The Detroit Reparations Task Force is soliciting feedback from Black residents on ways the city should repay the community for harms most were not alive to witness.

“I did want to make sure we did tough on a spot of harm, particularly because that’s literally the basis of this work,” DRTF Co-chair Cidney Calloway said as she discussed the 35-question reparations survey at Gordon Park, near the epicenter of the 1967 riot that claimed 43 lives, including members of the Michigan Natural Guard, and Detroit police and firefighters.

“It’s like we have been harmed, and now we have to find repair and what it looks like,” Calloway told WDIV.

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The effort is part of the task force’s work to produce a report for the Detroit City Council by March 2025 that outlines potential reparations. The task force stems from Proposal R, a referendum approved by the city’s voters in 2021 to study reparations. The 13-member task force was created by the city council in February 2023.

“Hopefully, they’ll take what we’ve recommended and kind of move forward with enacting some policy and ordinances around that,” Calloway said.

“Reparations are about justice, equity, and healing,” according to the survey. “Detroiters, we want to hear from you. What do you want the City of Detroit to provide to address past harms to Black residents in the areas of housing and economic development?”

The survey asks Black Detroiters to rank a variety of possibilities using a scale of one to five, with one “extremely important” and five “not as important.”

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“Your recommendations” include “providing cash payments to Black Detroiters,” home down payment grants of up to $40,000, “granting city land to Black Detroiters at no charge,” $100,000 home improvement grants, 10-year property tax reductions, increased public school spending, and free computers, food, and transportation for Black students.

Other possibilities involve more public housing, free vacant city lots, food subsidies, income-based utilities, free counseling and mental health services, and dismantling a $5.6 million Detroit Police command center the task force describes as “a multi-million dollar technology surveillance center that is imposed upon Black students and families.”

Through Wednesday afternoon, Calloway told WDIV the task force had received 112 responses, well on the way to a goal of 500.

Detroit cousins Reginald Robinson and Mickey McConnell took the survey and shared some of their thoughts with the news site.

“Providing cash payments to Black Detroiters is extremely important,” McConnell said.

“Providing grants to Black Detroiters of up to $40,000 for a down payment on a mortgage was not as important,” Robinson added.

“Giving somebody the cash, they have the ability to make their choices, whatever they want to do, whether positive or negative,” he said. “Hopefully (it will) be along positive lines.”

The survey is among the first steps in what will likely be a years long process to bring reparations to Detroit’s black residents, City Council President Mary Sheffield, who created the task force and selected its leadership, told Bridge Detroit.

“Reparations is such a big topic and people have various opinions on what it is,” Sheffield said of the $350,000 effort. “That has been a challenge – having a clear plan in how we attack this. We’re finally coming to a place where it’s starting to get momentum.”

“The work and the research warrants more time,” Sheffield said. “My hope is that if we could have baseline recommendations and goals by the end of this term that would be great and hopefully we could continue on the work for the next council to move forward.”

Whether that works out remains to be seen.

The task force’s first year featured four resignations, mismanaged meetings, private decisions and public fights between members, according to Bridge.

There’s also critics at the Michigan Black Business Alliance who believe the city should move more quickly to partner with corporations and foundations that have the power to change Black lives for the better now, rather than conduct more studies and surveys that delay the process.

“Studying harm is some people’s way of saying ‘we don’t have a solution yet,’” Charity Dean, the MBBA’s executive director, told Bridge.

“I don’t think any task force about repairing harm will have power unless you have power engaged in that work. As long as the work of restoring harm to Black people falls on the shoulders of Black people, we continue this cycle.”