Detroit’s neighborhoods present the visitor to our city with contrasts that are extreme, troubling, and seem to be permanent. On the one hand, there is beauty, serenity, cleanliness and safety. I am thinking of the stately mansions of the Boston Edison district, the modernist blocks of Lafayette Park, the well-kept serenity of the St. Anne Gateway area, the great housing mix of East English Village, the hip, cultural Mecca of Midtown. And, as any Detroiter knows, that is just a partial list.

In Detroit’s solid neighborhoods, trash is only seen once a week, concealed in clean barrels as it awaits pick-up at the edge of neatly mowed lawns. On litter-free sidewalks, neighbors walk without fear, and children play carefree in lovely, renovated parks. Residents send their children to safe, bright neighborhood schools. But drive a few blocks and the impression changes completely. The miles-long streets that border many of Detroit’s residential areas – such as Grand River and Michigan Avenue -- are full of gaps and blight -- barely a shadow of the vibrant commercial strips they were in the 1950s. Freeway construction, the flight of businesses and residents, and finally, riots, hit the city with a combination of blows from which we’ve never fully recovered. Nearby residential blocks are pockmarked with empty, overgrown lots, burned-out, boarded up and poorly kept houses, badly maintained streets and sidewalks, graffiti and broken glass. In areas like Brightmoor on the far northwest side, a sea of blight exists around islands of stable, functioning neighborhoods. This, too, is Detroit. Here, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what needs to be done to truly heal the scars on our city’s landscape.

The situation is not helped by the fact that it is this Detroit that is firmly fixed in the public imagination as the “real Detroit.” Mention that you are visiting the city, and outsiders will react with alarm for your safety. Say you are thinking of moving here, and your family may well seek to have you evaluated by a psychiatrist. The perception is unfortunate, first because, as I’ve shown, it is only partially grounded in reality. Second, it is a perception that has very real, negative ramifications for the future of our city, since it serves as a powerful disincentive – to businesses that might locate here; to enterprising, energetic people who might consider moving here; and to the collective will of our citizens who want to believe that these neighborhoods can and will turn around.

It is a perception unfortunately fed on too many fronts leading to an undeserved national reputation that affects all of us both in the city and throughout the region. Two out of three local TV news stories that involve a shooting, a fire, or some other disaster seem to originate in a low-income Detroit neighborhood. Let’s leave aside the fact that incidents of all kinds are more likely to occur in a city of roughly 1 million than a neighboring community of 50,000 or 20,000. Let’s even leave aside the fact that often our own local media is not as interested when the city is the site of a major cultural event or a neighborhood or educational success story. The constant images of rundown areas and distraught people feed the impression that Detroit’s neighborhoods are not only out of control, but also beyond help.

However, let’s be brutally honest with ourselves and acknowledge that reality also provides plenty of grist for the mill of negative perceptions. Detroit residents are keenly aware of the frustration they feel when the police response to an urgent call is slower than expected, when an abandoned house burns before it can be renovated or demolished, and when the nearest retail establishment remains a corner liquor store year after year.

The good news is that our neighborhoods are not beyond help. Indeed, we have the solutions at hand to turn our city, all of our city, into a seamless vista of decent, livable residential areas. Urban neighborhoods are turning around all over America, but most importantly, they are turning around right here. During the past two decades, areas like Hubbard Richard, Morningside and Brightmoor, to name a few, have proven that there is no such thing as a hopeless neighborhood – not if the residents of the neighborhood and the leaders of the city are willing to fight for it. The most dramatic turnarounds have transformed blighted areas into stable communities with new residents, new businesses, and the amenities seen in a prosperous village. But in every case, here and around the nation, big change required bold vision and action. Sometimes a community had to try things that no one, anywhere, had ever tried before. Laws and regulations had to be rewritten and unlikely allies had to join forces. But no matter how difficult the transition, nearly everyone agreed the transformed community and revitalized city was worth every bit of the price paid.

I am convinced that Detroit is ready to take a much broader and more radical approach to the task of neighborhood restoration. The groundwork for this kind of change has been underway for more than a decade, and the patience we’ve shown during this period of foundation-laying, coalition-building, political struggle and incremental growth is beginning to pay off. We are already seeing pockets of growth and prosperity blossom throughout the city of Detroit. The big push we need needs to come now.

But no single group – not the city’s deficit-ridden government, nor the community associations, nor the churches, nor the non-profits, nor foundations, nor businesses -- can do this alone. I propose that we embrace the radical model of a partnership among community groups, city government and the business community on a scale Detroit has never seen before. And I propose a greater level of openness and inclusiveness in the neighborhood redevelopment process than we’ve seen before. All stakeholders need to be at the table when decisions are made about how our neighborhoods are going to be redeveloped, so that public trust and legitimate outcomes become the cornerstone of our citizens’ investment in their own city.

Separately, we can do little. Together, as I’ll show, we can succeed beyond our greatest expectations. Detroit can once again become the city that was called the “Paris of the Midwest” in the 1930s and ‘40s for its green boulevards, lovely neighborhoods, and graceful public architecture.

