by Jennifer Guerra

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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

Tags: jennifer guerra, michigan radio, Stories