# Wanted: Good Squatters for Detroit



## Matt Derrick

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...it-neighborhood-plea-want-squatters/32558019/






“There’s so much abandonment here, we need (squatters) to turn the neighborhood around,” said Jennifer Mergos, property owner.​
*Wanted: One good squatter. Neighbors in northwest Detroit are so desperate to stop a cycle of abandonment and blight they’re recruiting a squatter for a home whose owners left last weekend.*

Wanted: One good squatter.

It’s no joke. In a remote pocket of northwest Detroit along the Rouge River, neighbors are so desperate to stop a cycle of abandonment and blight they’re recruiting a squatter to occupy a home whose longtime owners left last weekend.

That’s because neighbors fear the onetime farmhouse on Puritan and Hazelton will be stripped and torched if it remains empty for long. Eight nearby houses burned in the past two years. A few blocks away, there are more weedy lots than homes.

“We want squatters. There’s so much abandonment here, we need them to turn the neighborhood around,” said Jennifer Mergos, 33, co-founder of the Northwest Brightmoor Renaissance neighborhood group.

Squatting is illegal in Michigan, punishable by up to two years in prison for repeat offenders under laws passed last year. But 10 years into a mortgage crisis that has seen 1 in 3 homes foreclosed in Detroit, Mergos and other neighbors view squatting as a solution instead of a scourge.

“Most people around here are perfectly fine with squatters,” said Sky Brown, another neighbor.

She acknowledged that sounds weird. But the situation is unusual and so is the neighborhood. The 95-year-old farmhouse is on a dead-end gravel road and overlooks woods and a creek. Next door is a house with no windows that appears to be heated with a wood stove.





In a remote spot in northwest Detroit along the Rouge River, neighbors are recruiting a squatter to occupy a home whose longtime owners left last weekend. Eight nearby houses burned in the past two years, including this one on Hazelton. (Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News)​
Just blocks away are busy Telegraph and McNichols roads. No one but neighbors are coming to the rescue, said Brown and Mergos.

“The neighborhood is rallying around this house because it’s a tipping point to stop the continued destruction that’s happened around here,” said Mergos, an urban farmer who lives a mile away in Redford Township.

“If I didn’t have three small children, I’d squat in there in a heartbeat with a dog, a gun and some wasp spray.”

She’s motivated in part because she couldn’t save her own home two doors down from the farmhouse. Mergos had planned to rehab it and live there with her boyfriend, Sparrow Rissman. But it burned twice in two years after he bought it from the tax auction in 2013.





Neighbors fear the 95-year-old farmhouse on Puritan and Hazelton will be stripped and torched if it remains empty for long. (Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News)​
Undeterred, Mergos began a community garden, Sunnyside Farms, on the site of her burned home. Someone tried to wreck the garden, so she placed five beehives to keep away troublemakers.

“I’m trying to bring something positive to the neighborhood,” said Mergos, who grew up in Brightmoor. “There’s nothing to do now and nowhere to go, so lighting homes on fire is the entertainment.”

At least 350 other homes in the neighborhood are fire-damaged, while one-third of Brightmoor properties are vacant, according to data from the Detroit Blight Task Force. The population of the four-square-mile neighborhood, which stretches from Interstate 96 to Puritan, has fallen in half to 12,000 since 1990.

Detroit has led the nation in arson rates for years. And while there are no statistics on squatting, city data indicate at least 5,500 publicly owned, abandoned buildings are likely occupied.

Squatting is the next step in a do-it-yourself culture that’s taken root by necessity in Detroit, said neighborhood leader Riet Schumack.

Brightmoor neighbors already mow lawns and board vacant homes, she said. Technically, that’s trespassing and illegal, Schumack added.

“As long as squatters are not becoming a great nuisance to the community, we allow it to happen,” said Schumack, co-founder of Neighbors Building Brightmoor, a group that maintains 200 properties.

“It’s not black and white. You want someone in the house when it’s still functioning. Otherwise, it will be destroyed in 24 hours.”

Only in Detroit

Accepting squatters is one thing. But how does a neighborhood recruit them?

It’s an only-in-Detroit question, Brown acknowledged. And neighbors don’t want just any squatters. They want ones who won’t sell drugs or sex but will maintain the house and ward off arsonists if necessary.

So Brown asked several squatters she knows for referrals and alerted the Detroit Arson Squad, while another neighbor informed The Detroit News about the situation.

Within days, she got four good leads. By Thursday, Brown received word that a couple may be moving into the home.

“The over-arching theme is that the city of Detroit does nothing, so we’re forced to do our own thing,” said Brown, 34, a Wayne County Community College professor.

Brown also made headlines last year. That’s when she and her husband, David, bought a $2,000 house in the neighborhood in hopes of forming a kibbutz, a Jewish communal settlement. City officials seized backyard goats and charged the couple with violating ordinances.

The case ended when she agreed to perform community service. She wasn’t able to save the goats.

As the case dragged on, the couple set their sights on the farmhouse and negotiated for months to acquire it in a short sale, a transaction in which lenders agree to take less money than is owed on the mortgage.

The deal fell through because the lender, Fannie Mae, wanted $65,000 for the 1,400-square-foot home, Brown said.

The owners of the farmhouse did not return phone calls from The Detroit News. The home’s front door is secured by three deadbolt locks.

Neighbors say that’s not enough.

Next door, Keith Stone Sr. lives in a tiny house with no siding and plywood covering all windows and front door.

The property is encircled with a fence made from concrete chunks and protected by at least two dogs. Stone said he covered the windows “to keep people out.”

