being a detroiter myself i absolutely love the city, few outsiders recognise how great it is. it took me three or four years to realize how great it is. not something you can do in a single visit.
for people specifically interested in buying forclosed homes and learning how to budget inorder to pay property taxes and what not there is an organization called Design 99. they have a showcase in hamtramk and do alot of work trying to turn their neighborhoods green.
and houses for 100 are ussually stripped, no windows, no insulation, no pipes, and no electrical wiring (copper scrappers). but i've heard one of the worst cases a house sold for 1$ totally sripped, needed a complete renovation, and a new roof. but the news said the total cost to fix it up to livable standards was only about 32 grand. which for a house is extremely cheap.
but like i said about design 99, they bought a house for 100 bucks same condition, refurbished it, fixed it up, and took it off the grid with solar and wind power all for under about 2 grand. they went on to buy two more houses in the same neighborhood and fixxed them up for just as cheap.
they ended up on national television some time last winter i think. I just saw them do a lecture at the Cranbrook Museum early december. Really great people.
on top of design 99 there are at least two anarchist collectives, one on trumble the Trumbleplex, and another one farther north east. i forget what it was called though. (mostly just using space for music venues)
and as detroit has been getting more attention like Design 99 has been getting it, more and more bohemian crowds are coming in to the city. It may not be hip now, but it sure as hell will if a real art scene starts up in its streets. dont forget kids, the Motorcity is also Motown, America's capitol of music revolution. rock and roll, soul, jazz, proto punk, techno, all that shit was firmly grounded in Detroit's history and that history that soul is not going to leave any time soon.
but tbh.. ive never run into crack heads. i tend to stay out of the southwest detroit hoods which is where most of the gang and crime violence is also.
Mid-town is beautiful, bustling, as bustling as Detroit can get, you've got the museum district, Wayne state University, the College for Creative Studies (*is an alumni), great clubs, tons of hospitals, the cultural bohemian hodgepodge of Hamtramk is just to the north, and there are more cheap victorian homes (many vacant) than you can shake a stick at, all of them enormous. and like someone said above, the streets are very very bike friendly. The people are nice, its not like NYC where you cant go ten feet without bumping into someone you dont want to.
life in the D is good.
