Homeowners in Historic Detroit Neighborhood Fighting Back

Detroit made headlines with its $1 house last month and now we have a new kind of real estate story out of Detroit: vigilant neighbors fighting back and taking things into their own hands. The Wall Street Journal reports today vacant homes in the historic and stately Boston-Edison neighborhood, where automaker Henry Ford lived and prospered, are being watched and “protected” by neighbors to prevent decay, vandalism, and burglary.

Organized by an 87-year-old neighborhood association, some do unpaid duty mowing lawns, trimming hedges and picking up litter outside vacant houses. Others park their cars in the driveways of empty houses to make them appear to be lived in. The association’s Web site promotes mansions in need of new owners. Some members have volunteered to rush to the scene when burglars are breaking into empty houses.

In other cities, the WSJ reports:

• In Cleveland, OH, a neighborhood group in the Slavic Village area organizes lawn mowing at vacant homes and encourages youths to paint cheerful designs on boarded-up windows.
• The city of Los Angeles, CA, is training neighborhood leaders to report signs of deterioration in vacant homes so action can be taken before blight spreads.
• Just Cause, a nonprofit group in Oakland, CA, pressures utility companies not to shut off the water of tenants whose landlords are in foreclosure.

Homes in Boston-Edison are large and stately (here’s Henry Ford’s former house) and probably in need of some work (maybe lots of work), but it’s fascinating to look at these homes (photos above and below) and imagine a day in time when powerful figures such as Ford, Sebastian Kresge (five-and-dime store chain that eventually became Kmart), Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr, and labor leader Walter Reuther lived.