The front desk at DCDC is covered with examples of what Detroit could do with its abandoned buildings (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

by Jennifer Guerra

You’re going to hear the words asset and opportunity a lot in this story. And frankly, that’s a pretty welcome surprise. It’s not often you hear those words associated with Detroit these days.

But don’t tell that to Charles Cross, Chandra Moore, and Virginia Stanard. They all work at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center. The firm is associated with the University of Detroit Mercy. And most of their work focuses on Detroit’s abandoned spaces.

“Many communities come to us because they’re searching for some sort of revitalization or rethinking of their communities based on the strengths and assets that still exist in their communities,” explains Stanard.

The table at the front of the design center is covered in colorful mock ups and drawings of all the potential projects they want to work on.

They’re currently working on a project on Heidelberg Street in Detroit. A lot of children live around there, and it also happens to be one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Chandra Moore explains how they’re going to take one of the vacant houses on the street “and figure out we can make it an open, urban amphitheater for the area.”

The reason they’re able to do the project is because they got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Without the grant, who knows if the project would’ve happened. A lot of time the fate of a project does come down to money.

Virginia Stanard says money is, of course, important, “but it’s also collaboration and partnerships. And I do think there are a lot of strong foundations, non profits, organizations in the city, of course as well as the city government. And we’ve actually been fortunate enough to be in conversation with some of these groups and start to talk about some of these ideas.”

An idea that Charles Cross has is to turn a vacant building into a fish farm:

“There’s a gentleman in Brooklyn, New York who’s raising tilapia in these tanks in basements of buildings,” says Cross. “He’s done some research and said there’s a market for this. Other people are doing these things and we have infrastructure with the abandoned factories that are here that can be retrofitted and reused.”

When asked if he thinks there’s a space in Detroit to farm tilapia, Cross says “there’s one right around the corner from my apartment. And they used to support the auto industry; they’re now out of business. The building is still in good condition and it’s huge; I don’t see why this couldn’t be done there.”

Virginia Stanard tosses out another idea, this one is taken from Germany. It’s a country that has lots of similar post-industrial issues.

“They’ve been able to transform some of their current factories that are no longer in use into recreation and tourist destinations,” says Stanard. “There are some climbing wall locations, there are some park and walking areas. It’s an interpretative space as well. So they’re learning about the history of this particular factory, and the history of this region as an industrial region.”

The photo they showed me of the German factory looks like an attraction at Cedar Point: It is super bright, with red, purple and green neon lights. And there are people actually rappelling off one the side of the factory.

Now of course, they know it’s gonna take time to transform some of these dreams into realities, since Detroit has so many abandoned and foreclosed properties.

But Charles Cross figures if other cities can do it, so can Detroit.

“The guy in Brooklyn,” says Cross, “this guy is raising fish! Why couldn’t we grow potatoes and have Detroit made fries or tater tots or something? So I really think it’s going to take a lot of political will and a lot of partnerships with the nonprofits and with the communities. We can’t sit back and wait for things to happen. We have to make them happen.”

Detroit made Tator Tots? I could totally see it.

Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu

Michigan Radio manages another site called the Michigan Radio Picture Project with the editing help of photographers Eric Smith and Doug Aikenhead. This week we published a photo essay entitled “Home,” containing photos by Michigan photographer Austin R. Hermann.

Hermann describes the collection as “a pictographic examination of Michigan’s current economic housing crisis, with interviews from each participating member.” He visited houses and buildings in Berkley, Ypsilanti and other Michigan communities to capture the scene and speak with homeowners.

Visit the Michigan Radio Picture Project to view the photo essay.

Patrick Molloy sits in his new house in Clarkston, which he bought with the help of NSP funds (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

by Jennifer Guerra

The federal government doled out nearly $4 billion towards the Neighborhood Stabilization Program last year. The program was designed to stabilize communities hardest hit by foreclosures. Michigan got more than $98 million in NSP money. As part of our Facing the Mortgage Crisis series, Michigan Radio’s Jennifer Guerra checks in with one county to see how it’s spending its NSP money.

