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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Sociology
First Advisor
Sarah Swider
Abstract
Since 2008, Wayne County has issued more than 400,000 foreclosure notices to property owners in the City of Detroit for falling three years behind on their taxes, resulting in the yearly bloom each January of yellow-bagged foreclosure notices taped to doors or stapled to wooden stakes pounded into the frozen ground. Detroit’s sizable Black population living at or near poverty has felt the greatest impact of the yearly Wayne County tax foreclosure auction. This dissertation project seeks to understand the Wayne County tax foreclosures not simply as a mundane state process, but rather as a form of racialized dispossession. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Marxist understandings of dispossession, this dissertation examines the Wayne County tax foreclosures and resulting demolitions, using public records data from 2008-2024. The data is geocoded to create maps showing where and when the foreclosures and demolitions took place. By drawing on the fields of sociology, history, law, and critical geography, this dissertation will contribute to understandings of wealth extraction from communities of color, the legacy housing discrimination, and community belonging.
Recommended Citation
Sabbagh, Michael L., "Tax Foreclosure, Racialized Dispossession, And Belonging In Post-2008 Detroit" (2025). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4186.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4186