Two university professors have studied the Wayne County Tax Auction and come to a startling conclusion: Since 2005, around 90 percent of purchases went to speculative investors. This shift from largely resident-owned properties to bulk owners has had serious ramifications for the city.
In the study, “The Eviction Machine: Neighborhood Instability and Blight in Detroit’s Neighborhoods,” Joshua Akers (University of Michigan-Dearborn) and Eric Seymour (Rutgers University) detail their work cataloguing property that has gone through the auction and its impact on neighborhoods.