Detroit is on the verge of a renaissance.
That’s just how these things go historically. Poverty creeps in, houses go empty, property becomes decrepit and mass exodus ensues only to eventually become overtaken by artists and intellectuals seeking cheap living, cheap housing — a space to put earning the bread on the backburner rather than the front-burner and focus for a change on one’s mind, heart, soul, community or craft. Perhaps all of them at once. Such waves are, after all, what helped lead to the great San Francisco Poetry Renaissance so many years ago, embracing America with its “Howls, Raps & Roars“. Many a famed art collective has been formed around cheap rent, to be sure, and there’s nowhere cheaper right now than Detroit.
Detroit-based nonprofit Write A House refurbishes blighted homes and gives them to writers. That’s right! Gives them to them! It gets better, too.
It’s no secret that Detroit’s blight problem is far out of hand. Pictures circulating the web comparing the once-thriving city to bombed-out war zones in the Middle East make their point clearly. But this program does not only spectacularly help kick-start Detroit’s impending renaissance (despite Herr Snyder working diligently to sell the Detroit Institute of Arts out from under his constituents), it helps provide teenagers in the community with valuable trade skills. It also hooks participants in with an invaluable network of writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout the area once they’ve moved in.
Write A House purchased three homes in need of repair in a neighborhood just north of Hamtramck, known to be a diverse community, and surrounded by the city of Detroit. As an added bonus, the Write A House homes boast another artist-run neighborhood organization, Powerhouse Project, featured in national magazines such as Juxtapoz, just down the street.
Write A House cofounder Sarah Cox moved to Detroit from New York three years ago in order to cover the Detroit leg of the real estate site Curbed.
In the past three years, I’ve seen incredible progress, but there is still so much room for more in the literary arts. This is a city with unique, historic and fascinating stuff happening. We think there are writers who will want to come and be a part of it.
The first home Write A House hopes to restore for its debut writer is the “Peach House“. In order to do so, the nonprofit is hoping to raise $25,000 on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. According to Write A House director Kat Hartman, the organization is registered as a nonprofit in Michigan but its 501(c)3 status is still pending. All donations collected through crowd-funding, therefore, will be directed to Young Detroit Builders — a registered 501(c)3.
(Even if you are not a writer, you can help support the arts, and Detroit, by contributing to this worthy cause!)
Young Detroit Builders is the organization helping provide contracting skills to Detroit teenagers, offering them a leg up by teaching them valuable trade skills they can carry with them the rest of their lives (not to mention help them build a healthy sense of community in the process!)
Write A House director Kat Hartman said:
We chose this neighborhood to start because it’s a smaller community and we felt we could have an impact. The neighborhood has a level of vacancy that is affecting the quality of life for current residents. They need more good neighbors.
Write A House will begin accepting applications from low-income writers in the spring. Applicants are asked to send in a short writing sample along with a letter of intent. Judges for the project include former National Poet Laureate Billy Collins, poet Major Jackson, editor of Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishing Sean McDonald, and writer/filmmaker Dream Hampton. Low-income, socially, community-oriented writers from all corners of the world (and Detroit!) are welcome to apply.
Winners are expected to live in the home for at least two years, though the project is really seeking writers who are looking to make Detroit their permanent home. Life does have a way of changing on all of us, though, and project coordinators understand that, too. Nonetheless, winners are expected to live in the home for at least two years rent/mortgage free, only covering a small amount of property tax and insurance. After two years, the deed is handed over to the writer outright. In those two years, winners are expected to also write regularly for the Write A House blog and take part in local readings, gatherings, and shindigs. One is expected to embrace the community as much as the community embraces him, her, or z, after all.
Notable Detroit urban planner Francis Grunow said:
We didn’t want to create an atmosphere where people are being encouraged to flip homes.
And with so much being offered there is little chance they will. Now is the time to get in on the ground floor of Detroit’s inevitable renaissance. With such a city so truly rich in its people, its character, history, soul, resistance and perseverance. It is only a matter of time, and the ground is ripe.
Like that old song says:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again…
Detroit has already begun to rise.
