DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – Dozens of tenants and housing justice activists took to the streets with homemade signs and protest songs on Sunday morning to put the spotlight on eviction practices in the city of Detroit. After a pause on evictions during the pandemic, the University of Michigan researchers have found that eviction filings in Detroit are rising again, and are at about 75% of pre-pandemic levels.

The Detroit Metro Times (DMT) reports that some, like Kyleigh Matthewson, are being evicted because they have complained about their living conditions. Matthewson and her husband had called city inspectors about damage after a recent cold spell. She and her husband had gotten especially scared over Christmas when dirty water poured down from the ceiling and seeped through walls that already had black mold, drenching many lights throughout their home causing circuits to spark. They were also unable to use their shower or toilet for several days because of aging pipes and when the furnace broke, they were without heat for a while. During all this, she lost some of her artistic portfolio and both she and her husband broke out in rashes.

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Matthewson contends that no major repairs have happened in their home and says the management company is now retaliating against them because of her call to the city. She said, “We’ve been living in a safety and fire hazard for five years and they (management) refused to do any repairs. It’s wrong. They know it’s wrong.” Even while fighting her auto-immune disease, chronic pain and asthma, the 27-year-old, still found that it was necessary to bundle up and go into the cold to bring attention to her plight.

The DMT reported that many at the protest were rallying against “what they claim are retaliatory evictions, defamation lawsuits and other intimidation tactics taken by landlords that have reached an ‘unprecedented’ boiling point” and are left with no way to fight back – except with their voices.

Steven Rimmer, founding member of the Detroit Tenants Association and coordinator of the Tenants Association for the properties New Center Plaza and Marlenor said, “Free speech is not just the right to speak but the right to be heard. Speech is essential in the Detroit fight for housing justice. It provides a platform for the voices of the Detroit tenants facing extreme housing challenges, including gentrification, retaliation, homelessness, and discrimination.”

Another tenant, Derek Grigsby, was at the rally to protest bad landlords. Living off a fixed income of social security and pension benefits during bad economic times, with the cost of everything rising, has him worried about getting priced out of his house. He said, “Every day I worry about that. And I imagine people who are living day to day trying to pay their rent. It’s horrible.”

Solutions offered by the protesters included a tenants bill of rights, rent control, a stoppage of evictions and a “right to renew” lease which the DMT says would give them the opportunity to renew their lease or get compensated to relocate.

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The Detroit City Council proposed a resolution on January 12th calling on the state legislators to help out by rescinding the rent control ban. In the resolution, they state that more than half of the households in Detroit are renter-occupied and that the annual rent of a one-bedroom apartment in Detroit is $1,322 which increased 11% from 2022 according to rent.com.

With the median income in Detroit reported in 2020 as being $20,961 per individual and $32,498 per household, they said “an individual making the median income in Detroit would need to spend roughly 75% of their income to rent the average one-bedroom apartment.”

In the letter, they predict that 61,000 tenants will face the threat of eviction this year based on the study done by the University of Michigan.

The Detroit City Council concluded that the “lack of rent control in Detroit” contributes to the homelessness and astounding number of evictions that happen in Detroit every year and based on the seriousness of the situation, the Detroit City Council “strongly urges the Detroit Delegation to the Michigan State Senate and House of Representatives to introduce and enact legislation rescinding the ban on rent control laws.”