Activists, Lawmakers Working to Keep Detroiters in Their Homes
Housing insecurity is a driver of poverty in SE Michigan and elsewhere. What efforts are underway to address it?
Much of last year on Detroit Today was spent exploring all the ways that housing insecurity drives poverty. Even people who are on the other side of the poverty line can find themselves quickly falling into financial quicksand if they lose their home.
People lose their homes for all kinds of reasons. It could be they didn’t pay rent for some months. Or that their landlords don’t like the fact that they have kids. Or that they can no longer afford their heavy tax burden.
There’s no lack of those stories in and around Detroit, and that became clear last year through the work the program did through the book club, which held events and looked into these issues in every corner of the region.
What’s happening now to combat these problems in Southeast Michigan? There are efforts afoot to guarantee that people facing eviction have legal representation in court during eviction proceedings. There are also many people working on possible solutions to Wayne County’s tax foreclosure crisis.
United Community Housing Coalition is one of the groups at the forefront of both of those issues. Executive Director Ted Phillips and Michele Oberholtzer, director of the group’s tax foreclosure prevention project, join Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson.
Click on the audio player above to hear that conversation.
