Detroit crews were preparing on Monday, Aug. 10, to secure a vacant apartment building at 10030 Cadieux again after neighbors said it had become a magnet for squatters and apparent drug activity. Building inspectors also posted Notice to Vacate warnings around the site the same day.
For Sterling Dickerson, the problem is not abstract. He said the steady stream of people going in and out of the building has brought harassment and apparent drug use into Yorkshire Woods, and he pointed to the Cadieux property as the center of it all. Dickerson said the nuisance activity happens throughout the day, not just late at night, and he recently recorded video of Detroit police conducting a raid near the building. “They overrun our neighborhood,” he said, adding, “The constant squatting and the people that’s harassing us. The drug use is amazing over here.”
The city has been watching the property for some time, and the latest response comes after repeated attempts to keep people out failed. Detroit Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett, Jr. said the building has been boarded up at least three times and that Detroit Police Department officers have already been out there. The property is among those tied to Real Token and the owner is under court-ordered receivership, which leaves the city trying again to address a site that keeps drawing complaints even after the last repair work is done.
Mallett said plywood has not been enough to secure unsafe buildings, and that the city may have to move to stronger barriers such as clear-view panels or steel grating. That is the part neighbors have been waiting to hear, because the question is no longer whether the building will be boarded up again. It is whether the next layer of protection will finally hold at 10030 Cadieux, where the same problem has kept coming back despite the city’s repeated efforts.
Detroit City Council member Latisha Johnson represents District 4, where the building sits, and the next step is now in the city’s hands. If the stronger measures Mallett described go in as planned, the test will be immediate: whether residents in Yorkshire Woods can finally go a day without seeing the same vacant building pull in the same kind of trouble.
