Background

Despite Detroit's image of being under-populated with large amounts of vacant land and abandoned, blighted homes and buildings, rapid growth and revitalization has been spurred by an influx of people with higher incomes in the city's urban core. This growth has resulted in a shortage of multi-unit apartment housing, causing increased rental rates through the conversion of low-income housing into market-rate housing. Additionally, the 2007-2008 mortgage foreclosure crisis caused many seniors who had predatory loans to lose their homes. Seniors who moved from employment to Social Security and could not afford the expenses of a single home often lost their homes to tax foreclosure. The foreclosure crisis created a shortage of rental housing and caused rental prices to escalate. This, coupled with the conversion, or potential conversion, of apartment buildings serving low-income senior citizens in Detroit into market-rate housing, has created a human service crisis for seniors living in the downtown and midtown areas of Detroit. City planners had anticipated this concern and had created plans to address vulnerable seniors and their housing needs in previous administrations (City of Detroit Senior Housing Preservation Strategy, 2001). While these plans were set aside for various reasons, with a new mayor and new investment in the city the possibilities for addressing these previously-acknowledged concerns reemerge. In fact, the current city administration has expressed support for the coalition's vision and challenged it to play an active role in advising the city in preserving low-income housing. As a post-bankrupt Detroit pursues revitalization, the needs of seniors living in low-income housing must be addressed. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan recently highlighted the need for action on senior housing in his 2017 State of the City address, stating, “There is no point in being mayor of this city if you can't stand up for people who are otherwise being pushed around…It's not just enough to preserve the affordable housing we have, because as rents rise in this city, we're going to have a need for affordable housing everywhere. We need to act. We've made a commitment as an administration that it doesn't matter what part of town you're in, we're going to be committed to affordable housing” (Duggan, 2017).

Detroit is not the only city with a scarcity of housing for low-income seniors. The number of senior renters in the United States is anticipated to go from 5.8 million to 12.2. million in the next two decades (Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Health and Housing Task Force, 2016). The task force also notes that 1.8 million seniors experience rent burden labeled as severe, meaning they pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing. As is the case with most urban areas, Detroit has a high concentration of subsidized low-income senior housing. There is insufficient support at the local, state, or federal level to finance new housing for low-income seniors in Detroit who may be displaced and will be compelled to relocate. The current focus of new development is for affordable housing, which does not address the issue of housing for low-income seniors since affordable housing will be priced at a rate that is unaffordable for seniors with incomes below 20% of the Area Median Income (AMI). Thus, there is a shortage of low-income senior housing in Detroit and seniors incur waiting lists as the population of seniors steadily increases. The scarcity of low-income senior housing in Detroit has been featured in local newspapers, and was just featured in the Wall Street Journal in March 2017 in an article titled, “Detroit's Resurgence Brings New Housing Concerns” (Kusisto, 2017).