- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald, and here's what's ahead this week on "One Detroit."

Understanding Michigan's redistricting process, now with a firm deadline.

Also ahead, more flooding this past week stresses Detroit neighborhoods.

Then Nolan Finley and Stephen Henderson on the next generation of leaders, plus how renters can get help if they're facing eviction when the ban ends in two weeks.

And happy birthday, Detroit.

Lookin' good for 320.

It's all ahead this week on "One Detroit."

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(light contemporary music) - Hi there, and welcome to "One Detroit."

I'm Christy McDonald.

Thanks so much for being with me.

A beautiful summer week and drying out from round two of a lotta rain.

This video was shared by Pastor Barry Randolph from the Church of the Messiah in the Islandview neighborhood on Detroit's East Side.

We spent a lotta time there covering stories.

That was last Friday, July 16th, when a lot of homeowners said, "Not again."

Many basements reflooded, along with freeways.

A disaster declaration was already given to Wayne and Washtenaw Counties from the rain back on June 25th.

For more on how the city and the state is looking to improve infrastructure, and our reporting on water issues, head to greatlakesnow.org, and follow our reporting partners at BridgeDetroit.

We are moving closer to the primary elections in the city, and a governor's race that will start to heat up.

Our "One Detroit" contributors, Nolan Finley of "The Detroit News," and Stephen Henderson of "American Black Journal," got together to talk about the future of leadership.

- So we've only got about a week-and-a-half before Detroiters will go to the polls to elect a new mayor, elect a number of new members of city council, and probably get to decide on some major charter revisions.

For all of that important stuff being at stake, you would think there would be more buzz about all of this in the city.

But because I think we don't have the number of glitzy candidates that we normally do, this is kinda flying under the radar, and it's really hard to make heads or tails out of what's gonna happen.

- It is, and there's, you know, there's that strange element of the charter.

The absentee ballots went out, and people are voting on Prop P, even though the Supreme Court is still weighing whether it should be on the ballot or not.

And so, we're not quite sure what happens if the charter, to those votes that are cast, what happens if it's taken off the ballot.

I mean, there's still a lotta questions.

- So if the court says, "This can't be on the ballot," then all of those votes that are being cast now, absentee, don't count, because it won't be a question.

Let's talk about the danger of that message in a city like Detroit, where people are already voting, are already questioning the integrity of the vote, already accusing Detroiters of cheating.

You have a lot of Detroiters who are still raw about that, still thinking that people want to take the vote away from them.

Imagine then, if in the very next election, if you cast a ballot, and it literally doesn't count.

I mean, this is not a really great way to run a democracy.

- I don't know how you communicate it.

I think the only thing worse is that if the charter passes and we have to live under it in the city of Detroit.

They've sorta forgot the mission of a charter.

A charter is supposed to be an operating blueprint.

It's not supposed to be a point-by-point direction for how you run the city.

I mean, you've got to give an opportunity for the elected officials to administrate.

- I mean, it's an example of some overreach.

There's no question.

There are some things that they're talking about doing there that I believe you cannot do in the charter, and that's why it ended up in court in the first place.

But at the same time, I want to give a nod to the people who did this work, the work that they put in.

A lotta people spent a lotta their time.

They brought a lot of energy and imagination to this process.

And a lotta the ideas they came up with are things we ought to be talking about in the city of Detroit, and things that we ought to be working toward.

The charter is probably not the right vehicle for those things.

The legislative table is, right?

This is where city council, if it were more a foil, for instance, to mayoral power, which it has not been, if it were more creative on its own in terms of what it wanted the city to look like, and what it was willing to take initiative to do, we could be talking about those things in the right forum, in Detroit, and voting to do them.

You know, we have a real problem with the way that we deal with the water system in this city, that you have all kinds of people who are always on the verge of not having water.

That doesn't make any sense.

- We have the vehicles for addressing it now.

We didn't need to change the charter.

In fact, I thought this whole process was unnecessary, that there was nothing so broke about the 2012 charter that we needed to come back and change it.

But the other races, I mean, I thought they would be, and there may be a lot more buzz around the council races since there are four open seats.

You got a lot of candidates running, some familiar names, but they don't seem to have a whole lot of those familiar faces you might expect clamoring for these jobs.

- You don't have a lot of familiar faces in some of the districts.

In some others, though, you're seeing names crop up who have, I think, become part of the political fabric of the city, through the district process.

People who are doing work in those districts, people who are working with community groups and neighborhoods in those districts are now saying, "Hey, I'd like to represent this district."

