DETROIT, MI -- Hershel Welch was visibly confused surveying his new surroundings.
The 61-year-old man was touring a new apartment with a social worker assigned to help low-income seniors move out of downtown Detroit’s Griswold apartment building, which was converting to market-rate units.
"To find this man toward the end of this process, I still get choked up," said Claudia Sanford, of the United Community Housing Coalition, who worked to help Welch move to Rivertown Assisted Living in Detroit. "I took him to Rivertown and he had a real moment of profound confusion."
Welch didn't make the move. He was found dead two weeks after the deadline for tenants to vacate the building at 1214 Griswold. His body was found amid the construction to convert the building from senior housing in The Griswold into market-rate apartments developed by Broder & Sachse Real Estate Services, Inc., which renamed the building The Albert.
Wayne County Medical Examiner records confirm Welch was found dead in apartment 1109 at 1214 Griswold on April 14. The cause of death is listed as "natural causes/heart failure."
Welch's death galvanized a coalition of Metro Detroit housing experts to study what went wrong, and where it could happen again. Their findings, so far:
• At least a dozen senior apartment buildings in Detroit's Midtown and downtown areas could convert to market rate apartments in the next 10 years, forcing hundreds of seniors to find new homes.
• There is a strong incentive for building owners to capitalize on high demand for apartments in Midtown and downtown.
• Right now, there's no set system to move seniors or preserve low-income housing credits.
That group calls itself the Senior Housing Displacement-Preservation Coalition. Members include professors, nonprofit leaders, housing experts and experts on aging. They've been formally meeting for more than six months with two goals that carry complex obstacles:
• Preserve senior housing in Midtown and downtown where it can.
• Smooth the transition of seniors to new housing in instances in which preservation is not an option.
One significant obstacle for the coalition is convincing people that development in Detroit could price people out of neighborhoods where they’ve lived for years, sometimes decades.
"This is a national problem, it's not unique," said Tim Wintermute, executive director of the Luella Hannan Memorial Foundation. "What's interesting about Detroit is people don't think it would happen in Detroit."
Wintermute and the coalition have identified more than a dozen properties in Midtown and downtown where low-income subsidies for senior housing - paid by HUD - are set to expire in the coming years. Most pressing on the list: Orchestra Towers, at 3501 Woodward Ave., where vouchers on 248 units are set to expire Sept. 30. Other properties still have several years left in the subsidy-based contracts with HUD or MSHDA.
Preserving senior housing in Midtown and downtown will be difficult for the coalition, which ideally would like to get senior housing apartments into the hands of mission-driven nonprofits. But intense demand for apartments in the city’s high-profile neighborhoods - both occupancy rates above 95 percent - have private owners taking note of young professionals’ desire to pay premium rents to live in the city’s business, entertainment and university districts.
Failure to preserve senior housing, though, could come at a cost. Sanford and other nonprofits, including St. Aloysius Neighborhood Services, worked to help more than 100 seniors move out of The Griswold to make way for The Albert. Welch's death was hard to take, she said. He'd lived in the apartment for 16 years and was suffering from dementia, but the transition left no opportunity for him to stay. The federal subsidy expired, the private developers chose not to renew the contract, Welch and hundreds of other seniors couldn't afford the new rents, and they had to move.
"The injustice from my perspective in all this is, and I understand capitalism, but there seems to be a loss of dignity and respect for people who live in these neighborhoods," said Deacon Don Leach, an associate pastor at St. Aloysius and member of the senior housing coalition.
Conversely, the seniors' departure shows the resurgence of downtown Detroit real estate. Many of the senior apartment buildings were filled in the 1980s when no one wanted to live downtown, according to experts. Senior subsidies paid by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were one way to keep any sort of density in the central districts.
Today, stories of young professionals being unable to find affordable housing in downtown Detroit are heralded as proof of downtown Detroit's comeback. Displacing subsidized apartments - albeit units housing seniors - with market-rate apartments like The Albert can be seen as a sign of economic health.
Richard Broder, a principal with Broder & Sachse, said he expects work at The Albert to be finished in late summer or early fall. Apartments have been hitting the market daily and are quickly being leased, he said. He declined to say how much is being invested in the re-development.
Broder acknowledged moving seniors out of the building "wasn't perfect." He said he didn't recall being told specifically about Welch and the issues housing advocates say they had reaching him.
"First and foremost, the process wasn’t perfect, but in hindsight it did go incredibly well in general," Broder said, adding that “there were a few road bumps along the way."
Part of the problem, he said, is his firm is one of the first to take on a project like this in Detroit. "I will tell you that perhaps part of the issue is, this is the first time this has happened in the way it has happened," he said.
Housing advocates say they do not blame The Albert developers for Welch's death. They do allege, however, that the fact that the building was mostly empty when Welch passed away illustrated a problem with the move, and the need for a comprehensive system to protect all seniors in the future.
This is the first in a series of posts investigating the transition of senior housing at The Griswold into market-rate apartments in the new Albert apartment building. While senior advocates use the transition as an urgent need to preserve low-incoming house in Midtown and downtown, developers of The Albert say the shift to market-rate apartment could be a model for future developers in the city. We'll also look at how the senior housing coalition is attempting to preserve senior housing and millions of dollars in housing subsidies that could otherwise be lost. Finally, we'll take a closer look at the residential real estate market in Midtown and downtown, and how it relates to gentrification in Detroit.
The series is part Aging Together, an ongoing partnership between MLive, WDET, and Model D examining issues related to the aging population in Detroit, the metro region, Michigan and across the country. Read previous stories here.
David Muller is the business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter