Detroit Reparations Task Force Harms Report

In partnership with U-M Rackham Graduate School, Poverty Solutions, and School of Social Work, the Center for Social Solutions created the following report to inform the Detroit Reparations Task Force with a comprehensive list of harms and areas in need of repair. 

In August 2023, the Detroit Reparations Task Force established a partnership with researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) to develop a harms report that will inform the final recommendations the Task Force makes to the Detroit City Council. These U-M partners include the Center for Social Solutions, Poverty Solutions, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-Being. The harms report aims to document the injustices and human rights violations experienced by Black Detroit residents, in order to establish a historical record of the city’s active role in perpetuating and sustaining these harms. By detailing these injustices, the report provides a foundation for understanding the extent and depth of harms in order to make a compelling case for reparations in the city of Detroit. The final report was completed and presented to the Task Force in August 2024.

The Task Force identified five key focus areas, establishing a scope of work to direct the U-M partners’ research efforts. These areas are: 1) housing, 2) policing, 3) quality of life, 4) education, and 5) economic development and economic insecurity. Beginning with housing, the report details how the city’s history of discriminatory housing and land use policies in the 20th century laid the foundation for enduring financial, social, and racial inequities that emerge across the other focus areas. The report highlights the compounding effects of housing segregation on Black Detroit communities wrought by over-policing, health disparities as a result of disparate environmental impacts, chronic underfunding and mismanagement of Detroit Public Schools Community District, as well as emergency management, austerity measures, unemployment and transit inequity.

U-M partners utilized a variety of research methods, including the identification and analysis of archival materials and census data, the synthesis of existing scholarship, and interviews with Detroit community members conducted at the request of the Task Force. A cross-disciplinary group of faculty also led project-based courses covering topics identified in the scope of work. During the winter 2024 semester, Rackham Graduate School offered a graduate course designed to connect students and faculty working on research for the harms report and to promote systemic understanding of the issues through crossdisciplinary exchange. The report utilizes and defines a set of key terms, which organize the histories of injustice in Detroit: redlining, white flight, urban renewal, and austerity measures. These terms emerge across all of the focus areas and are critical to connecting the longer histories of harm to contemporary disparities experienced by Black residents in the city of Detroit.