There stood Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, the Wizard of Woodward, looking rumpled and swollen, like he’d been beaten silly with a feather pillow. Hizzoner always looks that way when he’s caught up in a scandal.
The Wiz was struggling last week to finally lay to rest the death of two homeless children in a van. The mother had called the city hotline multiple times, only to be turned away. In the end, Duggan is responsible. His is the silent hand behind the curtain, concealing the millions in homeless dollars that never seem to quite make it to the homeless.
And so, the Wiz convened a press conference to offer a “new” seven point plan of stuff that should have been part of the plan anyway: things like a 24-7 homeless hotline and priority given to women and children.
I wasn’t invited to the press conference. I never am. The Wiz’s footmen had taken me off the media list years ago. I only seem to annoy the man with obvious questions.
One of the last press conferences to which I’d been invited was a change-the-subject sort of deal. With the flames of the federally funded demolition scandal burning up toward his C-Suite, Hizzoner convened a press conference to discuss low income housing. He fed the press poodle donuts and coffee.
I ate his French crullers (quite tasty!). Then I confronted him on his roll in the possible bid-rigging and price-setting on the demolition contracts.
He snapped: “Like most of your stories, it’s false.”
Not so much. A couple months later, Duggan, the city, and the demo program were ensnared in a sprawling federal grand jury investigation. It got so bad, Duggan had to hire Hillary Clinton’s defense lawyer for $1,000 an hour. It went on for years. The case eventually petered away, as Biden’s friendly DOJ let the statute of limitations lapse. And I got taken off the media list. See how it works?
This time around, the Wiz had just about closed the curtain on the dead children debacle when Ed White from the Associated Press ambled up to the lectern for one last question. I was watching via live stream.
“Charlie LeDuff had posted a video outside of a women’s and children’s shelter, said it was not authorized for occupation and showed a child on the floor, can someone address that?” asked Good Ole Ed, among the last of the old school.
“It’s a bunch of nonsense. They have a temporary license, they’re going through their permanent license,” snapped the Wiz. “But anyway, I’m not addressing that kind of a report.”
Of course he’s not addressing that kind of report. How could he address that kind of report?
Because it is a correct kind of report.
The city is breaking its own laws and putting vulnerable families at risk. Children are eating off of shelter floors.
The temporary license Duggan spoke of was meant for a temporary warming shelter. It was issued two Januarys ago and was supposed to provide short-term services during the extreme cold. It is not a permit to establish a perpetual overnight shelter.
But that’s what a city building inspector found on June 2024: nearly 50 women and children living in a former nursing home on Gratiot Avenue. The place had a raft of fire, plumbing, and structural issues, and did not have a certificate of occupancy. The inspector failed the facility and cited it for “operating illegally as a shelter.”
Incredulously, the city claims the building is operating legally—as a temporary warming shelter—even though the temperature was 71 degrees the day of that inspection.
Two months later, the city building department finally approved the nursing home’s conversion to an emergency shelter on condition that no one inhabit the joint until the work was complete and a certificate of occupancy had been issued.
A month later, in September 2024, the building flunked another inspection. It was still occupied with women and children.
Last month, the building yet again failed fire inspection. And it is still not certified to house human beings.
Instead of fixing the damn place, Duggan deflects, and millions intended to house the poor go unaccounted for. As for the woman and her remaining children, they got a house rent free for the next 12 months. Then she’s on her own.
In Duggan’s Land of Oz, the rich get richer and the poor get children. He’s running for governor, but he isn’t popular in Detroit. Polls show Duggan in a statistical dead heat in the city with Jocelyn Benson in a head-to-head match up. That’s not good for a guy who has been mayor for more than a decade. That’s because people who are not on his payroll know the truth. The Wiz has done nothing much to improve their lives.
So Duggan has dumped the Democrats and is now playing populist. Instead of running as the corrupt Big City Democrat that he is, he’s donned the robes of a good old boy.
Good luck running on that.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
