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themcglynnMichigan Town Makes Amends for Discrimination
“We went full circle, and it’s pretty wonderful,” said Ms. Sanders, whose parents, now dead, were among the 250 plaintiffs who sued the city. “To acknowledge that, O.K., they were wrong, that gives me a little satisfaction because my parents were mistreated so. I just wish they were here to see it.”
By SUSAN SAULNY,NYT, Published: March 10, 2010
“Just abruptly, we had to end up staying with relatives and friends,” said Ms. Sanders, a retired state worker who is black and who, at age 60, still has trouble recounting the ordeal without breaking into tears. “It was kind of devastating. My parents tried to protect us quite a bit, but I knew something was wrong.”
And something was. In 1971, a federal judge found that this old manufacturing town, five miles from downtown Detroit, had purposefully used urban renewal projects throughout the 1950s and ’60s to obliterate black areas from its two square miles, forcing the displacement of hundreds of families.
Although the judge, Damon J. Keith, ordered a remedy, and Hamtramck agreed to build new housing, it did not. For decades.
Now, though, in a time of deep recession and a housing slump in one of the most economically depressed states in the country, Hamtramck (pronounced ham-TRAM-eck) is at last fulfilling its legal — and what officials now call moral — obligation to provide affordable housing to the mostly poor families who were dislodged generations ago. And if the plaintiffs in the original class-action lawsuit are no longer living, as in Ms. Sanders’s case, children and grandchildren are eligible.
About 100 houses have been completed for rent or sale, and another 100 are on the way, paid for by a mix of local and state money.
In the last five years, the town, population 23,000, began building the new houses, but the project stalled because of the recession. It is only now approaching the final stages of construction, thanks to a recent increase in federal stimulus money. The homes cost $140,000 to $160,000, and subsidies can drive the price down to $100,000; most rentals are in the $400-a-month range, after government assistance.
But beyond the building, Hamtramck has changed in another way, too. It is now Michigan’s most international and diverse city, having evolved from a town that was 90 percent Polish just 40 years ago. With the changes came new attitudes about how to deal with the past.
Just weeks ago, Ms. Sanders moved into a new ranch-style house on the same street where her family once lived, and Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm personally handed over the keys. As a young lawyer, Ms. Granholm was a clerk to Judge Keith in the late 1980s.
“We went full circle, and it’s pretty wonderful,” said Ms. Sanders, whose parents, now dead, were among the 250 plaintiffs who sued the city. “To acknowledge that, O.K., they were wrong, that gives me a little satisfaction because my parents were mistreated so. I just wish they were here to see it.”
The home building is also what experts call a bittersweet finale to one of the longest-running housing discrimination suits to weave its way through court, having begun in the civil rights era. Beyond its age, the case is also distinctive in that it happened at all. While Hamtramck may be an extreme example, experts said housing discrimination against blacks in the mid-1900s was common, but class-action lawsuits were rare because of their expense and complexity.
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