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The first step city government must take toward neighborhood redevelopment is publicly declaring that neighborhood redevelopment is its highest priority. The second step is listening to what residents want in their neighborhoods and creating mechanisms to ensure that the city’s long-term development plans align with the residents’ vision. The third step is making things happen: cutting the red tape in city government that slows down or even kills the development process; finding supplemental government, foundation or private funds that can make more development a reality; and working to convince more commercial developers and community based non-profits to get involved in new projects.

Detroit has addressed these issues somewhat, but in comparison with what other cities have accomplished, we have taken baby steps. This is especially true in view of Detroit’s tradition of strong neighborhoods supported by a network of well-kept, single-family homes. Until the mid-1990s, when Fannie Mae accepted the city’s invitation to open a Detroit office and produce new mortgage products for the local market, we did little as a city to promote home ownership – an essential element for a city dominated by single-family houses.

The few neighborhood redevelopment projects Detroit has seen since the 1970s came about largely from the initiative of individual developers and community development groups, or city government’s direct involvement in particular projects. Harbortown on East Jefferson Avenue, the Lester Morgan Cultural Gardens in Midtown, and suburban-style Virginia Park and Victoria Park residential projects sprang up under Coleman Young. Livernois Square and River Bend Plaza were two of many new neighborhood retail centers built under Dennis Archer. Saint Anne’s Homes in Southwest Detroit and the Palmer Homes townhouse development on the near east side were among dozens of new residential developments built by community-based nonprofits and private firms during the Archer years.

In his 2004 State of the City address, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick talked about a development currently being called the Far Eastside Project, the most ambitious neighborhood redevelopment project ever undertaken by the City of Detroit. Planning for this project began in 2000, when Mayor Archer and Paul Bernard, then the city’s Planning and Development director, announced an initiative to link private developers, foundations and nonprofit organizations in the rebuilding of a 1,200-acre parcel bounded by Alter Road, Jefferson, Conner and East Warren Avenues.

In an effort similar to other large-scale, market-driven projects undertaken by major cities in the 1990s, the goal of this development is to work with current residents and small-business owners to completely restore a community devastated by the loss of industry, retailers and residents over several decades. I will discuss the status of this important project later in this document.

The record shows that successful cities with geographical and historical profiles similar to Detroit’s have been much more aggressive about investing in neighborhoods than we have. There’s no question that few American cities have faced the kind of disinvestment and population loss that Detroit has. Even fewer cities have been trying to rebuild their downtown, their business base, and their neighborhoods at the same time. We recognize by their example, however, that dramatic change is possible.

What Detroit needs most are truly bold strokes from city leaders. We’re still waiting for initiatives backed by both the public and private sectors that will transform the character of Detroit’s neighborhoods.

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A good deal of what ails many Detroit neighborhoods can be explained by what is sometimes called the “broken windows” theory. This theory – popularized in a 1996 book by George Kelling and Catherine M. Coles -- holds that social breakdown (or its opposite) stems in no small part from what people see around them everyday. If what they see are abandoned houses, broken windows, graffiti-covered walls and the like, the result is a public perception of danger and disorder that actually becomes the reality. The thinking is that when people perceive that blight and litter are tolerated and that no one in authority is watching, then those on the margins of unacceptable behavior will feel emboldened to act out. The visitor to the area sees no reason not to drop litter on the sidewalk. The angry, anti-social resident crosses the line and throws a punch; the drug user tries mugging; out-for-fun teenagers torch an abandoned home. And the neighborhood continues its downward slide.

The converse is also true, and that idea is one that should give all of us hope for the future. Small improvements in the look and feel of a neighborhood can have a major, positive impact on what actually goes on there. Pristine new in-fill housing, like that in the St. Anne Gateway neighborhood, gave many long-time residents a healthy sense of competition – they started fixing up their own places, and the result is a lovely area for families to live. Neighborhood patrols in many areas have let the criminals know that someone IS watching – and the crime rates have gone down.

Working from this idea, New York saw a dramatic reduction in crime during the 1990s as police cracked down – not on major crimes, but on so-called quality-of-life crimes like subway turnstile-hopping, jaywalking and public drinking. As Malcolm Gladwell documents in his bestselling book, The Tipping Point, citing people for those petty offenses often led to arrests for more serious crimes because – no big surprise – the person who will hop a turnstile is often the very same person who will sell drugs or commit a robbery. In New York, the cumulative effect was that dangerous criminals were taken off the streets, any future crimes they might have committed were prevented, and citizens began to perceive that police were not putting up with a chaotic, “anything goes” atmosphere in the city. New York City – dark, dangerous New York City – suddenly started feeling like a secure, well-lighted place where the high standards set by police were quickly followed by the growing pride of citizens in their neighborhoods and an ever lower tolerance for anti-social behavior.

