The Trouble at West Park

On a late summer night in West Park, a young basketball player one-arms a pass to a teammate for an easy layup. The game, illuminated by the headlights of parked cars, is just one of the hallmarks of what appears to be a healthy, active park. Two helmeted women bike down a paved path, a few teenagers push each other on a pair of swings, and some kids running across a playground bridge are treated to the passing glow of fireflies.

But beneath this pleasant veneer, crime has marred the area for decades. “When we moved here initially, there were fights all summer long,” says Craig Rominski, who with his wife Jenny Tubbs has lived in a house overlooking the park for twenty years. At times, like after a 2008 redesign, things improved temporarily. But during the Covid lockdown, Rominski says, they saw a lot more “nefarious activity. It really has built from there.”

Nina Francis-Levin, a U-M researcher, has a front-row seat from her home on Chapin St. She and her wife, Jess Francis-Levin, have “seen drug deals go down in our driveway, people overdosing facedown in the street, our cars have been broken into. And all this happens in broad daylight.”

The complex, multifaceted problems of homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health issues that beset the neighborhood came to a head in April with the gruesome murder of the Francis-Levins’ next door neighbor, Jude Walton.

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The neighbors’ shared backyard has long served as a thruway for people heading between the Delonis Center homeless shelter, West Park, and Miller Manor, a low-income apartment building that houses formerly homeless people with support services from Avalon Housing. Walton, a staunch affordable-housing advocate, had been Avalon’s director of employee experience since 2009.

In the backyard are two makeshift fences, one constructed by Walton from fabric netting and nasturtium flowers, and the Francis-Levins’ low metal pickets backed by bundles of fallen branches. For years the neighbors fought to gain city approval to build a permanent fence to stem the flood of trespassers, only to be denied because their homes sit just above the underground confluence of the West Park Drain and Allen Creek.

In the wake of Walton’s murder, Jess Francis-Levin, also a researcher at U-M, sees this as a shameful oversight with harrowing consequences.

There were “women in your community saying, ‘I don’t feel safe,’” she says through a stream of tears, “and the city didn’t listen. One of them ended up dead. That to me is completely unforgivable.”

Lynn Fiorentino was friends with Walton for twenty-seven years and shares the same frustration. “They can’t put up any protection for themselves from a flood that has never happened, but the thing Jude feared has happened.”

According to the city’s stormwater and floodplain programs director, Jerry Hancock, there are several roadblocks to getting the fence built. Ann Arbor participates in the National Flood Insurance Program and residents receive a 20 percent discount because the city enforces NFIP’s minimum standards. Even if the city granted a variance, which would increase insurance rates, a permit from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy would still be needed.

“To get that permit would require hiring a hydrologic engineer to design and model the fence in a way that will not cause a rise in flood elevation,” Hancock says. “That will be difficult and expensive.”

“Okay, so do those things,” responds an exasperated Fiorentino. “That seems cheap to me compared to a life.”

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Miller Manor was built in 1971 as affordable housing for the elderly. In the 1980s federal civil rights laws were extended to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities, and the Ann Arbor Housing Commission began accepting younger tenants with physical, mental, and/or substance abuse issues. More recently, as part of a county-wide effort to end homelessness, Miller Manor has welcomed an influx of people who’d been chronically homeless, with Avalon providing services to help them remain housed.

Avalon’s management brought 24/7 staffing to the building for the first time, but neighbors say it remains a nexus for problems. “Fighting, screaming, gunshots,” says “Isabelle Quinn,” a neighbor who asked that her real name not be used. “We’ve had somebody go in our backyard and open our car doors, people jumping the fence to get into our backyard, drug dealing, et cetera.”

She’s called the police more than thirty times this past year, mostly for altercations at a bus shelter in front of the building. The shelter was removed in July, and since then, Quinn says, “it’s gotten a lot better. The foot traffic isn’t as intense; prior to that, the police were here at least two times a week.”

When to call the police has been a conundrum for the Francis-Levins and Quinn. Neither want to use police resources for nonviolent crime, but they also want to feel safe in their homes.

“It’s hard to tell what is dangerous and what isn’t, because you get used to a certain level of chaos,” Jess Francis-Levin says. “You don’t want innocent people who are struggling to end up in trouble—but you also don’t want to be a sitting duck for someone who would break into your house and kill you.”

The police response was elevated over the summer when the AAPD called in the Michigan State Police for support. According to an email from councilwoman Erica Briggs to a West Park resident, early results of the collaboration resulted in five arrests and eight felony charges.

Responding to a FOIA request, the AAPD reports that there were twenty-four arrests in the West Park area over the summer. The addresses of the individuals were blacked out, making it impossible to know whether any of the arrestees were connected to Miller Manor or the Delonis Center.

Asked about problems at West Park and Miller Manor, Avalon Housing declined to arrange an interview, but provided a statement from director Aubrey Patiño. “We serve people who face discrimination and dehumanization caused by myths and unjust stereotypes,” she writes in part. “They are vulnerable to safety issues themselves … Avalon stands ready to work alongside the community to help and house our most marginalized neighbors, in the West Park vicinity and throughout Washtenaw County.”

Avalon residents’ vulnerability was brought home in June, when a resident of Arbordale Apartments off Pauline Blvd. was killed in his home. The AAPD believes the incident was not random but has yet to make any arrests.

A suspect in Jude Walton’s death was arrested within days of the murder. WEMU reported that Ricky McCain “apparently” was living at Delonis, but shelter director Dan Kelly says that he “wasn’t a resident at the time of the incident.” For privacy reasons, Kelly says, he isn’t able to comment on whether McCain received other services there.

