Detroiter sues, says his lifelong home demolished in ambush-style eviction

Jennifer Dixon | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Was eviction ambush-style or legal? Detroiter is suing the Detroit Land Bank Authority over the demolition of his childhood home. He says he was still living in the house and the demolition destroyed his life. Land bank lawyers say he's just trying to embarrass and harass the land bank with his suit.

Daniel Murray says his lifelong home on Detroit's west side was seized by the city's Land Bank Authority in an ambush-style eviction — his photos, mother's antiques and the family china cabinet among belongings tossed into a Dumpster and hauled away. Two months later, the property was demolished with federal money at a cost of $22,030.

The Detroit Land Bank says the building was blighted, utilities were shut off, Murray wasn't living in the house and he never owned the property. And he just wants to embarrass and harass the land bank with a lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court naming the authority and Rickman Enterprise Group, the demolition contractor, seeking more than $25,000 in damages.

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But earlier this month, the judge in the case, David Groner, denied the land bank's request to dismiss Murray's suit. Among his findings, Groner said Murray had "stated a claim for wrongful eviction" under state law and the lawsuit could proceed.

Murray declined to be interviewed. But through his attorney, he issued this statement:

“This house was my home. I grew up there, my family lived there, I lived there, and I kept everything there. I told the Land Bank I was living there and wanted to stay. By destroying the house, the Land Bank destroyed my life.”

Craig Fahle, spokesman for the land bank, said money from the U.S. Treasury Department's Hardest Hit Fund was used to demolish the house. The Hardest Hit Fund is the largest single source of the city's demolition dollars and the money comes from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

According to Christy Goldsmith Romero, the special inspector general for TARP, the Hardest Hit Fund should not be used to uproot people from their homes.

Fahle pointed to the land bank's court filings and other records, which contend Murray wasn't living in the house and had not lived there for a long time.

"Treasury intended that the HHF Blight Elimination Program prevent foreclosures by combating the ills associated only with vacant and abandoned properties, rather than lived-in residences," according to a December 2015 letter from Romero to the Treasury secretary that SIGTARP provided to the Free Press.

The Hardest Hit Fund was launched in 2010 to help homeowners affected by the Great Recession avoid foreclosure. The HHF Blight Elimination Program was announced in 2013.

Detroit has spent roughly $120 million in hardest-hit money for demolition, and expects to spend an additional $132 million.

After taking office in 2014, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan launched an ambitious effort to tear down 40,000 abandoned buildings across the city. To date, the city, the land bank and the Detroit Building Authority have demolished about 11,700 structures, mostly houses in neighborhoods, but not without problems.

The FBI and SIGTARP have launched an investigation, and on Tuesday, Duggan's office confirmed that a federal grand jury has issued a subpoena related to the demolition program. Duggan said his office is not a target of the investigation.

The Treasury suspended payments for blight removal in Detroit for two months last year during a review that led to new procedures to evaluate bids and pay contractors.

The city's auditor general has been auditing the program.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is negotiating a consent order or judgment with the city over the mishandling of asbestos at demolition sites. Any judgment or order will include financial penalties.

Josh Akers, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn who has followed the land bank and teaches geography and urban studies, said the land bank's issues reflect a lack of controls and expertise to manage a large-scale demolition program, especially one with a strong emphasis on speed.

Akers said oversight is complicated by multiple sources of demolition funds, each with different rules.

Akers said he is familiar with Murray's case, and believes the land bank should figure out what happened, instead of calling Murray and his neighbors liars, and being so "adamant ... about their right to tear down his house. You can't give Daniel his house back, but you can look at your processes to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Akers said the land bank doesn't have "that kind of internal capacity. No wonder they're facing so many other outside challenges from the various agencies that oversee them."

Fahle, the land bank spokesman, declined comment on Murray's situation, citing the pending lawsuit. But he pointed to stronger controls adopted in 2016 to ensure all state and federal guidelines are followed properly.

According to his lawsuit, Murray's parents bought the house in 1961, when he was 8, and he continued to live there after their deaths; his father in the 1970s, his mother in the 1990s. But he didn't have title to the house. The structure was forfeited to the Wayne County treasurer for non-payment of taxes in September 2011 and ended up in the hands of the land bank in April 2014.

Murray, who is 64 and receives federal disability benefits, said he was not aware that the land bank owned the property until he got a call from a neighbor, Maurice Gambrell, who said two men had pried open the door to his house with a crowbar, according to the lawsuit.