It's gonna take a while for us to know who those kinda people are, because the city's a big place.

Each of these districts has its own kinda life.

At the same time, you've got folks like Fred Durhal, who is in the legislature, decided he's gonna take a shot 'cause he's term, his, like everybody else.

You got Coleman Young, who also got term limited out of the legislature, who's running at-large, and has attracted the endorsement of both newspapers in town, neither of whom- - Who'd a thunk that.

- Didn't love him (laughs) when he ran for mayor.

- You know, what I was thinking, Steve, as I looked at the names on the ballot, looking for the future of Detroit, looking for those future leaders who might someday sit in the mayor's office, because, you know, I doubt Duggan's going to run for another term after this.

I assume he's gonna win this election.

I don't see a serious challenge to him here, but where's the future on this list?

- It could be in some of these council races.

If Coleman Young can win an at-large council seat, in four or eight years, it puts him in a position, if he does a good job and, and raises his name recognition and define, you know, he's got this extra challenge, of course, of defining himself separate from his namesake, carving out an actual profile for himself.

If he does that, he would be a very formidable candidate for mayor.

You know, I'm always counseling people, "We gotta be more patient around here."

We only elected this first council by district group in 2013.

It's only eight years ago.

They haven't had enough time to figure out how it works and then to define themselves in a way that you'd see people really taking a huge shot at mayor.

You know, I think the story in the city still is Duggan and how powerful he is, how powerful he will be in this third term, having, I expect him to get north of 60% of the vote on the primary day.

He could be north of 70 in November, and he will have $800 million of federal money to spend.

I mean, think of that third term.

Think of any politician entering their third term with that kinda momentum.

- If he's smart, he'll spend some of that money to keep water out of people's basements, because I think, (Stephen laughs) that's about as, that's an issue people are as angry about.

We'll see on August 3rd, whether any of this turns out the way we thought.

- Turning now to the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, and the fast-approaching deadline for its work.

The commission just finished the first round of public meetings across the state, as they gather input to redraw congressional and state legislative maps for the '22 election.

The meetings were on Zoom and in person through the 1st of July.

A key part to the work is having the most recent census numbers.

But thanks to the pandemic, those numbers will be six months late.

So the commission asked the Michigan Supreme Court for a timeline extension to draw the maps.

Well, the court denied it last week.

The commission will not meet the constitutional deadline of November 1st, so look for more legal challenges along the way.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota has been following the process, and gives us an idea of how it works.

- Getting the political parties and their office holders to give up control of this process is hard.

- The process, electoral redistricting.

There's a big change afoot.

Well, what was the old way of doing it, which is the political way, right?

- Yeah, well, the last two times around, the Republicans controlled the legislature and the governorship.

So the idea is, Democrats might as well go home and watch football or something, 'cause they were gonna play no part.

This was gonna be done to them, not by them.

- [Bill] John Chamberlin's been a redistricting participant and observer since the 1960s, but it's just recently Michigan voters changed the game.

- [Announcer] Over 3,000 volunteers collected more than 425,000 petition signatures.

- [Bill] Proposal 2 called for an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2018.

It passed, now the work has begun.

- [Announcer] Michigan's 83 counties signed, including Republicans, independents, Democrats, and those somewhere in between.

- I've had one commission meeting under my belt.

So I'm rolling.

- [Bill] The commission's executive director, Sue Hammersmith, started last month.

- This is for the citizens, by the citizens of Michigan.

So it's pretty exciting to be part of this historic work.

- [Bill] The commission has a few other states to look to.

California started their redistricting commission- - Now you have us.

- A decade ago.

- We are the 14 members of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

And we draw the lines.

- The citizens of California were very happy with the outcome of that process, despite the fact that they were doing it for the first time.

People recognize, Democrats and Republicans alike, that this was a better way of doing it.

Well, keep it up.

- There are four Democrats, four Republicans, and five independents that serve on the commission.

- But this is all going on in the middle of a pandemic.

How's that affecting things?

- Well, it's gonna be much harder in a pandemic to speak directly with people.

Point in case, we're on Zoom today.

In some respects, maybe that'll open up options for people to speak up.

- [Bill] Rebecca Szetela, attorney with four children and now a redistricting commissioner.

- I was very surprised that I made it on the commission, but I'm very happy to have this opportunity.

- [Bill] She joined as a political independent.

- I think the workload is gonna pick up, in the summer, as we get closer and once we get census information, so that we can actually start possibly redrawing maps.

But for right now, it's about every other week or every week of about four to five hours of meeting, and then outside prep.