Jess Francis-Levin says the police have been “very responsive” to neighbors’ concerns, but city officials have not. An April city council meeting included a moment of silence for Walton. People praised her as a “pillar of the community,” and pledged to continue her work as a housing advocate. But “why was the mayor not here [on Chapin St.]?” Jess Francis-Levin asks. “At minimum, just acknowledge that there’s a problem with homelessness, drug addiction, mental health, and affordable housing.”

“Even our own city council, I think they found it hard to believe that we have this type of problem in Ann Arbor,” says neighbor Jeremy Lapham. “I feel like there’s a disconnect between the people on the council and the actual neighborhood …  We tend not to see issues like poverty, drug use, and mental health that affect our communities. It doesn’t fit with that narrative of who we are as a city.”

Like the Francis-Levins, Lapham sees the chaos around West Park as a social issue first, with poverty and homelessness the driving factors.

“I want to differentiate between criminal behavior and public health issues,” he says. “There’s a tendency to perceive what’s a normal public health issue, like homelessness, poverty, and mental health, in terms of criminal behavior. It’s a more complex issue.”

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Kareem Dean stands on the corner of First and Miller holding a tattered cardboard sign that says that his soap, towels, and blankets were stolen from his stash spot nearby. He’s trying to get enough cash together, it says, to “get things back little by little.”

Dean is on the long waiting list to get into the Delonis Center, which would give him a place to stay until he can find a permanent residence. While people are waiting for a bed, staff also assess what other social services they might need, provide case management, and supply basic needs like access to showers, health care, food, mail, and email.

They do this on a $3 million yearly budget. Kelly says a recently allocated $100,000 marijuana excise tax transfer from the city will further help them this winter but still isn’t enough: “There’s only so much money to go around, and the need far outstrips the available funding.”

Kelly says the average cost to move someone into an apartment, including first month’s rent, security deposit, and back utilities that some owe, is about $2,500. But first, a unit has to become available.

“We need to build significantly more affordable housing,” Kelly says. “It’s gonna take local, state, and federal investments, and a huge community effort.”

Affordable housing is a more cost-effective solution according to Jennifer Erb-Downward, director of housing stability programs and policy initiatives at U-M Poverty Solutions. “Most of the literature points to how much less expensive it is to provide individuals experiencing chronic homelessness with housing than it is to provide ongoing shelter service,” she says.

Ann Arbor is working on the problem. Residents passed an affordable housing millage in 2020, and in a July Observer article, Julie Halpert reported that the city is moving ahead to create 500 to 1,500 affordable apartments on city-owned lots.

But for now, Delonis is at capacity, sheltering around eighty people, with eighty-five more on a five-month waitlist—up from around sixty at this time last year. More than 80 percent have disabilities, and 40 percent suffer from a substance abuse disorder.

As winter approaches, they are foremost on Kelly’s mind.

“We saw a 19 percent increase in our daily overnight capacity last winter, which is alarming and such a punch in the gut,” Kelly says. “Our team worked so hard over the pandemic to get people back on their feet, and we’ve had so many amazing success stories. To see so many people still in need is disheartening.”

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Delonis resident Dorwin Harper is one of those success stories. Harper worked seventeen years as a driver for Chrysler, until one disastrous afternoon when two armed men robbed what they thought was a trailer full of airbags—and shot him in the leg. Their shotgun caused so much damage, Harper says, that doctors thought they might have to amputate. He kept the leg, but lost the physician’s certification he needed to keep his commercial driver’s license.

Harper lost his job and his house. He managed to pick himself up and went back to school in Virginia to get his master’s degree in psychology with the goal of being a clinician, but suffered a heart attack. Unable to finish school and out of money, he moved to Ann Arbor and found work in drywall and as a maintenance worker for McDonald’s—until he suffered another heart attack that required an artificial valve implant with a defibrillator.

With mounting health problems and no way to support himself, Harper found himself homeless. He has spent the last eight months at Delonis, where staffers have helped him rebuild his life. He’s been taking care of his health and has a job at Michigan Stadium. He recently received a voucher for subsidized Section 8 housing, and is moving into an apartment this month.

Harper blames “repeat offenders” for the crime in West Park but says those individuals are banned from staying at Delonis. “There are success stories here. Some go to school, get a job and an apartment, and never come back. The probability of me coming back is none.”

According to Kelly, the number of people who return to the shelter after finding permanent housing is 10 percent or less.

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As for the future of West Park, parks director Josh Landefeld has begun an engagement effort to discuss the future of the band shell. It used to draw crowds for summer concerts but was closed two years ago due to foundation problems caused by the underground drain. “Any recommendation coming out of this process will not only concentrate on the band shell but also provide options and ideas regarding West Park as a whole,” Landefeld says.

In a post on nextdoor.com, Lapham has already offered a number of suggestions, including lighting along paths, more opportunities for shade, planned activities, converting the baseball field into a soccer pitch, and adding a dog park, among others. 

Jude Walton’s neighbors also want a solution to West Park’s problems, one that isn’t motivated by the rage and resentment they feel after their friend’s murder.

“None of us want to be positioned as the people who think they know exactly how to fix this, or as coming down firmly on any one side,” Jess Francis-Levin says. “We are confused and upset and trying to figure out how to move forward in a way that doesn’t completely bend to our anger but uses it as a catalyst for positive community action that would honor our fallen friend.”

She invites city leaders to “Come down to West Park, where this ‘pillar of the community,’ whose memory you evoked in your meeting, was murdered. See what she was contending with.

“Come hang out,” she says. “You’d be welcomed.”