Old Detroit YMCA branch lists for $1M after abrupt closure of Operation Get Down shelter

A social services organization on Detroit’s east side has closed its housing shelter after 26 years and is attempting to sell the now-empty building: a giant YMCA from the 1930s.

The nonprofit Operation Get Down ran a temporary shelter for homeless men and men who have reentered society after being incarcerated out of the former Northeastern branch YMCA at 10100 Harper Ave.

The shelter opened in 1997 and housed 66 men just before it closed Nov. 2 for financial reasons, according to Deborah Powell-Conner, the organization’s interim CEO. The closure was due to “lack of funding from the city of Detroit,” she said Wednesday.

“We didn’t want to close but we didn’t have any choice,” Powell-Conner said. “When there’s no funds, you can’t operate.”

The shelter residents were then directed to other housing.

“We transferred them over to Detroit Rescue Mission, and the city took it over from there,” Powell-Conner said.

Operation Get Down recently listed the five-story building for sale with a $999,000 asking price. An open house Wednesday fielded interest from a few potential buyers, Powell-Conner said.

The former Y features dormitory-style rooms, a stone-paved inner courtyard and a vintage gymnasium with overhead running track. There once was an indoor swimming pool, but it was filled in years ago. According to Free Press archives, the YMCA of Metro Detroit sold the 140,000-square-foot building to Operation Get Down for $1.

Detroit officials on Wednesday emphasized that the city did not pull any significant funding for Operation Get Down that would have resulted in the shelter closing. In fact, the city intended to continue funding the shelter into 2024, officials said.

While the city did withhold some cost reimbursement funds in August and September for lack of documentation by the organization, the money would have been released had cost information been forthcoming, officials said.

“We are disappointed in Operation Get Down’s decision to cease operations, and thank them for their decades of service to the residents of the city of Detroit,” Julie Schneider, director of Detroit’s Housing & Revitalization Department, said in a statement. “We are glad we were able to assist in relocating and providing resources to the residents who were displaced as a result of the organization’s closure.”

Operation Get Down may have also been feeling pressure from a recent loss of state funds.

The Michigan Department of Corrections said it stopped making referrals this summer to the organization after an independent audit found the shelter wasn’t fully compliant with the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. It was the shelter’s first such audit.

Department spokesman Kyle Kaminski said Wednesday the audit wasn’t prompted by any reports of rape at the shelter.

A copy of the audit report, reviewed by the Free Press, describes the audit as routine and says the shelter was not in compliance with 30 federal standards during auditors’ August 2022 visit. Those standards included proper employee training, screening for risk of victimization and having protocols in place to investigate any allegations.

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Operation Get Down was started in the 1970s and continues to exist, although without any active programs since the shelter closed last month. The organization hopes to relocate to a smaller office and someday restart programs, Powell-Conner said.

Bob Schwartz, CEO of the Here to Help Foundation, said Wednesday his group provided services, including job placement help, to some of the formerly incarcerated men who stayed at Operation Get Down for three- to six-month stints following their release.

“It’s been a staple in the community for a long time,” he said. “These individuals were those who were more displaced than others, in the sense that they had no family or friends to parole to.”

Some men received only a few days’ notice to pack up and leave before the shelter closed, Schwartz said. Some went to the Team Wellness Center on Jefferson Avenue, he said, while others entered independent housing programs.

“Everybody ultimately got to where they could move,” Schwartz said. “But the unfortunate thing is, many of the people who had jobs had close-by jobs. And then all of the sudden you’re moving to the completely opposite side of town — and you just can’t get to your job on time. So it was a problem for a stretch.”

The Harper Avenue Y building joins two other old brick Detroit YMCA branches that are now empty and available for purchase. The others — the Western branch YMCA at 1601 Clark St. in southwest Detroit and the Fisher branch YMCA at 2051 W. Grand Blvd. — were as of September both owned by prominent Detroit landlord Dennis Kefallinos.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.