only Frank Lloyd Wright house, on West 7 Mile.
One problem in Palmer Woods: Mortgages on the foreclosed homes are mostly held by out-of-town banks. Lento said Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, owns four or five of the mortgages on the six to eight foreclosed homes in Palmer Woods.
Fighting back
About 4 1/2 miles southwest of Palmer Woods is North Rosedale Park, another refuge of sculpted bushes, distinctive homes and mammoth trees. But it, too, is struggling with abandonment.
On a stretch of Shaftsbury Road, neighbors are doing their best to maintain a handful of abandoned homes and provide security. They've even put up window treatments to make the empty homes look occupied.
"We, as a neighborhood, really don't know what to do with what is going on here," said Nacio Thomas, 43. "We're looking for answers."
Marsha Bruhn, 69, the retired director of the City Planning Commission, lives in an impeccable and unique Tudor revival that has elements of an English cottage. Next door is an empty home. The neighbors cut the lawn. Rick Revels, 53, has even put chlorine into the built-in pool. A dead tree hangs over the garage, overhead wires are hanging loose and a window at the rear of the house is broken and boarded.
"We really don't want to see our neighborhood decline," Bruhn said.
Neither do the residents of Palmer Woods, where the vistas include lawns lush as meadows and homes that remind you of castles.
As trash left from the eviction blew across the lawn of the house on Balmoral, a neighbor slowed his car and asked what was happening with the house.
Before long, an SUV stopped and a passenger got out and picked up a vacuum cleaner. She walked with it toward the vehicle, then suddenly decided it wasn't worth taking.
So she threw it on the lawn, and they drove away.
In Palmer Woods.
2 of city's worst problems creep into some of its upscale areas
December 17, 2007
BY BILL McGRAW
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Palmer Woods never really looked like the rest of Detroit.
It has baronial homes, gently curving streets with such names as Suffolk and Argyle Crescent, and flourishing Norway maples and red oaks that cast a sun-dappled screen across much of the neighborhood.
That's why it was a shock to drive by the house at 1830 Balmoral.
It has sagging gutters, chipped paint and overgrown greenery. A wide-eyed doll lay across the crumbling front steps.
The history of the home's most recent occupants was splayed across the front and back yards: Golf clubs, canceled checks, prescription medicine bottles, toys, Scientific American magazines, birthday cards, an undated photo of the house looking lovely in winter and a fraternity paddle inscribed, "To Barbara, from Benny." A 1973 Lincoln with four flat tires sat in the street.
In Palmer Woods.
This is a 2 1/2 -story Tudor mini-mansion with a winding driveway and a 4-car garage in one of Detroit's most exclusive neighborhoods.
The owner, an elderly physician, lost the home to foreclosure, according to real-estate records and neighbors. She was evicted in November.
Hers is not the only vacant home in Palmer Woods.
And Palmer Woods is not the only elite neighborhood in Detroit that finds itself fighting an escalating battle with the kinds of cancers that rarely existed there before and, over time, have destroyed large swaths of the city.
Adjacent to Palmer Woods and only slightly less majestic are Sherwood Forest and the University District. Those neighborhoods, similarly, are battling blight and the pathologies that accompany it: crime, stripping, squatting and fires.
From North Rosedale Park on the west to East English Village next to Grosse Pointe on the east, Detroit's best neighborhoods are under siege like never before. Even the home in Russell Woods once occupied by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick before he moved to the Manoogian Mansion has boards on the windows. The latest owner defaulted on his mortgage, records show.
Of 298 homes in Palmer Woods, 20 are empty, said Rochelle Lento, a neighborhood resident and attorney who specializes in housing issues. That's a small figure compared with most of the city, but unusually high for Palmer Woods.
"Our goal is to protect the assets here," Lento said. "We're talking about historical jewels in Palmer Woods."
Sherwood Forest has 30 vacant homes out of about 435 houses, said Lois Primas, president of the neighborhood organization.
"If one house is looking lost and deserted, it means the whole neighborhood is looking bad," Primas said. "It just hurts your heart."
South of Sherwood Forest, across 7 Mile Road, is the University District, with about 1,250 homes. As of September, 130 were vacant, said John Autrey, the neighborhood association president.
