EXPANDING THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS OPPORTUNITY

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Public and private groups are working to abate the issues preventing more of the city’s majority Black population from moving into the middle class; and then, crucially, hoping to dissuade them from moving out of Detroit once they have the resources to do so.

But only time will tell if those efforts will change the trajectory in the city.

Shaping the region

Addressing the barriers to moving more of the city’s majority-Black population into the middle class and then keeping them in Detroit will help residents, the city and the region overall, leaders said.

In the city, it will help stabilize neighborhoods, enable recirculation of dollars in those neighborhoods, improve educational attainment and stabilize the tax base, said Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.

It will also position the region to attract more employers and more middle-class jobs, while providing a healthy, urban core, Goss said.

“It is imperative that the region prioritizes increasing the Black middle class,” she said.

“ e limitations to accessing homeownership, capital to start a business and a career that contributes to growing industries are holding back the entire region from accelerating to its full potential.”

If the loss of Black middle-class families in Detroit can be stemmed, it would be the rst city in the United States to have a majority minority population that actually changed the entire economy of the region by leading with this demographic, Goss said.

Detroit’s Black middle class has been in decline for the past decade, decreasing by more than 10,000 people since 2010. At that point, the Black middle class made up 28 percent of the city’s Black households. It dropped to 26 percent in 2019 and 25 percent of households in 2021.

DFC de nes the middle class as those with an income between 80 percent and 200 percent of the national median household income, and upper middle class as those with a household income between 200 percent and 300 percent of the nation’s median household income. For 2021, middle class income levels were between $55,774 and $139,434, and the upper middle class earned $139,435–$209,151.

Detroit’s Black middle class should be increasing, but it hasn’t, Goss said: “ ere are discriminatory barriers that keep people from moving into the middle class.”

Detroit Future City has laid out the issue in recent years with the 2019 report, “Growing Detroit’s African-American Middle Class” and the March 2022 report, “Buying In,” which found that in 2020, African American applicants in Detroit were denied loans at twice the rate of white applicants, based on federal home mortgage lending data. Huntington Bank, Bank of America Corp. and Plymouth credit union Community Financial have since rolled out new loan programs for Black and other minority borrowers to help them obtain mortgages, which are one way to build generational wealth.

Most recently, DFC teamed up

Voices Of Detroiters

Kalisha Davis grew up in Northwest Detroit before leaving after high school to attend Central Michigan University. She earned her degree in 1998 and headed to Minneapolis, then Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York and Silicon Valley. In 2015, she came back to Detroit to become a Detroit Revitalization Fellow at Wayne State University and, after two years, was paired with the Detroit Historical Society, where she served as one of the creators of the Detroit ’67 Project.

e opportunity the fellowship o ered to con-

Middle-class

By Race

nect, build relationships and be reintroduced to the city as a working professional was all very appealing, Davis said.

She currently works for the California-based Kapor Center from Detroit as the project director for the equitable computer science curriculum initiative. And she bought her rst home, a colonial about 10 minutes from where she grew up, last fall.

“Even in all the various places I lived, it (was) always ... in the back of my mind to come home,” Davis said.

“ at’s something that my parents always instilled in me: to have pride in the community and to have a desire to give back to the community because I gained so much growing up here through a variety of experiences.”

Davis said another reason she came back to the city and why she stays is because there are so many people doing good work here.

“I’m here in Detroit because this is where I choose to be,” she said. “I love this community. I don’t have any reason to leave.” more pro table enterprises. rough its Detroit at Work workforce programs, the city is helping to build a bridge to get those who are unemployed or underemployed into jobs and, ultimately, on a path to the middle class. may have a few skills but want to create new opportunities for themselves and to grow through a new middle-wage or management position or study area, she said. with the Brookings Metro program of the Brookings Institution to research and release “Growth Occupations: Opportunities for more equitable participation in Detroit’s Growing Economy.” e issues they raised are as relevant today as they were ve years ago, based on Crain’s interviews with four Detroit households.

“We have been very intentional about saying that we are here to support Black and Brown Detroiters in their economic mobility pursuits and that includes those who are disabled. at includes the justice-involved community, veterans and then, of course, the cultural community that have typically been underrepresented as well,” said Dana Williams, chief strategy o cer for the city’s Detroit At Work workforce e orts.

“Maybe that’s getting them connected to a four-year college program, or a community college program utilizing the other resources that are here like Michigan Reconnect so that they can earn that wage, as well, and get truly a path to a longterm career,” Williams said.

Public and private groups are making moves aligned with many of the recommendations DFC has made, based on focus groups it did in 2018 with 100 people who are part of the Black middle class and left Detroit.

Increasing worker wages

People need to earn more money to move into the middle class, Goss said.

Among other recommendations, DFC is calling for more jobs that put the city’s Black residents on a path to a middle-class income, increased support systems to encourage post-secondary certi cate and/or degree attainment and e orts to help Black entrepreneurs scale the businesses they’ve started into bigger and e city is operating with an “A,B,C model” in its workforce development e orts, Williams said. “A” is getting Detroit residents into a job.

“ ere are some folks we know who need to go to work tomorrow, just to be able to get some immediate income. And so we’re connecting them with those opportunities,” she said.

For those who want to move into a better job, the city o ers career coaches to connect them with over 50 training programs for high-demand, high-growth industries.

And then there are the people who e mayor has also been focused on attracting large employers like FCA-Stellantis (which is employing roughly 4,000, most of them Detroiters) and GM Factory Zero, the carmaker’s rst, fully dedicated electric vehicle assembly plant, among other companies. Many of the positions at the plants would be considered middle-class jobs, said John Roach, media relations director for the city.

Raising education access

Post-secondary education is important to position residents for a middle-income job. But only 14 percent of Detroiters have an associate degree or higher, Goss said.

e Detroit Regional Chamber has provided the Detroit Promise scholarship for the past decade to Detroit