“To allow farming is to give up on the city”: Political anxieties related to the disposition of vacant land for urban agriculture in Detroit

ABSTRACT

Detroit has a vibrant urban agriculture movement as well as an abundance of vacant land, much of which has come into city ownership through foreclosure. Despite the presence of a land bank and a supportive agricultural ordinance, growers struggle to gain long-term access to and ownership of land on which to farm. Using in-depth interviews with growers and their advocates, community development experts, and city and land bank officials, I discuss the specific challenges that urban growers face and related anxieties communicated by city and land bank officials. Anxieties include commonly held perceptions of the polarity between “urban” and “agriculture,” as well as a fear that agriculture may not last. In the absence of an updated master plan, another anxiety relates to land disposition serving as the de facto vision for the city’s future. These anxieties reflect the dominance of growth regime frameworks in current governance. I outline the elements of an alternative framework that weaves together agriculture and redevelopment and discuss its prospects at least for the near term.

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many individuals who generously gave of their time to participate in this study. Thank you also to Wayne State University Anthropology graduate student Jaroslava Pallas, who assisted with the research; Dr. Laura DeLind of Michigan State University, who commented on an earlier draft; and three anonymous reviewers whose feedback greatly strengthened the article. Any remaining errors, of course, are mine alone.

Notes

1. In 2009, financial services magnate John Hantz proposed a large-scale commercial farm in Detroit. His proposal to the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation rested on acquiring, for free, tax-delinquent land and a zoning adjustment that would create a new, lower tax rate for agriculture. He imagined hundreds of acres of farms organized as pods around which development would happen. To start off, he suggested a pilot farm of about 50 acres on the city’s east side (Whitford, 2009). In the end, the city sold 1,500 city-owned lots (about 140 acres) to Hantz Woodlands in 2013 for $520,000 (Gallagher, 2012a, 2012b). Since the transfer, the lots have been cleared and have been planted with hardwood trees.

2. The RecoveryPark Farm, which expects to spend $15 million in the 3 years following the agreement in October 2015, got a lease for 35 acres on Detroit’s lower east side at $105 per acre (or 24 cents per square foot) per year. When the lease is up, the farm plans to purchase the land for $3,553 per acre or 8 cents per square foot. The agreement requires the farm, which aims to create nearly 130 jobs, to secure or demolish any blighted or vacant structures on the land within 12 months of a signed term sheet (Hall, 2014; Pinho, 2015; Welch, 2012). At least 51% of the employees are required to be Detroit residents for the first 3 years and then increase to 60% or more. If RecoveryPark does not meet the terms of the proposed agreement, the city retains the right to take back ownership of the land that does not have structures on it (Pinho, 2015).

3. Governed by a board of five directors, four of whom are appointed by the mayor, the DLBA is financed through property sales, government grants, philanthropic support, and fees, among other sources. Prior to the reassignment of land disposition responsibilities to the DLBA, the PDD was responsible for land disposition. Gardeners could purchase parcels from the Adjacent Vacant Lot program or submit a purchase application or obtain a garden permit through the Adopt-A-Lot Permit Program.

4. The DLBA manages several programs related to demolitions, abating nuisances, home auctions, and rehabbing of properties. However, the programs of most relevance to this study pertain to vacant lots.

5. As this article is being revised, additional guidance has become available on the DLBA’s website:

The price for 10 or more properties or commercial property will be negotiated based on staff guidelines. The guidelines will identify factors to be considered when pricing property for transfer. Valuation methods could include, but are not limited to, appraisals, Broker’s Price Opinions (BPOs), two times the State Equalized Value (SEV), or a price as established by the City Economic Development Offices. The consideration to be received by the DLBA for the transfer of property shall be determined by the DLBA in its sole discretion, but these factors should be applied consistently and staff will be required to provide a written justification for the proposed pricing. (DLBA, 2016a)

6. A gardener who was interviewed for this study was able to secure a temporary use permit from the DLBA for two lots on the east side for $25 a year, for up to 3 years.

7. Keep Growing Detroit works closely with growers to identify ownership of desired parcels, determine optimal tenure option for their operation, and navigate the process of securing property from city and county agencies (see, for example, Keep Growing Detroit, 2016). Along with other organizations such as the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, they also mediate informally and formally on behalf of growers with these agencies.

8. It is, of course, possible that some commercial producers are interested in securing land in larger numbers of contiguous acres. Given the paucity of such large tracts of vacant land that are also not subject to possible industrial contamination or viewed as being more suitable for development, such proposals are less likely to gain much traction.