Gambrell said the men told him in April 2016 that Murray's house was on the city's demolition list and they were there to empty it, the lawsuit said.

Murray was in Southfield at the time, watching his grandchildren, and rushed back to Quincy Street, which is northeast of Livernois and Fenkell, to confront the men and make a police report, the suit said.

The men took Murray's medications and about $250 in cash, the suit claims. They had also strewn other belongings around the house, damaged the blinds and removed the front door.

Murray scrambled to find out what was going on: He wrote to U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and other elected officials, and soon after got a call from Fahle, the land bank spokesman. Fahle told him that the land bank owned the property, according to the lawsuit.

Fahle assured Murray the land bank would not demolish the house, the suit says.

In May, late on a Friday afternoon, Murray got another call from Gambrell while watching his grandchildren: A Dumpster had been parked next to the house and an eviction appeared imminent.

Murray called the land bank again to remind officials he was still living in the house, the suit said.

Fahle sent a message to three other officials saying: "We need an inspector to check for occupancy, Caller Daniel Murray claims to still live in the house," according to the suit.

But on the following Monday, about 7 a.m., an eviction team was at the house, throwing Murray's things into a Dumpster.

Because it was before business hours, Murray couldn't reach the land bank, and because he didn't have a car that morning, he couldn't get back to Detroit to stop the eviction, his suit says.

When he finally returned to Detroit several days later, the Dumpster and his things were gone.

"This ambush-style eviction has been deeply traumatic and disruptive to Murray's life. He lost the home he had lived in since age 8, that his deceased parents had purchased. He is now without a home and is renting a room at a family member's house," the suit says.

"Additionally, Murray lost essentially all of his belongings that he kept in the house," including clothes and furniture. As a person who receives disability and food assistance benefits, "these cannot be easily replaced."

"Moreover, a price cannot be put on the countless other of his deeply personal family possessions, including family pictures, his family china cabinet, and his mother's antiques," the suit claims.

The land bank, in court records, said Murray wasn't living in the house, and cited inspections of the property by contractors in 2014 and 2016.

"There were NO credible or reasonable signs of human occupancy at the property" during the time the land bank owed the building, land bank lawyers told the court. "The property was confirmed vacant and abandoned through multiple investigations and indicators."

However, the CEO of a company that did a 2014 inspection said in a sworn statement that it was an "external inspection only."

In other court filings, the land bank said it couldn't answer questions about whether other inspectors went inside Murray's house because the information "is outside the Detroit Land Bank Authority's scope of knowledge."

The land bank said gas and electricity to the property were shut off in December 2015. It said the water was turned off in 2008, which Murray's lawyer, Matt Clark of Detroit, disputed.

"Plaintiff's claims are frivolous," the land bank told the court in asking that the case be dismissed. "It is quite clear that plaintiff has pursued this course of action with the primary purpose to embarrass or injure the defendant ... Plaintiff has engaged in a campaign of libel and slander."

According to an October 2016 memo by the land bank's demolition director, Becki Camargo, Murray did not live at the property at the time of the inspections or demolition. She said he never owned the house and never produced a lease.

"Therefore the demolition was proper and did not require an eviction," Camargo wrote. "Any personal property left behind in the house was abandoned long ago when Mr. Murray moved out."

Rickman, the demolition contractor, said in court filings that it first learned of Murray's concerns when it received a copy of his lawsuit. Rickman's lawyer, Anthony Adams, did not return calls seeking comment.

Three of Murray's neighbors have signed sworn affidavits saying he lived in the house.

"Anyone who looked at 15745 Quincy from the street would have seen that the home was occupied and not abandoned. The lawn was continuously mowed and otherwise kept up, the doors and windows were locked, there were possessions in the home, and a gate was up around the yard," said neighbor Shona Butts.

Two other neighbors, Dwayne Lee and Gambrell, said Murray would regularly shovel the snow, mow the lawn and take out the trash. Lee said he would "often see the lights on in Daniel's house."

In an interview on his front porch, Gambrell said: "It's not fair the way they took the house down." He said Murray's house could have been fixed up for less than the more than $22,000 spent on the demolition.

David Harris of Southfield said in an affidavit that he and Murray grew up as neighbors on Quincy and have known each other for more than 50 years. Harris said he would pick him up at his house twice a week to take him on errands because Murray didn't have a car.

He said he went inside Murray's house frequently, and it was "where he kept all his possessions. He was not a resident at any other home."

Contact Jennifer Dixon: 313-223-4410 or jbdixon@freepress.com