In a similar vein, through the 90s, New York’s transit authority adopted a “clean fleet” policy for the city’s infamous graffiti-covered subway cars. Graffiti painters were motivated in no small degree by the triumph of seeing their handiwork in public view as people rode the trains. The powers that be in New York decided that no car would leave the train yard if it were not graffiti free. For a while, vandals still snuck into the yards to paint the cars, but transit workers would be right behind them with chemicals and scrub-brushes. Some of the “artists” literally wept to see their creations destroyed before their eyes. But the result was to completely remove the motivation for these people to continue vandalizing subway cars. To this day, a ride on the New York City subway is reminiscent of nothing so much as the London Underground: it may be crowded, but you’ll have a safe, civilized ride on a clean, air-conditioned train. The key takeaway here is that a clear vision, coupled with some achievable changes, can make a big difference. So let’s take a look at how strong, cross-sector partnerships, and a culture of openness and inclusion, can enable us to start implementing those changes in Detroit, now.

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Since broken windows themselves are by definition the root of the evil that plagues our neighborhoods according to the “broken windows” theory, it makes sense to start any discussion of improving our neighborhoods with a focus on the those broken windows, and all the other components of visible blight. I have discussed elsewhere what should be the first and most critical item on the city’s blight-busting agenda: the urgent need to start putting abandoned properties and empty lots into the hands of competent developers. To summarize here, we can and must make it easier for potential developers – whether commercial or non-profit – to purchase city-owned properties at low prices that encourage investment. My booklet on “Restarting the Economic Engine” outlines specific proposals for doing just that. In addition, I’d like to propose the bold step of passing legislation that holds the owners of derelict properties and empty lots to a 90-day deadline for bringing their buildings up to code or developing their land. If they fail to do so, they would then surrender the property to a qualified community development organization, even if taxes on the property are paid up.

A systematic property seizure and redevelopment process would make a huge dent in the abandoned buildings problem in Detroit. The community developers involved would not be allowed to sit on a backlog of properties. As was the case in New York during the past decade (discussed in the next section), they would be required to crank out renovated buildings – and they would, in most cases, partner with reputable commercial contractors to get their projects done well and within the parameters of a responsible budget. Following the New York model, the program should encourage the participation of private developers who submit viable redevelopment plans and then follow through on them.

In the same way, the City should aggressively act to put City-owned properties seized for nonpayment of taxes back on the market. The state of Michigan has created legal tools the City of Detroit can implement to put these properties back in use. Task forces that include business partners of the City have recommended ways to speed up title transfer of neglected properties. Attacking the backlog with a sound, innovative redevelopment plan is the answer.

When buildings are so far gone they must be demolished, money must be set aside to get the job done. The current City administration has fallen behind the previous rate of demolition – despite promises to far exceed the previous rate -- because of dwindling financial resources and an unfocused demolition plan. Mayor Archer set an example of focused, realistic planning for demolition, and the creativity to find new sources for funds – such as $60 million secured from HUD – the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One of the keys to putting the brakes on blight is basic code enforcement. One of the primary sore points of Detroit residents and businesses is the City’s failure to enforce the City Code on property maintenance. Despite public pronouncements by the current administration, despite its recently adopted Property Maintenance Code, housing and commercial building inspections do not occur consistently. When absentee landlords know they can neglect their properties without punishment, that’s what they do. The same is true with people who do not comply with requirements for setting out garbage: they put garbage cans and loose trash before or past their pickup day, creating litter, attracting animals, and producing health risks for the community. Also, landlords evict tenants by carrying their belongings to the curb, where an ugly pile sits for weeks at a time. These code violators are not receiving warnings or tickets.

An initiative like the Kilpatrick administration’s Property Maintenance Code needs teeth to work – namely, leadership at the top that coordinates communication, the use of technology, and fast action among citizens, the police, Neighborhood City Hall offices, community groups, and agencies like the Department of Public Works. Without such leadership, abandoned cars will continue to sit, illegal dumping will increase, and blight will persist in block after block.

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But how would new development actually move forward? I can summarize it in one sentence: creative partnerships that take on manageable chunks of neighborhood redevelopment until a once-blighted area becomes a real-estate goldmine.

It can be done, and has been done. The revival of two of Boston’s toughest districts, Roxbury and Dorchester, described in the 2003 book House-by-House, Block-by-Block, by Alex von Hoffman, shows what is possible when determined people dedicate themselves to neighborhood transformation. The comeback of inner-city Boston also offers impressive examples of the large-scale, block-by-block community rebuilding that can result from flexible, productive development partnerships among business, government and nonprofits.

By the late 1980s, Dorchester and Roxbury were synonymous in Boston and across the country with inner-city decay. The reasons for their social and physical decline are shared by many urban areas, including ours: the exodus of local industries, retailers and residents that was accelerated by the demolition that accompanied highway construction and urban renewal policies of the 1950s and 1960s. Racial division was also a familiar factor, as low-income people of color moved to the areas in increasing numbers. Dorchester and Roxbury hit bottom, and by the early 1980s were filled with vacant lots, abandoned buildings and a prolific crack cocaine trade.

