Detroit voters will elect two at-large city council candidates in 2025. Incumbents Coleman Young II and Mary Waters are on the ballot. So are former council member Janeé Ayers and Detroit Fire Department Community Relations Chief James Harris.

Why she’s running

Ayers joined the council in 2015. She was appointed to replace Saunteel Jenkins, who vacated her seat to become the CEO of The Heat and Warmth Fund. Ayers won a special election in 2016 and secured a full four-year term in the 2017 general election. She ran for re-election in 2021 but lost.

At the time, the federal government was investigating corruption in city government. FBI agents searched her home for evidence but found none. The Justice Department closed the case in 2025 without charging her.

Ayers says if not for that ordeal, voters would have re-elected her.

“It was horrible, but I’ve come through it,” she says.

Ayers says she couldn’t talk about the investigation until now but welcomes voters’ questions about it. She also says it helped her understand many of the problems Detroit faces.

“I’ve lived it in a way that makes me so much more keen on the issues that people are dealing with,” she says.

Support local police

One of those issues is crime and how to fight it.

Detroit has seen a steady drop in the number of homicides and other violent crimes in recent years. Despite that, President Donald Trump has insisted crime is out of control in Detroit and other U.S. cities.

Vice President JD Vance repeated those claims while visiting Howell, Michigan, and said Trump would send the National Guard to Detroit if Governor Gretchen Whitmer requests it.

Ayers doubts she would.

“She and I know each other well,” Ayers says. “If she did, she’d have some serious questions to answer.”

Ayers says the federal government doesn’t need to police the streets of Detroit. But she does see a problem on the horizon—replacing Detroit Police officers who are retiring.

“We’ll be losing a lot of the institutional knowledge in those folks that have been on the job,” she says.

Ayers chaired the Public Health and Safety committee throughout her years on the council. She says the city needs to encourage young people to join the Detroit Police Department as older officers leave.

“We definitely need to strengthen that pipeline for Detroiters to start taking those positions,” she says. “So that we just have people that are from our community policing our community.”

On housing and jobs

Besides public safety, Ayers says she’s concerned about affordable housing in Detroit. One reason why it hasn’t been affordable for many, she says, is the formula the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development uses to calculate the city’s median income.

“For us, it is Detroit, Warren, and Livonia, and they take the median income from those three cities,” she says. “We can’t get a median income that makes sense for Detroiters as long as we’re compared to those two cities.”

Ayers says more Detroiters could afford to buy a home if they had better jobs and better access to transportation. She would also like to pick up where she left off with a task force to help people returning to the city after being incarcerated.

Don’t call it a comeback

While Ayers hasn’t been on the council for almost four years, she has been busy running her own consulting company and returning to work for the city’s recreation department where she started.

“I’ve been right here doing all the things I would have done with or without the title,” she says.

More election coverage

A new survey conducted by the University of Michigan and Outlier Media reveals the top concerns Detroiters would like to see the next mayor address.

Crime and Safety topped the list, followed by neighborhood maintenance, access to better paying jobs and affordable housing.

Mara Ostfeld is with the University of Michigan and co-authored the survey. She spoke with WDET’s Bre’Anna Tinsley.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mara Ostfeld: If you had to identify your top three major challenges just getting by in life today, what would you say those are? And as you mentioned, the most commonly selected ones were crime or safety, neighborhood conditions  and employment. And I don’t think any of those would jump out as new themes for people who’ve been in Detroit or talking to Detroiters, but I think it was interesting to think when we asked Detroiters who mentioned crime or safety next as a follow up: so what would you want the city to do about this? …A majority of Detroiters mentioned something other than police when they were talking about what would make them feel more safe. A lot of Detroiters mentioned things like better lighting or more gun control or less vacant housing or more support for neighborhood associations. Which highlights something different and something we have seen more in Detroit, but something different than what often comes to mind is the most common response to safety concerns.

There was just a really big push in desire to see the city show respect for people’s neighborhoods in a way that reflected the way a lot of people love their neighborhoods.

MO: It would probably resonate with you and other people who spent a lot of time talking to Detroiters, is that a big theme was just concern about how people’s neighborhoods were being maintained and attended to. And a really strong desire for just better attention for neighborhood upkeep, whether that mentioned just trash pickup or vacant lot maintenance or, you know, people coming to fix lighting or fix trees. There was just a really big push in desire to see the city show respect for people’s neighborhoods in a way that reflected the way a lot of people love their neighborhoods.

Bre’Anna Tinsley: Employment and access to jobs were mentioned in the survey, and when asked what specifically Detroiters would like to see addressed, items like wages and flexible hours were mentioned. Not typically something a mayor can address, does the mayor have any sway over these things?

MO: I mean, I think that’s a really good question, and not all of these are things that the incoming Mayor can directly mandate. But it does speak to you know, we do know that mayors and our legislators do work to create incentives for different types of companies to come to the city. And I think another thing is that we can think about what makes the desire for flexible schedule so prominent. We know a big factor that leads to a desire for more flexible schedules is after school programs, child care, and transportation. All of those things are things that are more directly in the realm of mayoral control and impact.

BT: Schools also fell into that same category. Issues like better teachers, class sizes and more schools were of big concern for Detroiters, but the mayor doesn’t have direct control over that. In what ways could the mayor address these concerns?

MO: There are partnerships that can be incentivized in the city, building more partnerships with teacher training programs. And I am hesitant to say too much. I don’t know all of like, the policy dynamics and politics behind, you know, education policy. But regardless of whether it’s in their direct realm of control, we know there’s a lot of indirect mechanisms in terms of incentivizing certain partnerships or changing the structures around which some of these like things, are enabled for this by the school board. And so I think it’s important for the mayor to know what’s this? Residents, especially people concerned about education, want in that realm so that they can work within what is in their space to incentivize these other changes.

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