Mayor Duggan talks NFL Draft, crime reduction and affordable housing at State of the City

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan delivered his 11th State of the City address Wednesday night.

Speaking at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Duggan highlighted the city’s efforts to reduce blight and ramp up city services ahead of the NFL Draft, increase affordable housing and more.

He pointed specifically to efforts by city council members over the last two years to leverage federal funding for more affordable housing.

“Council members Letisha Johnson, Angela Calloway, Mary Waters and Gabriela Santiago-Romero prioritized the American Rescue Plan money and put together a $200 million package for affordable housing,” Duggan said. “And where that put us? Seventy-one projects in five years — a billion dollars in new and renovated affordable housing in the city.”

Duggan also mentioned a recent University of Michigan study that showed home values for Black and Latino residents has risen dramatically over the past decade.

“This is the city that we wanted to build, where everybody benefits for the recovery,” he said. “And the next time some out of town person comes in here and says to you it’s all happening downtown and Midtown, nothing’s happening in the neighborhoods, you tell them the University of Michigan study has four billion reasons why that’s not true.”

However, neighborhoods have seen slower growth than the high-density areas Duggan mentioned.

The mayor also highlighted quality of life improvements for residents, including more reliable bus service.

“In the last year we’ve hired 140 new drivers, we’ve raised pay $3 an hour, we got more buses on the road — went up from 120 last year to 159 this spring,” he said. “By fall, we’re gonna have 188 buses on the road.”

Duggan says the new transit center at 8 Mile and Woodward will open next month.

He also touted crime reduction efforts in the city that have seen carjackings and shootings drop considerably from a decade ago.

“Homicides are down another 27% below last year’s level, shootings have so far down another 23% from last year and carjackings are down another 45% from last year,” he said.

The mayor attributed crime reduction in the city to the Shot Stopper community-based violence reduction program. In high crime areas where residents spoke directly to potential offenders, crime went down significantly, Duggan said, vowing to continue and expand the Shot Stopper program.

Crime also fell dramatically in almost every major U.S. city following spikes in violent crime during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duggan also touched on efforts to dramatically reduce blight in the city, noting that he is “officially declaring Detroit’s ruin porn tours canceled.”

He specifically turned his attention to people with cars left in yards.

“Multiple vehicles stored on the lawn we’re gonna prioritize. If you’re fixing your own car in your backyard nobody has an issue. You can’t fix all the neighbor’s cars,” he said.

The Detroit Police Department will handle code enforcement.

Additionally, Duggan said, the city has teared down or rehabbed 12,000 homes during his decade in office.

Duggan also pledged to drop taxes by an addition 1 mill next year, after a cut last year and one planned for July.

“My mother says I’m the oddest of all politicians: a Democrat who keeps cutting your taxes. I don’t know what that means but we’re going to keep going.”

Duggan barely mentioned his Land Value Tax plan to cut property taxes on homeowners while raising them on vacant or undeveloped lots in the city.

WDET’s Jenny Sherman contributed to this report.