But the remaining residents of those two communities were not about to let their neighborhood die. In 1984, as city plans for redeveloping a major intersection of Roxbury were made public, neighborhood residents formed the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative – named after the primary commercial street that connected Roxbury and Dorchester – and prepared their own redevelopment plan for the community. However, the disparate locations of abandoned properties and lots made it difficult to assemble the proper parcels for a coherent development proposal. Advisors to the Dudley Street group at two quasi-governmental development authorities suggested that the group form a nonprofit corporation that could be authorized by the state to possess the derelict properties by the power of eminent domain.

To make a long story short, they did it! This is a critical point because it shows what residents can accomplish when they are given (or wrest for themselves) a voice in the city’s redevelopment initiatives. In Boston, the city’s Redevelopment Authority was ultimately forced to accede to the group’s proposal under pressure from the community, the media and the mayor, who could not imagine serious opposition to what was so obviously a commonsense plan. According to von Hoffman, it was the first time in American history that a group of citizens were given such power over their own neighborhood. Here in Detroit, there should be no such initial resistance. Let’s start doing what makes sense: empowering citizens and their representatives, the community development organizations, and take the city out of the property development business. We aren’t good at it, and we should step aside and hand the job over to someone who is.

In Boston, the proof is in the pudding: by 2001, Von Hoffman writes, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative had “overseen the development of 300 vacant lots into 225 new homes, playgrounds, gardens, and community buildings.” Early on, a $1 million grant from the state allowed the group to create a “gateway” development to the area similar to Grand Circus Park or the upcoming Campus Martius Park in downtown Detroit. More recently, it won a $10.5 million federal grant to restore another main square in the district.

The Dudley area was just one of many neighborhoods restored by Bostonians in the ’80s and ‘90s. Von Hoffman reports that the number of abandoned homes and apartment buildings in Boston dropped from 790 in 1997 to 260 in 2001, with a total reduction of two-thirds in Dorchester and one-half in Roxbury during the period. And between 1990 and 2000, the value of the average home in Dorchester went up by almost 51%.

A similar story unfolded in New York City during the same time period. The city, under Mayor Ed Koch, launched a neighborhood rebuilding initiative in 1986 that committed the city to spending $4.2 billion to build 250,000 units of affordable housing over the next decade. Von Hoffman reports that New York’s Ten Year Plan spent $5 billion on the program, all in the form of subsidies to community development corporations and an army of private developers. A key element of the plan was a Vacant Building Program, which paid for the renovation of 40,000 vacant units over seven years. Most of the developers selected for this program were small operators who specialized in refurbishing old buildings. The redevelopment and cost-cutting skills they developed through years of experience made the program a success, von Hoffman and others note.

The Ten Year Plan completely revitalized some of the worst parts of the South Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem – bringing new residents and new businesses to communities that nearly everyone had written off as hopeless. Here, as in Boston, the abilities of community development corporations – assisted and encouraged by government, businesses, foundations and nonprofit agencies formed to help CDC’s – were given a national showcase. For homeowners, the change was significant too: people of modest means who had bought a brownstone home in New York’s Harlem area in 1990 could sell it today for over $1 million.

The two key lessons of the neighborhood redevelopment campaigns of the ‘90s were these: First, the power of collaboration. No sector of society could rebuild devastated communities alone – it only happened when the leaders of every sector worked together. In every case, the enthusiasm and commitment of block club organizers was just as important as that of bankers and city planners. It should be noted that one piece of federal legislation helped put these folks on the same page: the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which made Low Income Housing Tax Credits available to community development groups. Local government and supportive agencies like the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the Enterprise Foundation, brought corporate investment dollars to the table by selling them on the tax credits available by working with local, nonprofit community development corporations.

Second was the openness and inclusiveness of involving of multiple sectors – citizens most especially – in key initiatives affecting their neighborhoods. The Dudley Street group, for example, was empowered; they had a voice and a seat at the table – even if they did have to essentially shame the city into giving it to them. As a result, the citizens of their area could trust the process and not only accept the outcome as legitimate, but feel a deep, personal investment in it. Everybody was determined to succeed, and they did.

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Thankfully, Detroit has begun to embrace the partnership philosophy of redevelopment. The $350 million local and national foundations invested in new development, community organizations and city government itself during the 1990s was a major step forward. The March 2004 series by the Detroit Free Press on the redevelopment of our Midtown district demonstrated that many influential people have learned to gather under the Big Tent of collaboration to bring an important city neighborhood back to life.

In a different area, the Bagley Housing Association started a neighborhood rehabilitation process in 1995 during the Archer administration that has brought nearly a hundred new homes, a senior citizen retirement community, a refurbished city park, and much more to the St. Anne Gateway neighborhood in the historic Hubbard Richard/Hubbard Farms community in Southwest Detroit. Bagley Housing didn’t accomplish this feat alone. It partnered with a citizens district council, HUD, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA), the City of Detroit, and the LISC funding collaborative to transform a broken community into a whole community with more than $18 million in grants over the last eight years.

