Statement on Pope Francis Center Housing Development in Core City

10/01/2024

It's been determined by Core City residents that we do not give our consent to expand the current Pope Francis Center in any manner that involves temporary or permanent housing in our neighborhood. The long-term Black residents, along with new residents, have decided to prioritize housing development to which all Detroiters have access.

Aside from that determination, we're quite concerned about how Mr. McCabe, the President of the Pope Francis Center, has conducted himself in our community.

The most concerning parts are:

• Mr. McCabe and other Pope Francis affiliates did not transparently communicate the desire to expand their facility to our community in a respectful and direct way. We were treated like a box to check by an external consultant (ULI -- see their attached PDF mandate), instead of being carefully and intentionally communicated with as the most impacted community. Pope Francis staffers like Carmen Szurpicki reached out to us directly and validated this concern, and we have yet to receive an apology for how we were treated.

• Mr. McCabe wrongly determined that Lilly Skinner spoke for our community (without checking with us) when her purview at Core City Neighborhoods doesn't include our neighborhood or this type of subject matter. He also used her ignorant words about our organized and powerful neighborhood against a member of our community to try and discredit our right to have our voice heard around future development. It should also be noted that members of Core City Neighborhoods have felt disrespected by Mr. McCabe in his "consultative" approach.

• Mr. McCabe and other Pope Francis affiliates were not transparent about the wish to potentially develop a second phase of the Pope Francis Center within the initial proposal, which included the acquisition of a significant amount of land across the street from the Center. If residents knew there could potentially be a phase 2, it would have changed how they approached the phase 1 hearings.

• Mr. McCabe and Pope Francis Center affiliates have failed to recognize that developing anything in our community will significantly impact the coming residential and commercial development along Lawton and beyond. We're already home to the Covenant House bridge housing center, the Salvation Army bridge housing center, the parole office, the Veteran's Center, and the new Pope Francis bridge housing center. While our community has welcomed these facilities, each of them negatively impacts our community in various ways. We cannot afford another bridge housing development in our community. Period.

• As shown in our most recent meeting with Mr. McCabe, he fundamentally doesn't understand the need to truly listen to our community's concerns without putting himself at the center.

We perceive these acts above to be in bad faith against our community, and we do not trust Mr. McCabe and Pope Francis Center to act in a just and equitable way towards our community.

Building permanent residential housing for renters and families is our community's number one priority to balance out the non-profit development in Core City and attract necessary infrastructure and amenities that our residents have desired for decades.

Outside of our concerns with Mr. McCabe and any new Pope Francis development, it has come to our attention that Pope Francis' major donor is KKR, a global private equity firm and a bad actor. Their most current bad act was their acquisition of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline in Canada against the wishes of Indigenous First Nations. The Wet’suwet’en tribe First Nation has had to escalate to criminal legal action against KKR and other actors as preparations are being made for drilling to commence under the sacred Wedzin Kwa River in British Columbia, Canada. The Coastal GasLink Pipeline is only one of the many fossil fuel assets in KKR’s energy portfolio, as the firm has maintained that it intends to continue investing in conventional fossil fuel projects regardless of the local and Indigenous opposition. KKR has $479 billion of assets under its management, making it one of the largest private equity firms in the world. They sow anti-Indigenous, anti-worker, and anti-environment messaging and actions for profit. As a community, we do not support any entity who is tied to such a bad actor and puts one community's needs over another while calling it "philanthropy".

Our research continues on Pope Francis' board members and its funding streams.

Because Mr. McCabe's track record with us isn't great, and he holds various relationships with people in power in Detroit and at the state level, making our story public is the only way we're guaranteed to be heard.

Email corecityfightsback@gmail.com if you have questions or want to jump on the phone.