Patrick Molloy and his wife, Patricia, moved into their new house this past September. They bought it with the help of a program in Oakland County that uses $17 million of NSP funds to put eligible people in foreclosed houses.

The couple had been down on their luck for a while. Patrick had lost his high paying job three years ago, and then he had a spinal cord injury that forced him into early retirement.

“We struggled through for about 3 years,” says Molloy. “Last February we saw the announcement of this county program that could put us in a home, we never thought we’d be in the position to own a home again. This program did it.”

Molloy says what makes the program so great is that everybody wins.

“My wife and I clearly are big winners in this,” explains Molloy. “The county itself wins because all of a sudden all these foreclosed properties are active on the tax rolls again. The neighborhood wins because this place is no longer in danger of falling apart because nobody lives here and takes care of it.”

Here’s how the program works: Oakland County never owns any of the homes. Someone like Patrick Molloy goes out and puts a bid on a house. If it’s accepted, he has to qualify for 51% of the mortgage. The county is responsible for the rest of the mortgage.

“Our portion of the money is a loan,” explains Gordon Lambert, chief of operations for the county’s Community & Home Improvement Division. “It’s 0% interest deferred, which means the person or the couple would not have to pay back until they no longer own the property or it’s not their primary residence. So it could be 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, 50 years before they would have to pay us back.”

In order to qualify, you cannot already own a home. You need a good credit score, and you cannot have filed any bankruptcies or foreclosures within the last 3 years. Also you cannot make more than 50% of the average median income.

There was a category for people with higher incomes, but the county got more than enough applications for that program and isn’t accepting anymore.

Everyone who goes through the program has to meet with a HUD certified housing counselor like Margaret Harris. She’s there to help make sure that all those bad loans that got us into this foreclosure mess in the first place don’t happen again.

“Generally when you go to get a mortgage,” says Harris, “a lender will look at a ratio. What you make on a monthly basis, your gross pay, not your net, they’ll take 31% of that to determine how much you can afford to pay in a mortgage payment every month. That’s kind of a broad number because that doesn’t include all of your other expenses,” like whether or not you for day care, or if you buy a pack of cigarettes every day, or if you have credit cards you’re trying to pay off.

Harris takes everything into consideration and then works with you on a realistic budget to figure out how much you can comfortably afford for a monthly mortgage payment.

Sarah Blower is going through the process right now. She put a bid on a new house for her and her daughter, Sydney.

If all goes well, she’ll close on the house next week. Blower cannot wait. They’ve been living in her parents’ house for the last 5 years.

“finally have a chance to get a really nice home,” exclaims Blower, “something that my daughter and I feel we both deserve and something I never felt I could get on my own. I hope that other people are given this opportunity as well.”

30 people have bought homes with Oakland County NSP money so far. The county hopes to help another 80 or so before the money runs out and the program ends next September.

Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu

The inside of the foreclosed house Charlie O'Geen bought for $3,300 (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

Earlier this year Michigan Radio’s Jennifer Guerra introduced us to an artist named Mitch Cope. He and his wife live in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit. It’s pretty mixed: Polish and Ukranian families, lots of Bangledeshi immigrants. Not to mention quite a few drug dealers. Here’ s what Cope had to say about it back in March:

“People who have been in the neighborhood for a long time talk about how great the neighborhood used to be, you didn’t have to lock your doors,” explains Cope. “Ok, so it’s gotten worse, yeah I can see that. But now what? Let’s do something. Let’s have fun.”

So they bought a foreclosed house there for $1,900. The goal was to turn it into a community art center and artist residency space that would hopefully help stabilize the neighborhood. They even convinced a couple of artists from out of town to buy houses.

Since then, Mitch Cope and Gina Reichart have been incredibly busy. There was the NPR interview, followed by the CNN interview, the 20/20 interview, not to mention all the fan mail:

“We had maybe 300 emails or more, we stopped counting,” says Cope. “Can we move there? We want to help. How do we do it?”