To cite one more example of success, in 1990 ten Catholic parishes formed a collaborative called the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, which aimed to stop the closing of churches in Detroit by working on housing in the City. Volunteers worked to refurbish houses in designated neighborhoods and then the houses would be sold on land contract. Most recently the Alliance has concentrated on the Gratiot Woods neighborhood on Detroit’s near east side where sixteen new houses have been constructed, nine of them being funded by the City through HUD. City Council recently approved the area a Neighborhood Enterprise Zone, which gives homes buyers a significant property tax break over ten years.

Meanwhile, with the 1,200-acre Far Eastside Project, Detroit city government has a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate the kind of open, inclusive model partnership I’ve discussed by leading a massive overhaul of a historic neighborhood without running over the 15,000 current residents or trying to impose its will on the private market. As the owner of more than half of the 8,000 parcels in the 2-square mile area, the City in 2000 recognized its responsibility to turn this area into a residential showcase. We brought the key players together, including local and national foundations, and had lengthy discussions with many of the residents and community groups, presenting a goal of constructing 4,000 new homes and bringing new retailing to the once vibrant area. The result: a powerful, open process that instilled trust and connected key stakeholders with the resources and empowerment they need to get the job done.

I expect that the tremendous potential for this project and the great anticipation already cultivated will help carry it to completion before this decade is over. Unfortunately, for the time being, the project has come to somewhat of a standstill. In a spring 2004 newsletter of the Warren/Conner Development Coalition, Executive Director Maggie DeSantis complained that there have been few recent discussions between the City and the community, and many questions remain, including the mix of affordable and market-rate housing that will be built, and which private developers are being considered.

In the past, a $5 million City bus transfer station and retail center has been proposed for the intersection of Chandler Park Drive and Conner, north of the development area. Shorebank Enterprises, an affiliate of Shorebank, has proposed development of 27.5 acres of the project, building 72 homes on two contiguous blocks. Chicago-based Shorebank has been a major supporter of east side housing development in Detroit since it opened for business here in 1998. This unique opportunity to remake a neighborhood the way other successful cities have done it – in the full light of public discussion and review, and involving enlightened developers, contractors, investors, and residents – must not be missed, and we cannot afford to lose momentum.

One of the most important partners in this and any neighborhood redevelopment initiative in Detroit will be the Detroit-based Michigan office of Fannie Mae. Since 1997, this mortgage securities firm and developer of mortgage products for working families has been making home ownership possible for thousands of Detroit families. Fannie Mae’s active presence in a city or region makes low-cost loans readily available through local banks. In March 1997, Fannie Mae announced House Detroit, a five-year, $400 million plan to put 8,500 Detroit families in affordable housing. Fannie Mae met that goal in three years, investing $553 million in affordable home purchases and rental arrangements involving 9,761 families in Detroit.

Fannie Mae in April 2000 set a more ambitious, seven-year goal to put 25,000 families in Detroit homes, targeting an additional $1 billion investment in the City of Detroit’s residential market. By March 2004, Fannie Mae’s new investment in Detroit mortgages had already reached $851,035 million, with 11,821 families financed for new home purchases, and 1,483 families receiving refinancing for homes they already owned. An additional 1,492 families obtained financing for Detroit apartments through Fannie Mae -- for a total of 14,796 families served so far under the new, seven-year plan.

Fannie Mae’s House Detroit program and similar mortgage-financing initiatives from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and others are making solid housing loans available through local banks. They are meeting one of the most vital needs in the City of Detroit. Because the comparatively low incomes of Detroit residents are a major detriment to our neighborhoods and the root of many of our problems, all of the city’s partners should embrace flexible, creative plans for the economic empowerment of Detroiters throughout the rest of this decade.

The bottom line on redevelopment is this: the City of Detroit needs to fully embrace the partnership model and open its development-related processes to oversight and involvement by multiple stakeholders across all sectors of the community. Only then can the high bar set by neighborhoods like St. Anne Gateway become the norm for our city and not the exception.

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Let’s turn now to the all-important problem of crime. Lots of people who admire Detroit’s housing stock – our thousands of well-built, homes clustered on cozy, tree-lined streets – wouldn’t dare to live in the city, because of the real threat of crime. Detroiters are defensive about this issue, because the perception, and our reputation as a crime-ridden city, is far worse than the reality. But in lots of neighborhoods, the reality can be pretty rough. Few residents of low-income urban neighborhoods -- where most people rent their homes, keep focused on their work and have little contact with neighbors – feel safe the majority of the time. They use double and triple locks on their doors, they use The Club or a similar steering-wheel lock in their car, they own a dog and they watch their backs.
I’d like us to take a look now at how the twin principles of partnership and inclusiveness have worked to turn the crime situation around in Detroit neighborhoods as well as in other urban areas around the nation, and from there, discuss how we can build on those successes for a safer city. I’ll also touch on what’s not working and how we can change it.

