new images

$500 houses

An interesting phenomenon has begun to emerge in Detroit.  Housing resellers have cropped up preying on poor and unsuspecting people looking to get into the housing market who couldn't otherwise. A company pays a cheap price for an abandoned home at an auction and then resells the property to someone who could not otherwise afford to purchase something through a more traditional means of home ownership.


Most home showings begin with a key in a lock. This one on Salem Street begins with a squeeze of a bolt cutter.
Owner Keith Hudson wades through a waist-high lawn, pinches off the front door's Master lock and calls, "Knock, knock," unsure if he'll encounter squatters or wild animals inside.
There are none. There's also no furnace, water heater or electrical wiring, and sunlight beams through gaps in the walls. This isn't just the prospective buyers' first peek at the vacant two-story on the west side. It's Hudson's, too. And 30 minutes after the walk-through, Hudson sells it to a family of six for $2,750.
He and his partners at BenjiGates Estates bought the house for $500 at the Wayne County Treasurer tax auction last year and have become one of the new faces of the real-estate market that's blossomed in Detroit from the foreclosure crisis.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110701/METRO01/107010393/Market-big-for-foreclosed--rundown-Detroit-homes#ixzz1Qsg2AYux

"Bottom of the barrel"

Michigan officials announced a plan Monday to overhaul Detroit’s struggling schools by moving the worst ones into a new system in the fall of 2012. The system will not have a school board or a central administration. Principals will be in charge of hiring teachers, and they and their staffs will handle day to day operations.

Oversight will come from a public-private authority with an executive committee led by the Detroit district’s state-appointed financial manager. With less management, Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, says he expects more money to flow directly into the schools.

The changes are meant to address problems in a debt-plagued district where nearly one in five students drops out.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that Detroit’s schools are “the bottom of the barrel” and that something must be done to save its children.

Big Changes?

A teaser from Mayor Bing today on some big announcement from the White House regarding help to Detroit. Stay tuned.

http://detnews.com/article/20110621/METRO01/106210397/1408/local/Bing--‘Huge’-help-for-Detroit-on-way-from-White-House

Neighbourhood selling point

Detroit is a tough city be any means and the eerie sense of lawlessness is something visitors and many residents alike feel uneasy about. The more abandoned parts of the city often feel like being in a Wes Craven movie. This article in the Free Press HERE offers a possible glimpse into the future of neighbourhood security and self government. Will Detroit become a series of patrolled enclaves gated off from the remains of the city? Will the expanding urban prairie create "neighbourhood Pods" that break the flow of critical flow and renewal? Is the idea of protecting the neighbourhood "pride coming back to the city" or merely an acknowledgement of how difficult the city outside of the neighbourhood has become?

Brian Johnson, the association's security director, learned about the firm from a neighbor who saw it featured on a news report. He touted Palmer Woods' relationship with Robinson and the 12th Precinct, but said Recon was an affordable boost to the neighborhood's security.
Robinson was quick to credit Palmer Woods residents for activism in protecting their neighborhood, adding that he sees a movement in protecting neighborhoods and "pride coming back to the city."In the city's Boston-Edison and University District neighborhoods, by comparison, security efforts range from traditional Neighborhood Watch patrols to citizen radio patrols and subscriber security firm patrols.
"It has worked for us," said Pamela Miller-Malone, president of the Historic Boston-Edison Association, about its community and subscriber patrol. The association also has e-mail alerts and a phone tree for older residents.

city views

Some more scenes from our recent photo's. One of the important things were trying to do with this project is stay away from simply shooting obvious decay and destruction; often referred to as Ruin Porn. Detroit offers many quiet scenes that most people just pass by. They tend to offer a more true and often more desolate version of what the city is really like.

NEW PHOTOS

Lots more to come. Working print shots only at this stage. Enjoy.

back from 313

I just got back from some more time in Detroit. Lots of new photos to post. My brain was sore after being there only a few days. The overall breadth of the continued decay and destruction is really sad. It's gotten far worse in only a year and after criss crossing the city from east to west and the river to 8 mile, you really realize the full scope of things. More than anything I just feel sad that it has come to this. Check this video out of robinwood st...from a few years ago..and some of those house are no longer standing or have been torched.
http://detroitnews.com/article/20090514/METRO08/905140408/Charlie-LeDuff--Off-Woodward--life-hits-a-dead-end

FRESH FARM

There has been an ever increasing amount of media coverage on the "new farm" idea that is taking over Detroit. Food co-ops and fresh collectives that are transforming the city's eating habits...unfortunately not true. Most journalists are parachuted in for 24 or 48 hrs. and given a "tour" of all the renewed ideas sweeping the city. Much like the tours that are given in Communist countries to show how "happy" all the workers are. No doubt there is some good ideas and some amazing people who, despite huge odds are trying with noble ideas to change the landscape of how people get food. It is however, for anyone who has really spent time there, a mere "piss in the ocean" in terms of the overall scope of what is happening. Here's the latest article from the NY times. Well written and intended. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/imagining-detroit/

Desensitization

It was a sad weekend in Detroit. Four police officers were shot inside their precinct. It was the latest round of a series of violent and seemingly escalating incidents in the city. Is it just the natural ebb and flow of urban life or does it speak to a more underlying current of fear and desperation? Does the slow process of renewal give way to frustration and hopelessness? How does the escalation of violence affect the psyche of a population trying to move forward and into a better place?

"That four were shot at once in Detroit wasn't shocking; that they were all uniformed and armed was. And it capped another felonious weekend during which three bodies were found in an eastside home on Friday and five people were shot outside a strip club early Sunday. "