City of Detroit wins legal protections for tenants in Real Token properties
After months of complaints, the city of Detroit wins a major legal protection for hundreds of tenants living in blighted properties owned by a cryptocurrency-based real estate platform.
Yolanda Williams and her family have lived in a house on Abington Street on the city's west side for nearly 50 years.
"This is the only house I've ever known. This is my neighborhood, my community," said Williams.
Their home is one of hundreds that are included in a sweeping lawsuit filed by the city of Detroit against Real Token, LLC. The lawsuit targets more than 400 homes across the city, citing the company's numerous code violations and unsafe living conditions.
"It's a security thing because we're scared over here because we don't know what to expect," said Williams.
Detroit Corporation Council Conrad Mallett says the company uses a network of 165 different LLC groups to avoid any kind of accountability or recourse for their tenants.
"These properties are in such a degraded state that there's no way that interested owners, no matter whom they farmed out the responsibility, would not know that their tenants are living in substandard housing," said Mallett.
On Wednesday, city officials announced major legal protections for those residents by safely withholding their future rent payments.
"They need to not pay their rent in August to Real Token; they need to put their August rent into an escrow account," said Mallett.
This temporary restraining order stops Real Token from collecting rent from any of its impacted tenants until those buildings are repaired and a certificate of compliance is issued to each of them.
"Not only are the tenants not to pay rent, once the rent is paid into the escrow account, no evictions can occur," said Mallett.
Mallett says this move is designed to push the company to finally address the nearly $500,000 in violations as soon as possible.
"The improvements have to occur, and we're not going to accept that it's going to take seven months, eight months, nine months. None of that," said Mallett.
City officials say they plan on doing door-to-door canvassing to make sure each impacted tenant knows how to set up an escrow account and gets everything figured out before their rent is due.