“We would get phone calls from people, too,” says Reichart. That “led us to post that message on our website that said: Yes, there’s space available, it’s not just on our block, it’s city wide. Detroit’s a really unique city, and it’s both amazing and really tough. So sure, come visit and decide for yourself.”

Since then at least 3 more foreclosed houses in the neighborhood have been sold to artists.

Charlie O’Geen is finishing up his masters in architecture at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills. He’s originally from New York. But instead of moving back after graduation, he decided to buy a house down the street from Cope and Reichart for $3,300. Mind you it’s totally unlivable: All the windows are smashed, and scrappers punched holes in the walls to get out all the copper wiring. So he’s been doing a lot of work on the house.

“The sort of energy of making your house better,” expalins O’Geen, “I’ve already seen in the neighborhood. My neighbor has been doing some work, I’ve been over there to help. So it’s good for the neighborhood.”

The house Kerstein Neimann bought for $3,500 is in much better shape than O’Geen’s house. Which is good, considering Neimann works in the Netherlands as a museum curator.

“For the next year I hope to set up at least 1 or 2 spaces for artists that could come there and work there on a longer base,” says Neimann. “I would call it residency, but residency that is invested and engaged in the immediate neighborhood.”

She’s calling the residency “Filter Detroit.” The artists can be designers, writers, painters. As long as they’re creative and interested in Detroit, they can apply to live there.

As for the original house Cope and Reichart bought?

“One of the neighbors asked us if we could hold English lessons there,” says Cope, “so the newer Bangladeshi immigrants would have a place to set up for an English class every Sunday. So it’s definitely moving in a direction. We haven’t held any of that there since it’s still under construction. But that’s our goal.”

Since Cope, O’Geen and some of the other artists are home most of the day working on their houses, they’re like an informal neighborhood patrol; it’s a lot harder for thieves to steal trash cans and break in to houses when people are home watching.

Reichart says what artists are doing in their tiny neighborhood can easily be replicated in other parts of Detroit. She says the city could designate 10 houses in a neighborhood to be used for artists as live/work spaces.

“And I think it’s one of the things the city or county could do and it wouldn’t cost them anything, maybe it would cost them back taxes,” says Reichart. “That’s just a matter of turning the property over to a community development group that starts looking into these ideas instead of the traditional cycle of rehab a house, put a family in it, rehab a house put a family in it. That’s great, but it’s not the only answer.”

Reichart and Cope believe, in order for a neighborhood to be healthy, it needs to be more than just residential.

Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu

Bobby Jackson talks with someone from the Land Bank about his urban garden at the Mission of Hope

Joanne Palek and her brother, Richard, have lived on West Court Street in Flint for 10 years. A few years ago, the abandoned house next door burned down. So they bought the empty lot from the Genesee County Land Bank for exactly $1.00, and then they started to plant.

“We had carrots, we had green beans, we put in broccoli this year, but it didn’t do anything,” explains Palek.

There’s yet another abandoned house on the other side of Palek. As soon as the city pays to tear the house down, Palek says she’ll likely buy that lot too.

“And I know that it’s gonna cost me in tax money and I’m not that flush,” says Palek. “But I would make sure the taxes were paid and Flint got the money for it, whereas right now they’re not getting anything.”

She’s right. Vacant land doesn’t bring in any money for the city. In fact, an Emory University study shows that failure to collect even two percent of property taxes from abandoned houses translates into $3 billion in lost revenue for a city.

It’s the Land Bank’s role to find new uses for all that foreclosed property.

Christina Kelly works at the Land Bank. She says they’ve sold more than 400 empty lots to residents like Palek, though the lots are more this year. They cost $25 instead of $1. But she says it’s still a good deal, not only for the person who buys the lot, but for the neighborhood.

“It actually is very transformative in a neighborhood when you have lots that are gardened and cared for by the community, you can really see visual changes in the surrounding properties,” says Kelly.

The Land Bank has teamed up with a bunch of other groups to form an umbrella organization called Edible Flint. It’s basically a one-stop shop for all your urban gardening needs. The Land Bank provides the land, some materials and support.