These communities are at 7 Mile and Livernois, one of the six areas selected for bolstering by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as part of his Next Detroit neighborhood revitalization initiative announced in May. Despite their problems, the elite districts continue to look stunning overall, featuring homes with distinctive architecture, remarkable size and memorable landscaping.
Some of the abandonment in these three neighborhoods stems from the mortgage crisis, which has left empty houses in its wake in cities across the region and nation. But most suburban neighborhoods are not as fragile as those in Detroit, where history shows a few empty houses can become havens for crime and ignite a decades-long downward spiral.
Of Palmer Woods' 20 empty homes, six to eight are because of foreclosures, Lento estimated. She isn't certain about the others, but said some homes simply have been for sale for years.
The house next door to 1830 Balmoral also is empty, having gone through two foreclosures in recent years. A large Dumpster sits on what used to be the front lawn. A blue tarp blows from the roof. There are weeds and junk in the backyard, and the entire first floor is in shambles.
"We're working with the city to condemn it," Lento said. "It's probably the only house in the neighborhood that needs to be demolished."
The plague spreads
George Galster lives in Palmer Woods. He's also an expert on neighborhoods and has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a professor at Wayne State University.
Galster said the housing crisis hitting Detroit in 2007 is "fundamentally different" from the long-term problem, which has occurred mostly in marginal areas of the city and which he attributes to metro Detroit building more housing units over the years than it can fill.
It's a regional problem, but Detroit's older housing stock bears the brunt of it, and the city is powerless to control the situation, Galster said.
He added: "It's like playing a game of musical chairs in reverse."
Instead of taking away chairs -- or houses -- "we keep adding chairs, so there's a whole lot of chairs that people are not sitting in at the end of each round."
Historically, the least desirable houses are the ones that nobody is living in. After the owner can't find anyone to rent or buy the house, he or she often simply walks away from it.
What's different now, Galster said, is that for the past couple of years "we're seeing the abandonment of some of the city's most desirable housing."
Palmer Woods has experienced problems with squatters and scrappers stripping homes of valuable metals from pipes and wiring.
Said Galster: "All of a sudden, neighborhoods that are well up the food chain in Detroit are subject to the same desperation, or desperadoes -- the insurance burning, the stripping, the mortgage scams, the occupancy by inappropriate individuals."
Neighbors in Palmer Woods have tried to fight back by researching real-estate records, reaching out to banks, pressuring the city to cite owners whose properties are violating ordinances and working with the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office over possible mortgage fraud on two or three properties. They've had a couple of success stories, including the sale and rehab of the city's only Frank Lloyd Wright house, on West 7 Mile.
One problem in Palmer Woods: Mortgages on the foreclosed homes are mostly held by out-of-town banks. Lento said Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, owns four or five of the mortgages on the six to eight foreclosed homes in Palmer Woods.
Fighting back
About 4 1/2 miles southwest of Palmer Woods is North Rosedale Park, another refuge of sculpted bushes, distinctive homes and mammoth trees. But it, too, is struggling with abandonment.
On a stretch of Shaftsbury Road, neighbors are doing their best to maintain a handful of abandoned homes and provide security. They've even put up window treatments to make the empty homes look occupied.
"We, as a neighborhood, really don't know what to do with what is going on here," said Nacio Thomas, 43. "We're looking for answers."
Marsha Bruhn, 69, the retired director of the City Planning Commission, lives in an impeccable and unique Tudor revival that has elements of an English cottage. Next door is an empty home. The neighbors cut the lawn. Rick Revels, 53, has even put chlorine into the built-in pool. A dead tree hangs over the garage, overhead wires are hanging loose and a window at the rear of the house is broken and boarded.
"We really don't want to see our neighborhood decline," Bruhn said.
Neither do the residents of Palmer Woods, where the vistas include lawns lush as meadows and homes that remind you of castles.
As trash left from the eviction blew across the lawn of the house on Balmoral, a neighbor slowed his car and asked what was happening with the house.
Before long, an SUV stopped and a passenger got out and picked up a vacuum cleaner. She walked with it toward the vehicle, then suddenly decided it wasn't worth taking.
So she threw it on the lawn, and they drove away.
In Palmer Woods.
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