- [Bill] There will be at least 10 public hearings.

Will they be virtual, in person?

Don't know yet.

A lot to talk about.

State house senate districts, and those congressional seats.

- There's no doubt that we're gonna lose another congressional seat.

I think we're pretty much, no matter what happens- - [Bill] Kurt Metzger, Pleasant Ridge mayor and demographer.

- We're now at about 61 of our 83 counties have more deaths than births on an annual basis.

- Back in 1980, Michigan had 19 seats in Congress.

Soon it'll be just 13.

Every 10 years after every census, we keep losing.

And none of this is really a surprise.

I know there was a big effort to get the census numbers as close as you can- - Right, right, right.

- Or get the numbers up.

But there was still probably not much hope of saving that seat, was there?

- No, I mean, all the forecasts, it had us losing a seat.

And Michigan did as well as one could expect in the census.

- [Bill] Michigan's overall census response rate, in the top 10.

But in cities like Detroit and Flint, not so good.

Lower numbers there, and the shift in population, that's expected to affect how congressional districts will be redrawn.

- I think this time around, you've got a large movement of African Americans into both Southern Macomb and Southern Oakland.

- [Bill] With the Voting Rights Act, two Michigan districts need at least 50% African Americans of voting age, leading Kurt Metzger to speculate what's ahead.

- Andy Levin might get upset, but I think the Ninth District is the one that's gonna have to go.

We can't have as many districts in Southeast Michigan.

And the Ninth District takes in Southern Oakland and Southern Macomb.

And I think that that's gonna have to, the 13th or 14th or whatever they're renumbered, will have to take in a larger section of Southern Macomb, to get that African American community.

- High on the priority list, the commission must consider something called Communities of Interest.

Communities of Interest?

- Right.

- Is that a term that you use in your trade?

- Well, I'm learning more and more about Communities of Interest every day.

It is always been one of the factors in redistricting, but it's usually, if you look at other states, it's been way down at the bottom.

- You think about, you know, who's a Community of Interest?

Is it a religious group, an ethnic group?

Is it an economic group?

Then you're starting to make pretty core decisions about who people are and how they should be represented.

And so all of those become pretty controversial decisions.

- Communities of Interest don't come predefined.

There's no directory of Communities of Interest that the commission could go to.

They're going to have to depend upon people coming forward, either in, to testify in public hearings or virtual hearings, and I think make the argument, "Don't chop us into pieces."

What your interest is, is pretty much open.

I mean, you can name your interest other than, "Our interest is getting our guy reelected."

- [Bill] Another priority, partisan fairness, how to do that with tightly packed urban areas with a lot more Democrats?

Breaking them up is hard to do, which may be needed to create more competitive districts.

- There are a lot of maps that you could draw where Democrats will continue to have large problems in translating a statewide victory into a victory in say, the Michigan Senate.

- [Bill] Thus the conundrum, as more Michigan voters lean Democrat, while more house and senate seats are Republican.

- I'm just telling you, that's actually very hard to achieve (laughs), in concert with the other objectives, which are, you know, we pay attention to Communities of Interest.

We make sure racial groups have that potential to elect demographic representatives.

All of those things can be in conflict with achieving a map that means that a 50/50 vote would go 50/50 in representatives.

- [Bill] Now eyes turn toward that new commission, where you can follow every development online courtesy, the Michigan Secretary of State.

- We have to have our final maps drawn by November 1.

So that is our hard deadline that we're working with, and everything else is just going to fall into place based on when we get the data that we need to do our job.

- The success will be whether people show up at these public meetings, and people across the state get energized and engaged in the process.

- Is easy to make a map that is less partisan driven and less gerrymandered than the current maps.

So that's a bar that they'll be able to meet, but it is much harder to satisfy people, all with reasonable criteria for drawing the lines.

- We are still feeling the effects of the pandemic when it comes to housing and stability.

The federal moratorium on evictions expires in just a couple of weeks on July 31st, but back in March, Michigan launched CERA, short for COVID Emergency Rental Assistance.

"One Detroit's" Will Glover got in touch with Lakeshore Legal Aid to talk about the process for getting assistance.

He spoke with Ashley Lowe, LLA's executive director, and Kellie Foster, the head of LLA's Detroit Eviction Prevention Program.

- To assist households that are unable to pay rent and utilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The U.S. Department of Treasury directed $46 billion to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program through the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

The Michigan State Housing and Development Authority set aside $620 million of those federal funds to help tenants facing pandemic-related hardships to avoid eviction, while also making sure landlords can recoup owed rent through Michigan's COVID Emergency Rental Assistance, or CERA program, that's administered through local nonprofit agencies like Lakeshore Legal Aid.

