The $100 house

[flipzagging]

More tales of urban collapse and urban renewal from Detroit:

For Sale: The $100 House.

[...] The run-down bungalow had already been stripped of its appliances and wiring by the city’s voracious scrappers. But for Mitch that only added to its appeal, because he now had the opportunity to renovate it with solar heating, solar electricity and low-

Comments

[edrabbit]

I'm so drawn to the idea of buying property/house/etc out there too. Definitely sounds like it's turning into a post-apocalyptic sort of place, without the radiation, fires, etc. A chance to rebuild things in the way that the people that live there want to.

My only concern is the level of crime and violence that to be honest I just don't want to drop myself into. Having a shotgun hanging above my door, loaded and ready, still wouldn't help me sleep at night very much.

pros and cons

[flipzagging]

Yeah. But I'm definitely interested in seeing it.

On the other hand, Oakland is #3 in crime, and we both visit there pretty frequently. While my wariness level goes up when I visit, it's manageable. I personally wouldn't want to live in Oakland either, but it's not an outlandish choice of a place to live.

Rebuilding to some new vision may be the prerogative of professionals and artists. It's gentrification, although not the kind we're used to seeing, since it's a suburb.

Also, I figure, if it's reaching the NYTimes maybe the true pioneering days are already over. This Heidelberg project has been around since 1986, and was bulldozed several times in the 90s. but since 2006 there have been books written about it and it's being chosen to represent the US in architectural exhibitions.

Maybe Detroit will start getting its equivalent of the "see the hippies" bus tour pretty soon, if it doesn't have that already.

Edit: I love this sentence from the Wikipedia writeup: Visitors who arrive at the location by taxi should be aware of the