This Model D and Metromode series aims to report on everyday Detroiters and their experiences as they live and choices about their neighborhoods, health, education, jobs, transportation, and other factors that relate to economic equity.
"It's not enough to treat someone for a disease or help a mother grieve a lost infant," says Phyllis Meadows, a senior fellow at The Kresge Foundation's Detroit Program. "We need to look at all the economical, social, and relational stressors that contributed."
"There's an expression that goes, you can't see the forest for the trees. Well, we couldn't see the forest for the garbage," says Andrew "Birch" Kemp, president of Arboretum Detroit and part of the clean-up crew restoring Circle Forest.
Gallagher recently penned a “Buying In: Opportunities for Increasing Homeownership in Detroit Through Mortgage Lending” for Detroit Future City, decades after he first reported on racism and mortgage lending in the city.
Local chef Kamesha McDaniel has big plans for growing her business, Detroit Green Carrot. However, taking her catering company to the next level is going to take more than a vision. She needs capital for her big plans, and for African Americans and other minority business owners in Detroit, there are big challenges to getting the support and funding they need.
A new study offers a framework for approaching the reuse of industrial sites that stresses the need for low-income and under-resourced communities to have a say in the decisions that shape their neighborhoods and impact their quality of life.
"Transforming those four vacant lots started with a vision, and I believe that when you have a vision and put it out into the universe, you attract what you need and everything falls into place," Gray says. "But, it's not enough to have a vision. You need to put in hard work and you need money. And in this case our community needed money to make the garden a reality."
While a lack of financial resources impacts the Detroit school district’s ability to obtain quality textbooks and teachers, these parents are making it work.
A recent report by Detroit Future City (DFC) has found that residents – and in particular African-Americans, who have an unemployment rate 1.5 times that of white people – do not have a clear path to accessing middle-class wage jobs in the city. Here's how that can change.
Transit in Metro Detroit costs low-income people of color disproportionately more in terms of costs, travel time, and access to their jobs or job opportunities. COVID has made it worse, but these are longstanding problems— and proposed responses would require political will to implement them.
"Everyone can learn and everyone can play a role in the future," says Nicole Brown, a senior program manager for Detroit Future City, and leader of the Land + Water WORKS Coalition. "It has to be all hands on deck to move the needle further."
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