Who is it for?

What is it supposed to do?

Give me the rundown, the basics of, and you know, what can people expect?

- The CERA program is actually a followup program to what's called the Eviction Diversion Program that was in place in 2020.

And so the CERA funding provides a couple of different things.

So one is, it pays for legal aid attorneys to represent tenants, on a limited basis.

And then there is the rental assistance.

It pays for rent that could go back to March, 2020 until today.

You could be eligible for future rent.

So that could be three months of future rent.

But if you're still having a financial crisis after those three months, you can recertify and potentially get even more rental assistance going forward.

It also pays for back utilities and forward utilities, and it also will pay for internet expenses.

- [Will] Forms needed for assistance include, a completed CERA application, past due rent notice, the most recent lease agreement in the tenant's name, and all utility statements the tenant is responsible for, including an internet bill, if applicable.

- One of the main differences, though, is that a case doesn't have to be in court to be able to access these funds.

So he doesn't even have to have necessarily, a notice of eviction, just a notice that says, "You're behind."

And that's enough for people to start in the system.

- How would someone find out or know if they are eligible for this assistance?

You said something about a portal, but is there another, you know, basic earmark that like, "Oh, hey, I'm having trouble with this.

I'm probably eligible for this program."

- Yeah, so it's for people who live below 80% of the area median income.

And so we know for like a single person, that means that you make less than $55,000 a year.

And I think the number in Detroit is that it's almost 90% of residents would qualify for this program.

- Obviously, the amounts that people get, I'm sure, will vary based on what their needs are, but where does the money come from?

And is there any responsibility for people who receive this help to pay it back, or are there tax implications that they need to be aware of, going into this?

- So the money is, it came from the federal coronavirus relief fund.

So all the money comes from the federal government, and it's passed through the state of Michigan, but it's available.

It's not anything that anybody has to repay.

It's not taxable.

And the, one of the best parts about it is, for the landlord's perspective, they don't have any obligation, right?

They don't have to, in prior programs, they had to take a percentage off.

They had to forgive some sort of rent that they owed, that was owed to them.

But now they don't.

Under this program, it's 100% of the back rent that in the time period of COVID, and they can take that and just eliminate that back rent that was owed.

So it's really an easy process.

And it's also, the income is the only restriction, that's it.

If you were behind in your rent and you meet that income restriction, it's available.

And it's just a matter of going through the process.

- What you're telling me is, if you're already behind on your rent, or if you are, know you're gonna be behind on your rent, if you have been served some sort of eviction notice or the eviction process has already started, all of those scenarios, you guys are still able to help people manage that stuff through this program.

- Yeah, absolutely, well, so we're lawyers.

So we get involved, (laughs) right?

So we get involved once the court process is triggered, but our community partner, HARA is the Housing Resource Agency.

We work really closely with them.

And so they will work in the beginning of that process, if it's outside of court.

- Is there a technical reason, or are landlords still technically allowed to evict people right now?

Is there still a reason for them to be able to initiate that process?

- So they're able to initiate the eviction process pretty much in any circumstance.

There are some things that are prevented right now from actually taking place, where the bailiff comes for people to move.

And that is the CDC declaration, which if you are being evicted and a bailiff shows up at your house, you can show a CDC declaration that says, "I qualify under this program.

I'm not able to be evicted at this time."

The main problem with that is then it expires at the end of July.

And it has been extended a couple of times, but we expect this to be the end, at this point.

So, so that's one piece.

The other is if there is a CERA application that's been submitted and they're in the process, the Michigan Supreme Court has issued an order that says an eviction shouldn't go forward, because they're in the CERA process.

- For more information on getting renter assistance and information, just head to our website at OneDetroitPBS.org.

Well, someone has a birthday this week, not just me.

Yeah, Detroit, I'm lookin' at you.

On July 24th, the Motor City turns 320 years old.

So this weekend, celebrate our amazing center of culture, innovation, heart, and grit.

There is no better place to be.

Happy birthday Detroit, cheers.

And I'll see you next week.

(light contemporary music) (traffic passes) (water splashes) (traffic passes) You can find more at OneDetroitPBS.org, or subscribe to our social media channels, and sign up for our "One Detroit" newsletter.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Presenter] Support for this program provided by, the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, the Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations, committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Broadcaster] Business Leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by, and viewers like you.

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