The Dirt: Manufactured housing, universal design and solar arrays

Detroit might be the only UNESCO City of Design in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean embracing new ideas is easy. This week, we’re taking a look at some of these efforts: residents pushing developers to truly embrace universal design, a certain billionaire pitching manufactured housing and open questions about where those new solar farms will go.

Oh, and if you want to appeal your property tax assessment, you better get on that. The deadline is coming up.

Do you like a challenge?

Detroit homeowners should have gotten their notices of assessment in the mail last month. If you think your home’s assessed value is incorrect , you can appeal — if you act fast. The appeals process started Feb. 1 and will run through Feb. 22. For some help, check out neighborhood group Core City Strong’s video guide for Detroiters considering appealing their property tax assessments. If your home is assessed at under $200,000, you can apply for help with the appeals process from the Coalition for Property Tax Justice. Property tax assessment appeals ticked up last year , and the process should be a little more transparent after City Council passed reforms in November . (Outlier Media, City of Detroit, Core City Strong, Coalition for Property Tax Justice)

Make it universal

At last week’s City Council Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee meeting, we got plenty of details on the Future of Health project. One interesting design note: The Neighborhood Advisory Committee asked that the developers embrace universal design principles across the board (on Page 13) . Universal design is the “design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.” Think curb cuts : They were initially installed for wheelchair users, but the design benefits everyone regardless of ability. Sounds great! The developers agreed they would hire someone with universal design experience to consult on design for the project’s Henry Ford Hospital hospital expansion, research center, housing and outdoor spaces. (City of Detroit, North Carolina State University, 99% Invisible)

Accounting for the future

A few more interesting details about the Future of Health development are emerging as City Council prepares to vote on the project. A report last week from the council’s Legislative Policy Division ultimately concluded the project is a net benefit for the city despite the almost $297 million in public money that developers are seeking. The developers of the project say the city is “one of the least viable places for real estate development” given the relatively high cost of construction and low rents.

Smaller details worth a mention: The library continues to get the shaft with almost $9 million going to the project over 35 years through the tax capture financing mechanism . The Wayne County Community College District will miss out on more than $6.2 million in that same period.

The report also lays out the number of Detroit residents who are employed by organizations involved in the development. Michigan State University has the smallest number of employees working in the city with fewer than 100, but about 93% of them are city residents (go Green!). Henry Ford Health has around 16,000 employees working in Detroit, and about 68% of them are Detroit residents. Meanwhile at the (currently cursed) Detroit Pistons, only 17% of its 330 employees working in the city actually live here. (City of Detroit, Outlier)

Manufacturing demand?

There’s not a lot of manufactured housing in the city, but Dan Gilbert might be trying to change that . The Gilbert Family Foundation will host a manufactured home “showcase” later this year in North Corktown, on empty lots owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority. Nine homes are planned to drum up interest in using manufactured housing in the city. This kind of housing is less expensive to build and tends to resale at more affordable prices, too. The price of manufactured homes nationwide has gone up faster than other single-family homes over the past few years, but they still cost about three times less. The North Corktown Neighborhood Association has agreed to establish a second community land trust for the homes, something we’ve written about before that can, in fact, keep housing affordable . We hope the name of the initiative also came at a discount. It’s called THIS, an acronym for Tomorrow’s Housing Innovation Showcase. (Crain’s Detroit Business, Gilbert Family Foundation, New York Times, North Corktown Neighborhood Association, Outlier)

No light decision

The city hopes to build “solar farms,” basically multi-acre collections of solar arrays, in six parts of the city. One of the potential sites is Chaldean Town in northwest Detroit, a once-vibrant but now largely vacant area east of Woodward Avenue and north of 7 Mile Road. Across the city, the neighbors of these farms might not be opposed to solar energy, but they still have a lot of questions about the implications of solar farms on future land use. Those tensions are on display in BridgeDetroit’s piece on Chaldean Town , as is the difficulty of coming to grips with neighborhood changes. (City of Detroit, BridgeDetroit, Outlier)

The post The Dirt: Manufactured housing, universal design and solar arrays appeared first on Outlier Media .