We use collaborative, power-building campaigns to combat anti-Black racism related to dispossession and displacement from housing and other property.
Our Approach
Since 2017, the Institute for Law and Organizing (ILO) has developed campaigns to help impacted communities build power and is working to provide templates of those campaigns to spread to cities across the country.
Our three pillars include:
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Research
We produce legal research to define and support each campaign.
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Organizing
We support impacted community members in building power, creating leaders who spearhead our campaigns to change the systems that cause dispossession and displacement.
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Law
We provide direct legal services and partner with lawyers and law firms to support impacted community members fighting dispossession and displacement.
Why pilot in Detroit?
Strangers to Detroit too often associate it with disorder and economic decline. Those who really understand Detroit, however, know that it is a city of battle-tested residents who have been combating anti-Black racism for generations. Consequently, the nation should view Detroit not as a cause for sympathy, but rather as a source of wisdom. Detroit has been the seat of resistance to anti-Black racism, including the fights against racially restrictive covenants, urban renewal, blockbusting, redlining, predatory mortgage lending, and racialized property tax administration. Consequently, Detroit should serve as a source of experience and leadership for similar efforts in other majority Black communities.
Current Campaigns
Our three current campaigns are housed in the Coalition for Property Tax Justice – a project of ILO that is piloting programs in Detroit. ILO is also working in Milwaukee, Chicago, and nationally to end racialized property tax administration in America. Read more about this illegal overtaxation.
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Stop unconstitutional property tax assessments
ILO has appealed illegally inflated property taxes of over 250 Detroit homeowners and is working to end this practice at the city, state, and national levels.
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Ensure homeowners who the City illegally overtaxed or who qualify for tax exemptions do not lose their homes
ILO helped halt roughly 13,000 property tax foreclosures in Detroit.
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Compensate overtaxed homeowners
ILO’s vision and advocacy laid the foundation for the Dignity Restoration Project, a sister organization dedicated to compensating the hardest hit Detroit homeowners: those who were overtaxed and foreclosed upon for taxes they should not have been paying in the first place.
Our History
In 2017, ILO’s Founder Professor Bernadette Atuahene, a property law scholar at the University of Southern California focusing on land stolen from people in the African Diaspora, conducted empirical research that uncovered the systemic and illegal over assessment of property taxes in Detroit that led to foreclosures on roughly 100,000 Detroit properties, disproportionately affecting Black homeowners. This is not just a Detroit problem. Across the country, Black and Latino homeowners pay a 10 to 13 percent higher property tax rate than similarly situated white homeowners, making this injustice an overlooked driver of the ever-widening racial wealth gap in the United States.
To address this crisis and build an organization that can tackle other forms of anti-Black racism related to dispossession and displacement, Professor Atuahene created ILO later that year.
Our People
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Founder & Executive Director
Bernadette Atuahene, professor at the University of Southern California, is a property law scholar focusing on land stolen from people in the African Diaspora. She is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who grew up in Los Angeles and earned her BA from UCLA, her JD from Yale, and her MPA from Harvard.
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Community Advocates
Our Community Advocates lead our direct community outreach efforts. They connect Detroiters with services, support events, and move people to action.
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Harriet Tubman Fellows
Our Harriet Tubman fellows are graduate students from across the nation who work with ILO to help advance our Property Tax Appeals Project, conduct legal research, support the development of policy, and participate in community organizing initiatives.
If you are interested in joining our team please email illegalforeclosures.detroit@gmail.com.