Opinion | Detroit. New Orleans. D.C. Predatory Cities Are on the Rise.

The current pandemic has created fertile ground for predatory cities to sprout. With local businesses shuttered, unemployment skyrocketing, and many people unable to pay their rent and mortgage payments, Covid-19 has brutalized local economies. Michigan’s Treasury Department estimates 2020 tax revenues could plummet by $1 billion to $3 billion, while New York State has projected a revenue shortfall of more than $13 billion. Although many cities must slash budgets to ensure their financial survival, Covid-19 is also intensifying the need for essential, yet expensive, social services.

Stretched to its financial breaking point, Detroit has become a predatory city. Mrs. Sarah Dennis’s story gives a glimpse into how, in the midst of this global pandemic, financially vulnerable local governments prey upon their most vulnerable citizens.

Mrs. Dennis is now 79 years old and has lived in Detroit her entire life. After a long marriage, she became a widow at 47. She then met a widower, Earl Dennis, at the Church of God on Wisconsin Street. She played the piano and he was an usher. They were married in 1990, and she immediately moved into his humble home on Detroit’s east side. Every Easter, the whole family would sing hymns like “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” and Mrs. Dennis would make a sweet potato pie, lemon poundcake, and lemon coconut pie that brought tears to the eyes of grown men.

Covid-19 killed Mr. Dennis, exactly two weeks before Easter, the couple’s favorite holiday. Mrs. Dennis was, once again, a widow, after 30 years of marriage. The funeral home live streamed his home-going service, but Mrs. Dennis could not attend because she was in the hospital fighting Covid-19. She miraculously recovered. Although convalescing, she restarted another battle, this time against property tax abuse in Detroit.

The Dennis home is a quaint, gray brick ranch-style house built in 1954. In January, Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration was prepared to tax the home as if it were worth $26,800. Given the poor neighborhood conditions and the market price of recently sold comparable properties, the city’s estimated market value was far too high. Before becoming ill, Mrs. Dennis sought help from the Coalition for Property Tax Justice’s Pro Bono Property Tax Appeal Project, which I helped to establish. Once the project intervened, the city finally conceded that the home’s market value is $16,000 — 40 percent less than it initially estimated.