Detroit Reparations Task Force co-chair: 'Responsibility shouldn't just be the government'

Detroit’s Reparations Task Force is in the early stages, but members of the new commission grappling with how to make amends for long-standing systemic racism in the United States are preparing what new housing and economic development opportunities may look like for Detroiters.

Detroit’s task force co-chairs Lauren Hood and Keith Williams said the city’s challenges are different from others. That includes places like San Francisco where a similar committee this year proposed $5 million in cash payouts to citizens as one of many recommendations (this one particularly controversial) and Evanston, Illinois, where a body decided up to $25,000 should go to applicants of housing programs. In Detroit, cash payouts could be part of the discussion but compensation requires a shift in policies and practices in how the city governs Black Detroiters, Hood said. Housing stipends also require specific qualifications.

“On the surface, it looks good because you get some money, but it's really restricted in how you spend it. It's like having a coupon for a store that doesn't sell what you want,” Hood said. “In my mind, it’s more than local government … I think that in a city like Detroit, with regards to housing and economic development, there are a lot of institutional and organizational actors that could play a role in applying redress. The responsibility shouldn’t just be the government.”

More: Detroit's Reparations Task Force: What it is, why it's important

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San Francisco’s payout proposal sparked the local NAACP to urge the board to reject it and focus on education, housing, jobs and health care for Black people, the San Francisco Standard reports.

“(African Americans) never had a chance … to grow a business, own some property, get equity and move on to bigger things. To me, you’ve got to look at what’s happening around the country. I’m not trying to do San Francisco because I don’t know if we can do San Francisco,” said Williams, who also chairs the Michigan Democratic Black Caucus. “The first thing we need to do, to me, is get an economist to really see how much wealth was lost through those racist practices.”

Williams has repeatedly raised the pains of the economic losses to the Black community in Detroit from the razing of the Black Bottom district — the area now known as Lafayette Park — to build a freeway and he wants an official apology to the Black community. He added that the decades-old highway project was built "under the auspices of urban development," labeling the community as a "slum."

"Somebody should give an apology for what they did with I-375 and all the other practices with restricted covenants that caused the harm," Williams said. "The federal government was based on slavery ... on a municipality basis, it’s dealing with issues of zoning, restricted covenants, FHA loans that we didn't get. African American men went to war but they couldn’t participate in loan programs. We couldn't win from that perspective, when the City Council was white."

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The 13-member body has a $350,000 budget for the next 18 months, some of which may be spent on consultants whose expertise is in housing and economic development.

"We should get an expert on the housing market. It can’t be off-the-cuff stuff. On top of it, where is this affordable housing going to be built? From a historical perspective, the land was taken on the east side, the I-94, 375 and that area. Where is there land that can be conducive to new affordable housing?" Williams said. "Let us go through a process of putting all these facts together and doing the research, then we make our recommendation then hopefully they’ll take our recommendation."

Board members will discuss and provide a written report to Detroit City Council with their findings and recommendations in 18 months. But Hood said she hopes the body will expand that time period.

"I don't think you can solve a generations-deep problem in a year and a half. There needs to be a body that can continue the work and hold institutions and city government accountable for delivering what we recommended. There needs to be somebody that exists in perpetuity, and to ensure the policies and practices don’t further harm individuals that were harmed initially," Hood said.

More than a dozen residents attended the first meeting, which took place April 13, pushing for change such as cash payments, taxing wealthy developers and holding financial institutions accountable amid foreclosures. Hood was shocked at a lower than expected turnout, given the overwhelming support for a successful ballot initiative to establish the task force.

"I didn’t really hear anything that was surprising. What did surprise me was there weren’t more people there. I've been watching footage from other meetings in other cities. It's like a packed house. In Detroit, where we’re an overwhelmingly Black city, this is a place where reparations can have an impact," Hood said.

The board was scheduled to meet again April 29 but postponed until June as members conduct "organizational work," Williams told the Free Press.

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact Dana: dafana@freepress.com or 313-635-3491. Follow her on Twitter: @DanaAfana.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Reparations Task Force may use housing, economic consultants