“Michigan State Extension provides training and seeds and plants as they are available,” says Kelly. “The Ruth Mott Foundation provides training and technical assistance, and Salem Housing has a tool bank. Any one of those is not as valuable as all of them together.”

And it’s not just for people who want to buy property. Groups can adopt lots for free and get help from Edible Flint. Edible Flint will supply seeds, plants, tools, even a master gardener, anything to get people to care for the vacant lots in their community and help cut down on the city’s huge blight problem.

Bobby Jackson runs the Mission of Hope Day Shelter in Flint. He adopted two vacant lots and planted all kinds of veggies.

Jackson points out all the vegetables in his garden: kale, collard greens, broccoli, cabbage, basil, cilantro.

Anyone in the neighborhood is allowed to come and pick vegetables. Several churches brought their entire congregations to eat from the garden. But Jackson says it’s not just about food.

“The neighbors commended us for making the whole area look better because it was just overgrown and nothing there. And now they had opportunity to have a place to come and share in the work because people that didn’t know their neighbor four houses down met in the garden.”

And he says, since the garden went in, there’s been hardly any vandalism in the neighborhood.

Now, it’s important to note that not every vacant lot can grow vegetables. And while Edible Flint tests the soil, the still a chance of lead and PCBs and asbestos, since Flint was a big manufacturing town back in its hey day.

Still, Joan Nassauer, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan, says rust belt cities like Flint and Detroit can still turn all those vacant lots into natural assets, even if it’s just a pleasant open green space that gets mowed on a regular basis.

“In a kind of ironic way,” says Nassauer, “these cities that are facing abandoned property, they have the opportunity right now to pause and do it better.”

So, there may not be a lot of hope for all the abandoned and dilapidated houses in Flint that have fallen into foreclosure, but the land still has room to grow.

Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu

The Vista Maria campus in Dearborn Heights (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

The Vista Maria campus for girls has gorgeous brick buildings spread out over 37 acres. You could easily mistake it for a boarding school out east. There’s the big lawn out front. Volleyball courts behind each hall. Inside, you’ll find some girls watching a movie, others are working out, and some are getting ready for the big Fall dance.

But that’s where the similarities end.

First off, most of the doors at Vista Maria are locked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And the girls are ordered here by the courts; some have been abused, some have mental health issues and substance abuse problems, and some have a history of running away and skipping school.

On Vista Maria’s campus, they do everything. They eat, sleep and go to school here. They go to therapy; they go to meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous. But Cameron Hosner, who runs the program, says it all comes to a stop once the girls age out of the system:

“At 18, when they no longer have the resources or the support under the court, they have very little. They have food stamps, if they’re lucky they can get a housing subsidies. Their families aren’t in a position to help them in many instances, and so all the gains we’ve made could be lost very quickly.”

Hosner says in order for the girls to succeed after they age out of foster care, they need 3 things. They need a support system, they need to be able to finish high school, and they need a place to live.

“If I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, as one young girl to me, and I don’t know what I’m going to eat tonight, I’m not going to be in school tomorrow till I figure this out, and you know what I gotta go out and do to try and figure that out. And so she’d have to go out in the street to figure out how to make enough money or just end up staying somewhere.”

So where can they go after they age out? That’s where the Neighborhood Stabilization Program comes in. Michigan got more than $98 million in NSP funds to help rehab or demolish foreclosed houses.

Hosner noticed tons of foreclosures around the Vista Maria campus, so he applied for some NSP money and bought a house nearby for around $80,000, including rehab. Up to 3 Vista Maria graduates will get to live in the house. They can stay as long as they want, although the goal is to teach the girls to live independently.

Cynthia Williamson is one of the young women who applied to live in the house. I met her at a coffee shop in Detroit, where she was pretty open about her attitude before she was sent to Vista Maria.

“I didn’t care,” she explains. “Basically I didn’t care. Like a lot of people gave me a lot of advice, but I never listened to it.”

She successfully completed the program after a year, and she’s back at her Mom’s house. She likes it OK, but she’s 18 and wants to see if she can live on her own.

