DETROIT (AP) - Police in Detroit are looking into who demolished a house that a Michigan lawmaker and her nonprofit group were planning to rehab for a needy family.
The case is being investigated as malicious destruction of property, according to Detroit police Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood.
Democratic Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo has said the house was torn down without notice to her or her nonprofit group, Coalition to Integrate Technology and Education. The property was purchased last year for $1,000 from the Detroit Land Bank Authority.
Mayor Mike Duggan’s office said Tuesday that information shows the house on Minock in northwest Detroit was torn down on or around Sept. 20, but that it was not on a list of properties slated for demolition and was not in the pipeline in preparation to be razed.
Gay-Dagnogo spoke Tuesday about the demolition before the Detroit City Council.
“My question is, how can any company, whether it’s the city’s contractors or any private entity, demolish a home without, one, the permission of a property owner and two, without following all the environmental protocols that are necessary and three … no record at all,” she said.
Council President Brenda Jones said she hopes the council soon will get some answers as to who tore the house down.
Last year, a demolition company hired to tear down one house razed a vacant house next door. The house inadvertently torn down was owned by the Detroit Land Bank. About two weeks later, another contractor mistakenly tore down another Land Bank-owned house adjacent to one scheduled for demolition.
About 19,000 vacant houses in Detroit have been demolished since 2014. Another 9,000 have or are being rehabilitated. The city’s blight removal efforts have been funded primarily by $265 million from the federal government.
Duggan submitted a proposed resolution last month to the City Council to ask voters to approve the sale of up to $250 million in bonds to eradicate the remaining residential blight across the city. The bonds and city budget allocations would pay for another 19,000 demolitions.
The bond initiative would be placed on the March 2020 ballot.
On Tuesday, Gay-Dagnogo asked the council not to move too quickly in making a decision on a “demolition initiative that would cost the taxpayers more money.”
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