Southfield, MI Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

Sec. 9.1 of the City Code broadly declares a public nuisance to be whatever injures or endangers the safety, health, comfort or repose of the public, offends public decency, or renders the public insecure in life or property, and it bars any person from committing, creating or maintaining a nuisance. Sec. 9.3 then lists specific nuisances per se, including at item (7): all buildings, walls and other structures damaged by fire, decay or otherwise, and all excavations left unfilled or uncovered for 30 days or longer, where the condition is situated so as to endanger the safety of the public.

Sec. 9.2 authorizes the city to abate any nuisance without giving up its right to also pursue a violation under the Code, and lets the city ask any court of competent jurisdiction to order the nuisance abated and restrain or enjoin the violation. That court remedy runs alongside, not instead of, the code's civil infraction process, so a blighted or damaged structure can face both an abatement order and a civil fine. The nuisance-per-se list in Sec. 9.3 also reaches related blight conditions on the same property, such as dangerous unguarded excavations or machinery left accessible to the public under item (8), giving the city more than one hook to move against a deteriorating structure and the land around it.