To begin with, many residential areas have intuited that residents must work together to make for a safer area. The strongest neighborhoods have block clubs, Neighborhood Watch and CB security groups to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. During Halloween, the entire city is on alert, and many of us patrol our streets to guard against arsonists and other troublemakers. We have had effective citywide projects for limited periods, such as the Safe Streets Initiative Mayor Archer launched in 1998, which deployed citizens and corporate employees during the morning and afternoon hours when schoolchildren walk to and from class. Key to the success of these initiatives is the simple fact that criminals are unlikely to act if they think anyone is watching.

So how do we spark a commitment to forming and operating such groups consistently in troubled areas? One thing that won’t do the job is more and better rhetoric from city government. The current administration’s “Kids, Cops, Clean” slogan placed important emphasis on the need to give Detroit Police the resources, training and support to do the best job possible. What the effort behind the slogan has accomplished, however, besides a fresh rearrangement of officers and administrative staff, is not clear at all. The reality is that despite periodic changes in how our police force is deployed, despite past creation of Special Forces to attack drug rings and street gangs, and despite the creative and vigilant crime-fighting efforts of officers in each individual precinct, Detroit has rarely, if ever, declared war on crime in general.

To give neighborhood crime a real body blow, it is time for Detroit to design and launch a “zero-tolerance” anti-crime campaign as was introduced in Boston, New York and now Los Angeles by current L.A. Police Chief William J. Bratton. The principle behind “zero tolerance” – tying into the broken windows philosophy described earlier, is the idea of preventing crimes, rather than constantly reacting to crimes. It is also predicated on the idea that by cracking down relentlessly on the minor crimes, you can prevent the major ones. In New York, the ongoing focus on quality of life crimes coupled with new initiatives like Operation Spotlight, which seeks to ensure that repeat misdemeanor offenders serve meaningful sentences, has led to the city not only seeing its low crime rate continue, but actually drop further in the past year. Out of the nation’s ten largest cities ranked by the FBI’s Total Crime Index, New York City ranks 10th, making it one of the safest large cities in America. Detroit, by contrast, is #2.

Detroit is not Boston, not New York, not L.A. But a few victories on the “zerotolerance” front might produce a tremendous change in Detroit’s image as a city with unsafe, poorly policed neighborhoods. Key again to success here will be partnerships among the city, police force, residents and community and church groups. The city’s leadership is a critical element in setting the structure in place and changing our civic culture to one of openness and transparency, because those are the factors that will enable partnerships between citizens and police to form and be successful. Once they do, then equally critical will be small, community based efforts to watch over each other and to provide opportunities for empowerment and a sense of identity other than petty crime for young people currently growing up in these neighborhoods.

A close working relationship between the community and the police has always been the key to effective crime reduction. In Boston in the 80s, hundreds of crime patrols were formed to keep tabs on the streets as the drug problem escalated and homicide became a major cause of death for young people. Indeed, no serious reduction in drug-related youth deaths occurred until neighborhood groups and the police began to work closely together.
Churches, too, were instrumental in the effort. Von Hoffman and other authors point to the formation of the Ten Point Coalition by Eugene Rivers and other African American ministers in 1992 as one of the turning points. The fundamental work of the Ten Point Coalition was to patrol the streets of troubled neighborhoods at night. The ministerial group began regular communication with Boston police at a time when the force was under attack for its overaggressive tactics in pursuit of young, black suspects. Both sides recognized they needed each other. In time, the ministers and their congregations were able to lead police – and federal law enforcement agencies -- to arrests of the most dangerous young thugs.

At the same time, the cooperative relationship allowed authorities to steer youngsters who were only flirting with trouble in more productive directions. Von Hoffman’s book details the story of how law enforcement officials, with community support, were able to break the most violent youth gangs in Boston’s Dorchester district by the end of 1996 – sending their leaders to non-parole sentences in federal prisons. Once young criminals got the message – that the people and the police would not tolerate their behavior -- Boston’s drug-related crime wave came to an end.

There is no reason Detroit should not enjoy the benefits of a crime-fighting relationship between the community and police that is just as intense as the one that benefited Boston and other cities that replicated Boston’s tactics, such as Indianapolis. We need a long-term alliance that keeps our churches and community groups actively involved in the work of local precincts. The mayor should praise and emphasize these relationships as much as possible, and publicly reward the individual, church or group that is most effective each month or each quarter. Local businesses should be willing to support this rewards program by donating money or products, since they are among the largest beneficiaries of the reduction in crime – fewer criminals means fewer robberies and less employee theft for them.

Some of the needed initiatives are clear from the broken windows philosophy itself. For example, zero tolerance for graffiti, jaywalking, littering, public drinking. To do that effectively, we need to not only mobilize neighborhood groups, but also get our police officers out of their car seats and onto their feet on the streets. There is nothing like a beat cop on the corner to discourage a would-be petty criminal from pushing the envelope to a more serious crime.

