How Detroit can become a middle class city

The think tank that dazzled Detroiters with its 50-year master plan for the city nine years ago wants to change the conversation around growth and development here — and maybe even the way the city's elected leaders actually do things.

In a new report scheduled for release Monday, Detroit Future City suggests the city's elected leaders should focus on growing the city's African-American middle class — not just by luring more-affluent black families back to Detroit, but by boosting the incomes and purchasing power of the city's current working-class residents.

It's the first economic blueprint I've encountered in 15 years of covering the city that puts black middle-class families at the center of Detroit's redevelopment priorities.

What's happening now?

Seventy-five percent of Detroiters make $50,000 a year or less. That's why Detroit Future City decided to do this report, executive director Anika Goss says.

Goss wanted to know what keeps Detroit from attracting middle-class families.

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She says the data her think tank collected shows that African- Americans have been losing ground in wealth, home ownership and educational attainment more than any other group.

But Detroit used to be a middle-class city. In fact, it's known as "the birthplace of the middle class,' thanks to Henry Ford's $5-a-day wage. Detroit was also the place where African-American families joined the middle class in large numbers, in no small part because of high rates of homeownership. 

The percentage of middle-class households has been dropping throughout the U.S. since 1970, but the decline in Detroit has been especially steep. The share of middle-class households in the metro Detroit region is on par with the national average of 38 percent. But in the city, just 25 percent of households are middle-class. And most of the middle-class families who've fled the city since 2000 have been African-American.

To have the same percentage of middle-class residents as the rest of metro Detroit, the city would need to attract 33,000 new middle-class households. 

What does it mean to be middle class?

Detroit Future City considers households with annual incomes between $46,100 and $115,300 middle class. But folks the think tank surveyed associated a lot stuff besides income with a middle-class lifestyle: Safety. Security. Well-maintained neighborhoods with access to good schools, grocery stores and other shopping options. In a word, stability. 

Lack of stability is a big reason why people leave Detroit, or never move here in the first place. We talk about that a lot — how bad schools and high taxes and outrageous auto insurance rates lead to population decline. 

But we rarely talk about how all of those things make life less stable for residents who intend to stay. And we almost never talk about them as a group of conditions that collectively impact residents.   

"If we focus on these single issues in isolation of everything else, you can just drag this out forever," Goss says. "You don't have the sense of economic urgency, that you're still losing your biggest city."

Instead of saying here's auto insurance, and that's a problem, and here are the schools, and that's a problem, Detroit Future City's report suggests, let's look at this suite of issues, and think about how all of them, taken together, impact our ability to establish Detroit as a credible destination for middle-class families. 

Detroit needs more middle-class households. Middle-class households bolster the tax base and contribute to neighborhood stability. And it's important that Detroit, a majority black city, doesn't just grow its white middle-class population. That's what's happening now. 

Detroit is 79 percent African-American, according to the latest American Community Survey. But Goss says the fastest-growing group right nowis young, middle-class whites. This demographic doesn't have kids, and may choose not to own a car. In other words, they don't have to deal with Detroit's most expensive-to-navigate challenges. 

But that's not a long-term growth strategy. And the more diverse population growth Detroit needs won't just happen organically, Goss notes.

"It requires intentionality," she says, "to grow inclusively." 

Where would more middle-class families live?

If Detroit needs 33,000 new middle-class families, well, that's a problem. The real estate market in Detroit's most stable (read: middle class) neighborhoods is notoriously tight.

Look at the map: "We don’t have enough neighborhoods for middle-class families to want to be in," Goss says. "Especially if we're looking at places that could be competitive with the suburbs."

But Detroit doesn't have to start from scratch. Goss' data team didn't just look at neighborhoods where most households were middle class; they also looked at neighborhoods where nearly half of households were middle class. Including the latter really changes the map, expanding it from isolated middle-class neighborhoods that occupy a fraction of Detroit's land mass. And lifting threshold neighborhoods to full-fledged middle class status would require boosting the incomes of just 13,300 near-middle-class households. 

How do you do that? With workforce development, new job opportunities, and possibly some adjustments to the high current costs of living in Detroit.

What does the mayor think?

The thing about cool policy reports is, they've got to have buy-in from the folks in charge. And in this case ... well, it seems like that's happening. 

Arthur Jemison, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's chief of services and infrastructure, says he likes this report. The city is already doing some of the stuff it recommends, he notes, like offering zero-interest home repair loans.(Many banks still won't write the kind of home equity or rehab loans in Detroit that suburban homeowners can easily obtain.) 

A lot of city programs focus on Detroit's most vulnerable residents. That won't change, Jemison says. But what benefits middle-class Detroiters can benefit all Detroiters, he says. 

"Everything about this report encourages us to use it and put it to work and think about how we can tweak programs that are successful and make them more successful and target them to this area," he says. 

Some of this isn't new. 

Detroiters and Detroit's leaders have known for ages that we need better schools and safer streets and more jobs. It's easier said than done. 

But there's a lot of momentum in Detroit right now. And that offers opportunities that didn't exist in the past. 

And at some point, you just have to do it. 

That's how it works other places, both Goss and Jemison say: The folks with the ability to make change just decide that it's important to invest in neighborhoods, businesses prioritize hiring more Detroiters or letting more contracts to Detroit companies. 

"The idea that Detroit is being developed for white middle-class Detroiters, the other side is that black Detroiters let Detroit fail," Goss says. "We have to get past both of those sentiments. Detroit is being developed for all Detroiters, and Detroiters that are here didn’t let Detroit fail. Whatever Detroit’s history is, we’re all here now. We have to be facing forward to the future.

"We don’t have to think small and mediocre because of Detroit," Goss says. "We should be thinking big and audacious because of Detroit."

Nancy Kaffer is a Detroit Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.