FeedsHousing loan can go through
The Inkster City Council blockage of an ordinance change that would pave the way for the Inkster Housing Commission to borrow more than $4 million to repair public housing fell apart Monday night.
Despite objections from two outspoken critics of public housing, Councilman Michael Canty asked for — and received support for — reconsidering a vote to reject making changes to Ordinance 99, which effectively stopped the housing commission from applying for a loan offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Canty, along with three other council members — DeArtriss Coleman-Richardson, Wanda Harris-Foster, and Ron Johnson — voted in 2006 to reject making the ordinance change in favor of encouraging the housing commission to demolish vacant and blighted units located mostly at the LeMoyne Gardens Apartments on Henry Ruff Road.
“I’ve had some concerns about public housing in the past,” said Canty. “My concerns remain the same about the crime, but I’ve done some research.” He added that in the past he’s had qualms about the number if units, but that the commission has promised to look for ways to reduce that number. Currently, Inkster has about 700 publicly-subsidized units.
Canty’s about-face prompted Foster and Johnson to cry foul.
“We just raised water rates, and we have taxpayers here — people that own homes — that we’re asking for more and more,” said Johnson. “How do we justify this? (The commission) was behind on their water bill when I came into office, and we just raised rates on everyone else.”
Foster agreed, and said the approval of the Ordinance 99 changes will fix the level of people living in public housing above other larger communities.
The federal government offers the loan program that spurred the 2006 rejection of the ordinance change. Attorneys for the housing commission said they could not apply for the funds unless the local governing body changed the ordinance.
The conflict touched off a war of words for several months thereafter – the commission accused the council members who voted against he measure of denying poor people adequate housing and shirking their responsibilities, and the council accused the commission, which operates semi-independently, of ignoring the best interests of the entire community.
The loan program is for improvements and not for demolition.
Since the 1990s, a debate has raged on between the two camps about the appropriateness of the size of the Inkster public housing program. Inkster has more than twice the public housing units of cities three times its size; Dearborn has 680 units versus 700 in Inkster. The number of units in Inkster also outpaces the nearby cities of Wayne and Westland.
The number of publicly-subsidized units is often a matter of demand and need in a community.
Housing officials maintain a waiting list of potential housing applicants, and maintain most of them are local residents.
Opponents say the list has many residents who are not actually from Inkster. Both Johnson and Foster indicated that the fact that some of those residents are not from the city shows that the size of Inkster’s program versus the need among Inkster residents does not match.
Messages left at the Inkster Housing Commission went unanswered Tuesday.
Housing officials said other commissions from throughout the United States have applied for the loan dollars, and it’s unclear whether the funds are available at the levels the Inkster Housing Commission is requesting.