“The reason why I want to do it on my own is that I have people looking at me as a role model, like my little cousins and my siblings. So I just want to show people that are my age, my youth, that you can do it no matter what you’ve been through. That you can do it.”

The girls in the house will have mentors. They’ll learn life skills like how to budget and apply for jobs. Cameron Hosner, the director of Vista Maria, says as long as the girls live in the house, they’ll need to pay $200 a month in rent, they’ll need to be in school, either academic or vocational, and they’ll need to do community service around the neighborhood.

“We want this not to be one of those situations where it’s who came into my neighborhood? We want them to say, could you send us 3 more of those wonderful young women who have overcome so much in their own lives and are now such model citizens.”

The first house is part of a pilot project. If it goes well, Vista Maria hopes to buy 30 more foreclosed houses near campus.

Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu

In the news reports, which will air the week of Nov. 9 during Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Michigan Radio reporter Jennifer Guerra will look at how foreclosed homes are being transformed and used. One of these involves Vista Maria, a child welfare program for girls in Dearborn Heights, which purchased a foreclosed house for girls who have aged out of their program so that they might learn to live more independently. Other featured projects include Edible Flint, a citywide attempt to transform vacant and foreclosed lots into gardens, and an update on two Detroit artists who bought a foreclosed house in their Detroit neighborhood in 2008 with the goal of turning it into an energy efficient community art center.

These and the other reports in the series will air during Morning Edition (5-9 am) and All Things Considered (4-6:30 pm) on Michigan Radio beginning Monday, Nov. 9, through Friday, Nov. 13. This series will be supplemented by an installment of the Michigan Radio Picture Project. To view the stories’ accompanying photos, visit:  http://michiganradiopictureproject.org/.

In addition to its on-air coverage of foreclosure issues, the station will also host a mortgage foreclosure town hall event at the Bloomfield Township Public Library on Thursday, November 12, at 7 pm, in cooperation with Lighthouse of Oakland County. At this free event, homeowners concerned about foreclosure can talk to experts about the foreclosure process and learn about resources that can help them deal with or prevent foreclosure. Other foreclosure town hall events have been held in Southfield, Livonia, Westland, Farmington Hills and Dearborn.

For more details on this event and the other components of the Facing the Mortgage Crisis initiative, visit www.facingthemortgagecrisis.org. This website provides foreclosure resources, information from partner organizations, and opportunities for the public to offer feedback on how the crisis is affecting them.

Michigan Radio has partnered with Detroit Public TV, the United Way 2-1-1 of Southeastern Michigan, the Wayne County Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program, Lighthouse of Oakland County and other local organizations in order to provide the community with resources for dealing with the foreclosure crisis.

“Facing the Mortgage Crisis” is part of a national project spearheaded by KETC, a public television station based in St. Louis, MO, as well as a part of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Public Service Media Economic Response Initiative.

Michigan Radio, the public radio station of The University of Michigan, is an NPR News Station and the most-listened-to public radio service in the state, with nearly 500,000 listeners per week across southern Michigan. Michigan Radio broadcasts at 91.7 FM in southeastern Michigan, 91.1 FM in Flint, and 104.1 FM in western Michigan.

Tuesday, Oct. 6 – 7pm
William P. Faust Public Library of Westland
6123 Central City Pkwy,
Westland, MI 48185

Tuesday, October 27 – 7pm
Bloomfield Township Public Library
1099 Lone Pine Road
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302

Update: The Bloomfield Hills town hall meeting will take place at 7pm on Thursday, November 12.

1) Tuesday, September. 29, 2009
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Where: American Red Cross
4624 Packard St, Ann Arbor, MI

2) Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Where: Ypsilanti District Library
5577 Whittaker Road, Ypsilanti, MI

3) Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Where: Pittsfield Charter Township Admin Bldg.
6201 W. Michigan Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48108

Detroit Public TV will rebroadcast their special program for Facing the Mortgage Crisis at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8. DPTV is WTVS Channel 56.

For more info about the program and guest panelists, please click HERE.