A working paper by University of Michigan-Dearborn Assistant Professor Joshua Akers and Rutgers University Assistant Professor Eric Seymour outlines the housing policies and other factors that have allowed speculative buyers to contribute to neighborhood instability and blight in Detroit.

An accurate portrayal of Detroit’s history and current development must include mention of the city’s diverse Arab and Muslim populations. Sally Howell,  associate professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, addresses this gap with her Halal Metropolis project. 

Joshua Akers first arrived in Michigan in 2010 to work on his dissertation about the housing crisis. He stayed to help shed light on how speculators were affecting Detroit neighborhoods with bulk buying. With the help of students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where Akers is an assistant professor of geography and urban & regional studies he created Property Praxis, a collective exercise illustrating the impact of speculation on cities.

UM-Dearborn professor emeritus Lars Bjorn is still an integral part of Detroit’s jazz scene today. As the president of the Southeast Michigan Jazz Association for over a dozen years, he continues to support and encourage jazz musicians throughout the state. “The jazz scene in Detroit is getting better. It has been up and down, primarily with the fortunes of the city, but it is coming back,” he says. “It’s still a vital jazz scene.” To see jazz in Detroit, Bjorn suggests the historic Cliff Bell’s jazz club.

Anna Muller, the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies at UM-Dearborn said: “As we heard stories of solidarity among the people who once lived there, I looked at (CASL Dean) Marty Hershock. I could tell we were thinking the same thing: ‘This is Detroit’s story.’”

Few who devote their lives to words or teaching expect fame or financial reward. But when The Kresge Foundation recently named Gloria House its 2019 Eminent Artist, the poet, activist and professor described the accolades as a kind of grace “falling out of the sky.”

The American Dream of owning a home isn’t dead in Detroit – but it struggles under the weight of predatory lending practices, complicit landlords, real estate speculators and public officials whose interventions and policies can make the city’s complicated housing challenges even worse.