9. The Listening Session was convened on August 22, 2012, following news in June that year that the Bing administration was close to an agreement with Hantz Farms.

10. One organizational representative reported having to submit the same application to purchase seven parcels three separate times because the city kept losing previous sets (DFPC, 2012). Eventually, the organization was able to purchase these in 2015 from the DLBA, as well as 19 additional parcels under the CP Program. Another recounted their group’s efforts to purchase two lots on the east side, which were gardened at the time under annual permit. After thousands of volunteer hours to clear the property and maintain the garden, among other activities, their request to purchase was denied. Continue with the annual license, advised city staff.

11. DLBA guidance is evolving as work-arounds are uncovered. For example, in response to the incidence of land transfer by CPs to for-profit growers, instructions for the CP application now expressly prohibit such “straw” purchases by CPs. Language also has been added requiring CPs to adhere to state law for the purchase of property where there may be issues related to environmental contamination. This leads many CPs to shy away from buying land for third parties even if they previously engaged in this practice. Thus, as word gets out about how groups skirt rules, the loopholes are closed. All of this means that, increasingly, for-profit growers experience a host of problems finding a partner CP. Some growers also do not have, or do not wish to make, such relationships solely for the purpose of acquiring land.

12. Advocates who are knowledgeable about the city and land disposition issues understand that the land bank is an institution distinct from city government. However, the influence of the mayor’s office on its structure and decision making, the PDD’s past handling of land decisions, and ignorance among some growers about the land bank’s structure all cause many to refer to the land bank as the city. Hence reference to “city officials” in this article includes those related to both the city of Detroit municipal government as well as the Detroit Land Bank.

13. This was best articulated by Rev. Jesse Jackson in 2010. In a speech to Detroit’s city council, he called for more industrial development and jobs with higher wages and rejected farming as “cute but foolish” (Winter, 2010). He claimed that creating large city farms might drive out even more residents (Winter, 2010). In 2013, 20 candidates for mayor and city council were asked to respond to seven questions in a voter guide produced by the Detroit Food Policy Council. Five chose not to respond. Though a handful of candidates offered concrete suggestions in support of urban agriculture and land access to gardeners, others clearly had not given these issues much thought (Detroit Food Policy Council, 2013).

14. A stewardship regime stipulates business obligations to the community in exchange for government resources. This includes clawing back subsidies if the business community fails to deliver promised benefits, reporting business tax incentives as tax expenditures, setting standards for the types and sizes of businesses that qualify for tax abatements, or tying abatement amounts to the number of jobs created. Progressive regimes care about the equitable distribution of development benefits to various groups or areas of the city. Community groups participate in decisions concerning the allocation of development benefits such as set-asides for ethnic minorities for government contracts, job targets for minority employment, “fair” wage standards, etc. Activist regimes are characterized by the presence of both business obligations to the community in return for subsidies as well as a division of development benefits targeted toward particular groups, such as minorities and the economically disadvantaged. Finally, demand-side regimes adopt development strategies aimed at small business creation and neighborhood revitalization and might include investments in job training, industrial modernization, support for community-level planning, and the formation of industrial clusters to increase competitiveness. Such regimes tend to view neighborhood development as a priority (Reese & Malmer, 1994, cited in Clark, 2001).

15. See Pothukuchi (2015b) for a longer version of this vision developed from meetings of the City of Detroit’s Urban Agriculture Work Group led by Kathryn Lynch Underwood in the development of the urban agriculture ordinance.

16. Many groups in Detroit exist to foster agricultural entrepreneurship, product aggregation, and the development and sales of value added foods. For example, the Grown in Detroit Co-operative, a project of Keep Growing Detroit, facilitates aggregation of harvests from Detroit growers to sell at area markets. This effort creates a unified label for Detroit-grown produce, saves growers time and effort, and assures that nearly 100% of the revenue from sales is returned to them. Eastern Market serves as a food hub for larger-scale growers from the region. A community kitchen and entrepreneurship training and technical assistance program, Detroit Food Lab, also operates at Eastern Market. Several farmers and groups make value-added products such as salsa, salad dressings, teas, and dried fruit and vegetables from locally grown produce. In a final example, an after-school program called the Detroit Food Academy produces a delicious snack, Mitten Food Bites, that is sold at area farmers markets and grocery stores, including Whole Foods.

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Kameshwari Pothukuchi

Kameshwari Pothukuchi is Associate Professor in and Chair of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University, where she also directs SEED Wayne, a campus-community collaborative dedicated to building student leadership on sustainable food systems on Wayne State’s campus and in Detroit area neighborhoods.