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Another Detroit is Happening—But Which One Do We Need? (cont’d)

Between us and homelessness

A 2010 land study shows that 95 percent of Detroit’s vacant single-family homes are still in liveable condition–that’s 218,000 homes suitable for occupancy right now. Still, Detroit’s homeless population is among the highest in the country, and has been on a steady rise. Two major housing projects near downtown have been torn down or vacated in the last decade, their former tenants re-assigned to mixed-income townhouses or displaced in the shuffle. Ballparks and casinos now sit nearby.

Maureen Taylor, a Forum organizer and activist with Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, says the recently demolished East Jeffries projects were not only communities, but solid, well built housing stock. MWRO fights for residents’ basic needs. Their housing takeovers are featured in “Locusts,” a hip-hop documentary by Detroit’s own Invincible and Finale. The video jumps around Detroit to show how space remains contested and cordoned off, even in a city with so much of it.

“We have people who need housing, and we have available housing. So we got those people ready, and took them straight to those units, kicked in the door, got new locks on ‘em,” says Taylor, in “Locusts.” “That’s direct action–there’s nothing else left between us and homelessness.”

Fresh off a month of action that featured civil disobedience “live-ins” at government-owned or foreclosed homes in ten cities, Miami-based Take Back the Land is in Detroit, joining efforts with MWRO and housing rights groups from Chicago and New Orleans at several strategy sessions.

Midtown, USA

Detroit’s Midtown area, a constellation of six central-city neighborhoods, is one of the clearest signs that reinvestment is more than a boardroom daydream. The area bordered by four freeways boasts nearly $2 billion in investment in the last decade. Midtown reaches south to a stunning downtown skyline, still blinking like a real corporate city. Downtown’s entertainment district reaches back to meet it. In between sits the “South Cass” Corridor, a collection of hand-painted signs on bygone bars, plywood, and parking lots–as well as several social service and homeless organizations.

Midtown’s “changing” neighborhood is rebuilding from the ground up, giving rise to a small business bohemia. Gentrification is not an issue now, and it might never be, says Sue Mosey. A long time Detroiter, Mosey heads up the University Cultural Center Association, a non-profit headed up by local business owners and redevelopers. UCCA has its hand in nearly all things Midtown, an idea more than a neighborhood radiating from the Wayne State University campus.

Mosey lists off in rapid fire the projects that her nonprofit has underway. With a $5 million annual budget raised from local foundations, the group funds small business start-ups and facade improvement, street beautification and urban gardens, and is planning an arts district based around an auto dealership turned contemporary art museum.

Then there’s real estate. UCCA owns, manages, and helps develop housing for a mix of incomes–for now. “We haven’t seen anything like other markets where people throw out low-income and go for lucrative high-end,” says Mosey. “That’s not the market here, and that’s not what we’re going for.” All of the UCCA’s projects, she says, have taken place in vacant or abandoned buildings, and many have a green ethos.

While the Midtown name imports its status from New York, the Cass Corridor is undeniably Detroit. The Corridor’s legacy as home to a gritty arts community is too famous to be erased. But its authenticity is becoming marketable, too. “We’re not about changing neighborhood names,” says Mosey. “But we are about branding the bigger neighborhood that encompasses them all, and we call that Midtown.” But slapping a brand on neighborhoods raises the question: can development be about more than just attracting new consumers?

“A little gentrification’s good,” says Pat Dorn with a smile. But it was his concern that the whole neighborhood would go high-end that got Dorn into affordable housing work. The neighborhood was home to a sizeable white, Appalachian auto worker community when he started the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation in 1982. Two blocks of Brainard Street in the heart of the Corridor used to house thousands of people, but began clearing out when the Big 3 stopped hiring.

When CCNDC bought up the block for redevelopment, it was a stretch of empty lots and rubble. “We wanted to establish a percentage that would always remain affordable,” says Dorn. “So we took the center, and we dedicated some units to people who get pushed out. “

A developing story

Midtown and the Corridor tout a growing number of community-based projects. A locally-owned organic bakery and health food store share a block. Around the corner, there’s a neighborhood bike shop. Down Cass Avenue, across from the Mandarin signposts of old Chinatown, a recently closed school hosts an independent movie theater and studio space for artists and activists.

While another layer of life and culture imprints itself on the city’s rapidly changing palimpsest–a blend of decay and rebirth, exodus and return–Midtown’s humble, village-like charm exists precariously. Because Detroit has gone from majority white to majority black, from industrial powerhouse to industrial graveyard, in a relatively short period of time, no degree of transformation seems untenable. The covered wagon and the kibbutz set off larger processes of settlement and takeover, and gentrification, too, happens in phases on the urban frontier. Larger commercial and real estate forces always hover, ready to capitalize on “cool,” capable of enacting large-scale transformations in short periods of time.

For now, there’s only one Starbucks in Midtown. And the high-end lofts that sit above it are half-empty. Around the corner, California investors took out a $2 million mortgage on the Hotel Eddystone. The purchase of the 13-story blown-out structure comes after rumors that Detroit Red Wings owner Mike Illitch is considering the Corridor site for a new hockey stadium. A shredded “Move in Now” banner still hangs on the Eddystone’s windowless shell, a reminder of a highly-touted 2005 redevelopment effort - one of many false starts that precede the current attempt to transform one of the poorest parts of the city.

Bing’s remapping efforts will continue to bump up against pervasive inequality in the city. The most transient visitor, funneled from highway off-ramp to casino parking garage, will still see people posted up on every corner, asking for change.

The tens of thousands of visitors arriving in Detroit for the five-day Forum will take on superficial “renewal” plans with skill-building, strategy sessions, and direct action to shape community-driven solutions. They come together, however, with an understanding that no number of visitors can save the city in one week. “It can’t be the end,” says Spady. “We’ll have to come back out from it stronger. It’s got to be more of a beginning.”

A version of this article originally appeared at Truthout.org