The District Detroit, PED Committee

Planning and Economic Development Committee
Public Comment, Eden Bloom
Thursday March 2, 2023

My name is Eden Bloom, I live on the Eastside and work with Detroit People’s Platform. This morning I want to briefly check the developers claims of misinformation. It’s important to clearly state that Detroiters are not misinformed. Many know exactly how this works, they recognize it as a hustle and don’t want the developers to use public money, our money, to play the game.

Assumptions are positioned as gospel in the dominant economic development model in Detroit. The entire “but for” analysis is an assumption. As we’ve heard over and over that development cannot happen without without the use of public tax incentives, but a fact is that they would simply be less profitable for the developers.

We understand that these are models and projections. We’re not concerned about the project not getting built, because we’re not going be be the ones that benefit from it, we’re more concerned about it being built and the projects impact. Detroiters feel exploited when public resources are used to reimburse billionaires private projects.

What we have is a difference of vision in the way the city should be using public funds. What is happening here isn’t misinformation, what is happening here is that Detroiters are organizing to stop an economic development model that doesn’t benefit them. The developers and the city administration are willing to say anything to get it done anyway.

Thank you.