Steve Neavling
Taura Brown speaks to reporters and housing rights activists about her plan to fight her eviction.
Housing rights activists are stationed outside of the home of a Black woman with a terminal illness to defend her against what they’re calling a “retaliatory eviction” on Detroit’s west side.
Taura Brown, 44, is being kicked out of her 317-square-foot home that is part of a community of unique tiny houses in the Dexter-Linwood neighborhoods.
Cass Community Social Services (CCSS), a nonprofit that designed the homes for lower-income Detroiters, has received a court order to evict Brown after a two-year legal battle, even though she has paid her rent on time.
Brown, who has stage-five kidney disease, alleges she was evicted in retaliation for blowing the whistle on problems at CCSS. She accused the nonprofit and its director, Rev. Faith Fowler, of fraud and micromanaging residents. She also alleged CCSS never intended to provide permanent homes for tenants.
“At this point, we are in home defense,” Brown said Monday morning. "I’m going to fight this because this is bullshit. … I ain’t going.”
Activists said Brown’s eviction sets a dangerous precedent for other landlords to evict tenants for speaking out.
“Faith Fowler is an example of a nonprofit poverty pimp, a white savior, a white supremacist treating people like crap,” Bob Day, a retired lawyer with Detroit Eviction Defense, an activist coalition, said. “We can’t have it. We can’t allow it. And it’s setting the tone for slumlords all across the city who figure, ‘If anybody complains, anybody tries to organize, anybody tries to speak out, we’ll evict them.’”
Outside of Brown’s house is a large banner with an unflattering photo of Fowler’s face and the words, “Reverend Faith Fowler is a fraud!”
Sammie Lewis, an activist with Detroit Eviction Defense, said a system that allows for the eviction of an ill woman on dialysis is broken.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have to be here,” Lewis said. “The system is absolutely vile. Housing is a human right.”
In a written statement, Fowler claimed that Brown has not used the house as her primary residence and chose to live somewhere else during most of her lease, a claim that Brown adamantly denies.
“The Cass Tiny Homes were never intended to serve as second homes or to sit empty,” Fowler said. “They were designed to provide poor people with safe and affordable rental housing which would convert into homeownership after seven years. There is no shortage of Detroiters who need this type of housing, not as an investment property, but their primary residence.”
Brown said she often visited her boyfriend at another apartment in the city, but insisted she primarily lives in her tiny home.
If she’s evicted, Brown said she’s worried that her health will take a serious turn for the worst.
“I’m lucky every day to wake up, and I take full advantage of my life because I don’t know when it will end,” Brown said. “If I don’t get transplanted, then this could be it.”
When Brown moved into her house in early 2020, CCSS promised that tenants who pay rent for seven years will receive the deed to their home, mortgage-free. The goal was to break the cycle of poverty and create a path to homeownership.
But Brown likely won’t have that opportunity. She expects a bailiff to show up at her door any day.
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