But beyond that, there are the serious crimes that are already occurring. How can this model impact them? With a declaration of war that targets specific crimes that are creating havoc and hardship in our neighborhoods. Let’s say we declare war on the crime of breaking-and-entering, a crime that rarely causes bodily harm, but always causes irreparable damage to citizens’ morale and sense of security. If the criminal is not caught, and especially if there appears to be no immediate strategy for preventing a recurrence of the crime, the victim may continue to feel vulnerable. Ultimately, the victims may express their anger by putting up a “for sale” sign.

But Detroit police, working with community groups, long-time residents and street contacts, could create a culture of “eyes and ears” that would discourage any self-interested criminal (and they are ALL self-interested) from acting out in that area. How? I bet experienced officers could tell us right away, and they should be given the opportunity to do so. But a few ideas come to mind. Create neighborhood patrols and watch networks. Provide residents with clear and responsive avenues, such as 24-hour hotlines for reporting the kind of annoying or suspicious activity that – if permitted to continue – let’s criminals know the area is ripe for committing crimes.

Beyond that, let’s implement a few other commonsense initiatives. Follow up with previous offenders. If they’re not working, let them know they’re being watched. Educate them about available job training programs. Get churches and community organizations involved in this process. Also, regular seminars on security measures that will discourage break-ins should be offered to block clubs by local police precincts.

Again, folks, it’s all about city leadership leading the way to create the public trust that will fuel collaboration among citizens, police and community organizations. Then, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, Detroit will become a safer, better place for people to live, work and raise kids.

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I firmly believe that while churches are already doing much good to foster neighborhood revival, they can be even more effective and influential, when supported by the right kind of leadership from the City. A great example of this is the Front Porch Alliance, a direct outreach to the city’s churches that was operated by the city of Indianapolis during the second term of Stephen Goldsmith’s eight years as mayor there. The Front Porch Alliance, launched in 1997, provided assistance to help churches become more effective in their neighborhoods, short of efforts to evangelize or engage in strictly religious activities. This included cutting red tape with government agencies, directing churches to independent funding sources, and linking them to other partners with like vision for the neighborhood. Essentially, the Front Porch Alliance sought to become the City’s partnership arm to faith-based organizations.

According to Goldsmith, the Front Porch Alliance linked itself with more than 500 congregations and organizations. It facilitated an Adopt-a-Block program whereby 30 churches voluntarily took responsibility for keeping 60 city blocks clean, and fifteen churches contracted with the City to maintain 30 city parks. It created a summer jobs program that served 4,000 young people. The Alliance helped thirty churches and twenty public schools work together on extracurricular programs involving mentoring, tutoring, and after-school activities. It also assisted a youth abstinence program that got 3,500 teenagers involved in a peer-mentoring initiative.

Here in Detroit, in areas where no strong block club or community organization exists, churches should fill the void – or at least get the community-building process started. I agree with the main premise of Goldsmith’s Putting Faith in Neighborhoods – that faith-based institutions can cultivate and promote “municipal citizenship” – the active, informed participation in public affairs that brings peace and stability to a community. Moving beyond the political muscle churches can provide at election time or on controversial civic issues, it is time the City led the way to recognize and encourage the power of churches to affect social behavior. As Goldsmith and others have noted, part of the recent interest in the community involvement of faith-based organizations is the acknowledgement that they can influence neighborhoods and change lives in ways that other entities cannot. We see this principle at work in the success of the Ten Point Coalition in Boston, mentioned earlier. Churches must play a key role in the rebuilding of Detroit’s neighborhoods, because they can help the city achieve the physical redevelopment, family stability, educational progress and general quality of life all of us want so much.

On the most practical level, churches can work with city government to make sure local services meet local needs. For instance, churches should be allowed the opportunity to take on responsibility for grass cutting, snow shoveling and litter control in public areas of their neighborhoods. And the city should pay the churches appropriately for their work. Where more than one church exists, the City can divide the territory. Such arrangements would free City workers to focus their time and resources on bigger maintenance projects, and would give church members and employees a larger stake in their immediate surroundings. I also believe that focus on the task by church workers would offer neighborhoods more dedicated, conscientious service.
In the interest of promoting greater community participation and commitment to neighborhood upkeep, I support the legal establishment of special assessment districts in Detroit neighborhoods that already contract with private companies for grass cutting, landscaping, and snow clearance of public areas – as well as security patrolling at night. Michigan law already allows for special assessment districts in townships, making it possible for those municipalities to collect up to $7,000 per household for the cost of repaving rural roads. If residents of Detroit approved such a district for their particular neighborhood, the City should be willing to give them property tax breaks equal to a reasonable cost for the services provided. This measure would be a smart way to increase the participation of residents in sharing costs of private services that reduce the maintenance workload for the City
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I also encourage the formation and growth of church-sponsored nonprofit development corporations that can do large-or small-scale restoration and redevelopment in their neighborhoods. In “Restarting the Economic Engine,” I noted the success the community development corporation launched by New York’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church has had in revitalizing retail and residential districts in Harlem. Here in Detroit, Hartford Memorial Baptist Church has shown similar leadership in the Lodge freeway/Seven Mile Road area – first promoting the development of fast-food franchises, then facilitating the development of a big-box retail project at Seven Mile and Meyers. That property, first occupied by a Super Kmart, is now the site of a new Home Depot.

