Detroit — The new dog pound has a certificate of occupancy—as required by law—assuring the public that the place is safe for both man and beast.
A “new” Detroit homeless shelter does not have a certificate of occupancy, thus putting both vulnerable women and children at risk of harm and sickness.
The conditions at the Detroit Rescue Ministries Gratiot Avenue emergency shelter for women and children came to light six months ago this week, after two children died in the back of a rusting van in a casino parking lot where they were sleeping with their mother.
The mother had called the city’s emergency homeless hotline on multiple occasions in 2023 only to be turned away. Conditioned to accept rejection, the mother quit trying. The scandal shocked the world and led me to the doors of the Gratiot shelter on the city’s east side.
I was told by homeless advocates and city officials then that the place had not passed multiple fire inspections nor did it have a certificate of compliance, thus making it ineligible to house dogs much less children.
When we first visited the facility on a frigid February morning, a woman and her child were sleeping under thin blankets on the vestibule floor that also served as their breakfast table.
Back then, Mayor Mike Duggan called our report “nonsense” despite the video evidence. This guy wants to be your governor. You’d think Duggan would have made fixing this his top priority.
This week, we returned to the shelter. Despite being awarded a $400,000 grant from federal Covid money, the place continues to operate outside of city law. It failed its building inspection yet again, just a few weeks ago, after receiving a complaint about the conditions inside.
According to the inspector’s report and the accompanying photographs, the building is infected with a “foreign substance” (looked like black mold to me), leaking pipes, fetid toilets, holes in the ceiling, a broken elevator… and still no certificate of compliance.
“It’s terrible!” a mother of four shouted to me through the tattered blinds.
Nobody wants to be in the building. It’s a place of last resort for hungry children and women tired of their old men’s hard hands. Still, they deserve a place that is at least as clean and safe as an animal shelter.
That’s why we pay taxes. More than a billion dollars of federal money has funneled into the City of Detroit over the past five years, ostensibly for low-income housing and emergency shelters. So, when children die in the back of a van, we get angry.
I reached out to Chad Audi, executive director of the nonprofit that owns the building. He claimed the building continues to legally operate as a designated emergency warming center, a designation it received back in January 2024.
It is now August 2025. The temperatures this week were in the mid-80s.
“Everything has been fixed,” Audi assured me. “Almost everything, except the elevator, which is already scheduled to be repaired.”
Strange, that’s what he told me six months ago.
Audi offered to give me a tour. I have accepted. Now let’s see if Duggan will tag along with a building inspector in tow.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
