Obama Administration and Detroit Housing Needs

Obama Administration officials are coming to Detroit next week to discuss how to leverage existing federal funds to help the boost the city. This, like all previous meetings, is by invite only. We're told that community leaders, non-profit leaders and business leaders will meet with Gov. Snyder, Mayor Bing and dictator Orr.

Nowhere in these meetings has there been an invitation to the real leaders of Detroit -- its residents! Detroiters who live day-in and day-out with the consequences of emergency manager dictatorship, corruption, broken city services and meager resources for primary and secondary education have never been invited to provide their input on the changes that should be made here or where federal dollars should be (re)directed.

If they want to know what low-income residents of Detroit want, here's a partial list:

• Sell City-owned houses to low-income Detroiters for $50 without delay toward a goal of reducing homelessness. These houses are ready and available now and there is nowhere near enough public housing units or subsidies available for the vast need of low-income residents.

• Assist these new homeowners with acquiring Community Development Block Grant funds (from HUD) to repair these homes for families and neighborhoods.

• Provide training funds from non-profit foundations and businesses to low-income Detroiters for construction, plumbing, electrical, roofing and HVAC skills to repair these homes, thereby, creating new job opportunities.

• Increase SNAP and child care benefits to low-income people in Detroit so that parents can focus on home repair and skills-training work.

• Purchase plots of land for community organizations and block clubs to establish more community gardens for organic produce and food sustainability education.

• Distribute much needed funding to the Detroit Department of Transportation so that buses across the City -- of which low-income Detroiters desperately rely upon -- can increase service and get people to these home rebuilding projects, school and work.

Over 60% of the children in Detroit live in poverty. There's no better way to raise them out of that than by helping their parents acquire the stability they need in housing. It's unfathomable and unsustainable for a family to pay over 50% of its limited income toward rent. Yet, everyday thousands of low-income families across Detroit move from apartment to shelter to couch to car to street with no public official blinking an eye about this.

If federal, state and local officials want to be part of the solution for Detroit's economic crisis, get out of the way and stop being part of the problem!

Photo by MWRO.

Detroiters Speak Out at Poverty Tour

Today, members of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and others joined forces and met Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West’s "The Poverty Tour" with our point of view.

The session was electric with some 200-300 residents in attendance. A loud and well organized small group came to shout down the speakers with cat-calls of "sell-out and traitor" being slung toward both Tavis Smiley and Prof. West but they each held their own.

Prof. West started his remarks by commenting on the many fundraising and public events he sponsored for President Obama and recanted how he had remarked early on in the campaign that he would not be silent should the President falter.

The anger from some in the audience was about the false rumor that "The Poverty Tour" is being sponsored by the Tea Party or some Republican operatives; and that the intent of the Tour is to denounce Pres. Obama. Many people stood at the microphones to speak. When it was our turn, we all suggested to those loud folk that since we voted the President in we had every right to criticize what we didn't like and will continue to do so.

Dr. West talked about “too much Geitner,” “too much Larry Summers,” and “too much Ben Bernanke” -- all operatives working in Wall Street and for Wall Street.

We all agree and wish that our dear President had selected others to fill those seats. The loud group represents the antithesis to what we are all about. Class warfare was introduced and some folk wanted to turn the fight into ‘do you or don't you support the President?’ That is not the fight. They were summarily shouted down by those who came to describe both the plight of the poor and the fight of the poor.

We won a political victory because we were able to demonstrate through our comments that the poverty issue was systemic and needed to be solved in a systemic fashion. The level of anger also exists because people are looking for answers to their problems, most immediate and some long term.

Answers were in short order so some people left unfulfilled. The answer of course is that systematic poverty based on the rise in technological production means that a new system must be created where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Folks are almost ready to hear this message as the only conclusion.

MWRO, one of the founding members of THE ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY, announced the March On Washington set for June 30th, 2012. Both Tavis and Prof. West were very warm and receptive to MWRO so they left on their way to Akron with a belly full of Detroit and the ASSEMBLY! 

Image from The Poverty Tour