“Around here, the scrappers will scrap it if they get a chance,” said Stone, a tree trimmer. “I was gone once for six hours and they took my siding.”

‘Takeovers or holdovers’

The issue is percolating as Wayne County is conducting its annual auction of tax-foreclosed homes this month and October. About 8,000 of the 25,000 Detroit properties for sale are occupied, which means occupants could become squatters in homes they used to own.

“Detroit could be the largest phenomenon of squatting in recent history in America,” said Bernadette Atuahene, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

She spent the summer interviewing 40 squatters in Detroit and said she has “no trouble finding them.”

Atuahene categorizes squatters as “takeovers or holdovers.” Takeovers break into properties. Holdovers lost their homes to foreclosure or are former renters.

In places like Brightmoor, legal distinctions of ownership aren’t that important, said Ken Jackson, who has lived around the corner from the farmhouse since 1989.

“Squatter, owner, it doesn’t matter who lives there as long as they take care of the property,” said Jackson, a warehouse worker.

[email protected]

Twitter: @cityhallinsider


----------



## Matt Derrick

Man, when I see stories like this I'm extremely tempted to go check this out and maybe start an StP headquarters somewhere, despite my hate of the cold...


----------



## angerisagift

INteresting story


----------



## Odin

Comrade Matt... no worries. 
I bring the Vodka and we keep our Spirits Warm in the Tundra! 
Excellent.


----------



## Brother X

Been hearing about the relatively free property in Detroit for a few years but then I remember how much I hate the cold winters in the northern midwest. Just call me Chilly WIlly, the penguin who hates the cold.


----------



## Tude

Wow - it's that bad there with nothing to do - burning down stuff becomes recreation?


----------



## Matt Derrick

Tude said:


> Wow - it's that bad there with nothing to do - burning down stuff becomes recreation?



detroit has had that problem for over 20 years now. the most common is the day after halloween (if i remember correctly) and they call it 'hell night' where kids go burning down houses around town. it was a huge problem back in 2000, i don't know what it's like today.


----------



## Sip

Guys, the cold isn't THAT bad.  The trick is having good boots and decent Mittens.


----------



## Matt Derrick

Sip said:


> Guys, the cold isn't THAT bad.  The trick is having good boots and decent Mittens.



true, which is why i'm giving going there some consideration...


----------



## Sip

If I was in any sort of mood to settle down, I'd be getting a house over in D-Town. It really is a pretty sweet time to get in there.


----------



## milkhauler

I thought about buying one of those $100 houses a few years ago. 

There some kinda catch where the new owners have to bring the property up to code within six months if I recall? You could easily spend 20k fixing up a $100 house. Then worry if the local thugs will loot and torch it the second you leave town. Fucking animals!! 

Yeah, better to squat. With thousands of abandoned buildings, theres a slim chance of being found. Shit, I heard if its not life or death poe poe won't bother to go into certain areas. It would be wise to form a group for protection and manpower.


----------



## XanderMenanderer

I'd totally be down for this if I didn't have to worry about being burned alive in my sleep. Freezing my ass off or getting mugged when I step out for some fresh air.


----------



## wokofshame

Matt Derrick said:


> detroit has had that problem for over 20 years now. the most common is the day after halloween (if i remember correctly) and they call it 'hell night' where kids go burning down houses around town. it was a huge problem back in 2000, i don't know what it's like today.



There's a documentary on Netflix called "Burn" about the Detroit Fire Dept. In the one firehouse they show a "wall of shame" with pictures of something like 300 arsonists that have been caught. I got the impression burning buildings down for fun is still quite the thing there.


----------



## NattyKiwi

Only good thing about burning houses down is years later when the city blocks become overgrown fields of grass, and some awesome person starts an urban garden.

But at the same time Fuck that if people are dwelling in there!


----------



## jukkavassar

Matt Derrick said:


> Man, when I see stories like this I'm extremely tempted to go check this out and maybe start an StP headquarters somewhere, despite my hate of the cold...


Let's do it. I live in Detroit ill be down to help clear it up


----------



## Matt Derrick

jukkavassar said:


> Let's do it. I live in Detroit ill be down to help clear it up



we have a thread going about this somewhere... i think where we're at right now is that we need people to scout out areas of interest and report back places that might work...


----------



## jukkavassar

Matt Derrick said:


> we have a thread going about this somewhere... i think where we're at right now is that we need people to scout out areas of interest and report back places that might work...


I know of like a few good houses in ferndale that's out side of Detroit. And they have tracks right next to it


----------



## Rob Nothing

I am a lover of the cold and after I am finished up building money mass at current job will be headed thataway to see about squatters and diy types and whether cheap housing possibilities aren't still a thing out there. in other words, lemme get back to you on this k? excited to see this thread.


----------



## jukkavassar

severin said:


> I am a lover of the cold and after I am finished up building money mass at current job will be headed thataway to see about squatters and diy types and whether cheap housing possibilities aren't still a thing out there. in other words, lemme get back to you on this k? excited to see this thread.


Let me know when you are in town


----------



## Rob Nothing

speaking 6 mos to a year in advance, mind you. but will keep you in mind, thanks dude.


----------



## jukkavassar

severin said:


> speaking 6 mos to a year in advance, mind you. but will keep you in mind, thanks dude.


Yep just let me know I'll show you all the good spots to stay / eat


----------



## jukkavassar

Maybe some work.


----------



## NattyKiwi

Ohh, How HOME has not changed!
Just watch out for Devils night before Halloween. That's the night countless abandoned houses burn to the ground!


----------

