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Affordable housing, lowering crime key to Detroit says candidate Kinloch

8 October 2025 at 11:53

Voting has begun in Detroit’s mayoral election.

Reverend Solomon Kinloch, a political newcomer, is taking on career politician and City Council President Mary Sheffield.

Leading into the primary, the common refrain on the campaign trail was affordable housing and lowering crime.

Kinloch, the leader of Triumph Church, is no different.

In an interview with Detroit Public Radio, Kinloch spoke about filling up the city’s limited housing stock.

Listen: Affordable housing, lowering crime key to Detroit says candidate Kinloch

“We got to begin with, neighborhood revitalization. My plan would commit to putting a family in every house,” Kinloch said. “We do that by creating a greater pathway to home ownership, by increasing and intensifying the down payment assistance program… and prioritizing affordable housing development.”

The City of Detroit says there’s been over one billion dollars of affordable housing investment in the city since 2019. Many of those developments come with more expensive apartments, with units set aside for people with median income.

This, Kinloch says, is where he and Sheffield disagree. He thinks Sheffield, and the city, aren’t being aggressive enough.

“They’re bragging about affordable housing. Affordable for who?” Kinloch said. “You got rent 17,18, $1,900 a month. That’s not affordable for the average family in the city of Detroit.”

No victory laps when it comes to crime

Another key difference is that Kinloch sees city leaders, Sheffield included, already celebrating a drop in crime.

“I don’t think nobody should be taking a victory lap,” Kinloch says. “When you talk to residents in the city of Detroit, and when you leave a funeral, as I have left so many, where I’m burying too many young people in this city to go into saying, ‘you ain’t gonna change nothing’.”

Kinloch maintains that many in the city still feel unsafe, despite recent improvements.

“We got to be honest about how bad the problem is, so that we can take some comprehensive and some realistic and practical steps in order to deal with that,” Kinloch said. “People still don’t feel safe…they still got bars on their windows.”

That willingness to try new things when it comes to law enforcement and lowering crime does not extend to the using the National Guard in Detroit.

“I believe that the wonderful police officers in the City of Detroit should be responsible for caring for the people in the City of Detroit, and that people who live in the city should be responsible for being a part of that police department in order to patrol and protect their citizens,” Kinloch said.

Referencing the uprising in the summer of 1967, Kinloch says the National Guard being sent to Detroit is still an open wound for many.

“I believe that when you start talking about martial law, it regurgitates some traumatic experience for the community,” Kinloch said. “They long have tried, mentally and socially to and psychologically to distance themselves from (that).”

The organization that operates the Detroit People Mover has launched a study to look for ways to improve services.

Kinloch says he lives downtown, and he wants Detroiters to feel like it’s their downtown too. Expanding and improving the People Mover would help that.

“When I did my launch, people were saying, ‘Why are you going to the Fox (Theater)? That’s that’s not where we go. We don’t go downtown.’ We have to make sure that everyone in this city feels a part of what’s going on in this city, because if we bring them downtown, we want them to use the mode of transportation to get around downtown,” Kinloch said.

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The post Affordable housing, lowering crime key to Detroit says candidate Kinloch appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM.

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