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Much has been made in the past year of the idea – popularized recently by Carnegie Mellon University economist Richard Florida – that key to the vitality of urban areas is what Florida calls “the creative class.” This disparate, racially and socially diverse group of energetic, younger entrepreneurs, artists, writers and innovators, is widely seen to serve as a combination of fuel and magnet for successful business growth in urban areas. I want to note here, that this group – and artists perhaps in particular -- are also a crucial force in successful, cleaner, lower crime neighborhoods. The city needs to lead the way in facilitating stronger creative communities, both to make the city a better place for our artists to live, but also to support and empower them to help make the city a better place for the rest of us.

Detroit is full of areas where spacious, pre-war industrial buildings provide the kind of loft space that attracted artists to New York’s Soho and Williamsburg areas. Indeed, Williamsburg provides an excellent comparison with Detroit: a few years ago, it was one of New York’s most run-down and dangerous areas. It was also one of the few places where working artists could find inexpensive studio space, and they came in droves. Today it is one of the city’s hottest real-estate markets, home to every creative type you can think of, along with new restaurants, boutiques and galleries. Let’s look at creative programs to attract artists groups to similar areas here, perhaps even turning over development of an area to an arts-related development group.

Here in Detroit, we are starting to see what a vibrant artist presence can accomplish in areas like Eastern Market, and the Midtown area. Creative people attract creative businesses, which attract everyone. In his best-selling book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida notes that creative people are attracted to places that they can help to shape and craft. Indeed, perhaps fortunately for Detroit, they seem to like places that present a challenge, a need for vision. And they tend to favor an environment that is dynamic and interactive at all levels. Not just the Detroit Symphony, but street musicians; not just the DIA, but independent galleries, street art and guerilla installations like the Heidelberg Project. It is this impulse that transformed neighborhoods like Williamsburg, like Chicago’s Wicker Park, and it can transform Detroit as well. We have the basic raw materials.

Another key element to attracting and retaining creative, innovative people is the whole issue of diversity. Now I know that in a city like Detroit, that buzzword can also be a landmine. But I’m going to go there because it is crucial to the future of our neighborhoods and our city. Talented, creative people value an open culture that will enable anyone with great ideas and energy to succeed. These are folks who often do not fit easily into pre-conceived notions of race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and indeed, appearance. And because of that, they value openness to diversity and difference. We should too, if we want our city to be the thriving, growing environment that we know it can be.

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In conclusion, I want to note that it is the role of the City – the mayor’s office and the City Council – to create the culture and point the way for the kinds of productive partnerships I’ve discussed here. I have touched on the need for the mayor’s office to adopt a visionary policy of openness and inclusiveness that gives citizens, faith-based organizations, non-profits and businesses alike a meaningful voice and a meaningful stake in the neighborhoods they call home.

The City Council, too, needs to change, and on that point, I want to recommend a long overdue change in Detroit’s city charter. This change, proposed in the state Legislature in recent years but never seriously backed by elected officials or citizen groups, would bring the election process closer to the neighborhoods resulting, I believe, in more responsive city government and better service for residents. I’m speaking of election of City Council members by district rather than on the current at-large, citywide basis. If Detroit were divided into seven districts of relatively equal size, with two members elected at-large, it would be much easier for ordinary citizens -- community activists, precinct delegates, civic association leaders – to compete and win election to Council.

This common-sense change would make accessibility for public office more available to “everyday” people – bright, energetic Detroiters with good ideas and solid experience, but without a lot of money or extensive political connections. Right now, if you don’t have $200,000, years of building name recognition and several institutional endorsements to establish yourself in the minds of voters, running for city office is inaccessible to you. Running for City Council should not be an exclusive property of moneyed people or moneyed interests or people of great influence. The grassroots activist should not have to run three to four times just to establish name recognition before winning; often having to quit a job, and spend the rest of his or her life in pursuit of this goal. We should open the doors to their energy, their ideas and input on how this city should be run, how it could be improved.

Anyone who is fed up with the condition of his or her neighborhood, has shown dedication to community service, and who wants the opportunity to represent his or her neighbors and engage in higher leadership should have access to an election by his or her peers. The process is much less accessible when the election for each Council seat is citywide.

Common-sense changes in the culture and structure of our city government may seem like a small thing, but these fundamental adjustments will pave the way to the transformation of our most troubled neighborhoods. The spark that inspires residents to feel pride and hope for their neighborhood begins at the top – with leadership whose integrity and willingness to foster cross-sector collaboration and action sets an example for all citizens. I have boundless faith in our city, and I believe that we can provide the kind of leadership that stirs citizens to strive for the best in the areas where they live. Detroit can become a new city, that city upon a hill, looked to by others as a model, and one we are all proud to call home.

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