The author is a retired educator and entrepreneur, and a former fast food restaurant franchisee. She is a 60-year resident of Detroit’s historic Boston-Edison neighborhood.
By Carol Hall
I ask my fellow City of Detroit residents to consider this riddle: Can the development of affordable housing ever be harmful? Multi-generational Detroit residents, understand that the answer to this question very well could be yes!
The building being developed into apartments (Photo: Carol Hall)
Developer Timeless Properties and its Owner, Adam Noel submitted a request to rezone 9851 Hamilton Street, a former community center, to create a 50-unit apartment complex. This development will be located on a street which adjoins Boston Boulevard in the Historic Boston-Edison District.
Without fanfare, but with a consistent disregard for local residents, Timeless Properties has focused on developments which result in the outright transfer of the generational wealth in property values accumulated over decades by long-term residents to its benefit.
At the same time that Timeless Properties financially benefits from leveraging our property values, it decreases our homeowner property values through increased blight and criminal activity. We know this to be true, because Timeless Properties and Adam Noel has used this strategy TWICE in our neighborhood already on the same block of Boston Boulevard homes that adjoin Glynn Court.
I have lived in the Boston Edison district for over sixty years. Along with several other families who have lived here – most for over fifty years or more, we have seen our property values plummet when many people left the City for the suburbs. Slowly, after many years, our property values increased.
However, with that increase came investors, developers and speculators intent upon exploiting our property values for their profit under the guise of developing “affordable housing.” However, upon closer examination, one can argue that these altruistic-seeming overtures are no more than a money grab to leverage properties which are adjacent to ours for profit and decimate the property values of the long-term Boston Edison district homeowners through increased traffic congestion, blight and crime.
Timeless Properties and its owner, Adam Noel, have a concerning track record in Boston Edison. Several years ago, Mr. Noel and his investors purchased two properties on Glynn Court behind Boston Boulevard. He leveraged and increased the value of those investment properties, in part, based upon the values of our homes. He purchased these buildings for low amounts and refinanced them for multiples over his original purchase price pulling out valuations which are now denied to us through his actions. To the point, that activity also resulted in damage to our property values. Homes were broken into, police interaction increased and blight increased. Traffic and parking were so congested that the City zoning board barred development of additional apartments in his buildings.
As a former business owner, I applaud entrepreneurship, however, there is a problem, supported by our City zoning code, when business success causes harm to others and must be stopped. Timeless Properties’ transfers property value wealth at the expense of me and my neighbors. Creating a 50-unit apartment building directly across the street or behind a single family home will lower our values. We will never realize the value that we tended and developed over the years particularly when the zoning rules are waived to accommodate this investor.
A Former Community Center
In the case of 9851 Hamilton, Adam Noel and his investor group seek to create 50 new apartment units within the building structure of a former community center. In carving up the building into these units he creates, in a single act, more residents in the building than the number of people who live on the adjoining Boston Boulevard street.
My neighbors and I followed the rules in fighting this developer. We pointed to City Codes that were being violated or ignored, only to have the zoning board “waive” requirements. We showed that the developer was a “bad actor” by presenting photographic evidence of his workers dumping lead and asbestos based dust out of the windows.
We introduced Wayne State University studies which suggested that this development would most likely be destructive to our neighborhood. We showed the damage that their prior two developments had done to our neighborhood, which in one case, caused a neighbor to install grocery store-type roll-up window guards to protect his home from the constant break-ins that had increased following the Timeless Property apartment developments.
In return, we were made to feel like elitists who didn’t want affordable housing – an easy soundbite that gives the public permission to ignore our concerns. The City Code sections which require administrative agencies to consider this wealth transfer were ignored in an effort to please a well-connected developer.
However, with little effort, one can see that these investors tend to only “develop” on streets that border high net worth homes in established neighborhoods. Indeed, Mr. Noel’s team is marketing 9851 Hamilton as being “in the Boston Edison district” when only the parking lot slightly overlaps into the district.
Last year, Timeless Properties requested a zoning variance to add seven new apartments to its apartment building at 1415 Glynn Court (known as Boston Court Apartments). The City Zoning Board initially declined this request with resident support due to the strain it would place on parking. However, on July 10th, Timeless Properties held a press conference and announced the availability of seven new apartments at the location. Actions taken by the residents and supported by the zoning board were summarily reversed. Residents who invested in this neighborhood for over fifty years were ignored while the developer was accommodated.
No Need For More Housing
In short, the north end does not need additional housing. We have an abundance of available and affordable housing. Moreover, there is no need to convert any building into a fifty-unit apartment where, as in this case, there are other empty apartment buildings located further north on Hamilton Street that have both the necessary infrastructure and parking.
I’m asking the City of Detroit and the Detroit Zoning Board to adhere strictly to the City rules regarding the change of use that Timeless Properties requests for 9851 Hamilton. I’m asking that they not “waive” any Code requirements and require strict adherence to them. The standards were established for the protection of City residents and must be maintained. Finally, I ask that the Zoning board not tacitly endorse the transfer of generational property value wealth through this approval of the change of use of 9851 Hamilton, as is required for them to consider under the applicable Code requirements.
The loyal residents of Boston-Edison deserve better.
