You helped me buy a house in Detroit
Community supported journalism powered the purchase of my first home. Thank, you!
Hey!! I did it.
I bought a house in Detroit. And it wouldn’t have happened without your support of Detroit one million.
The trust you have in my reporting is something I don’t take for granted. From the bottom of my heart, I’ve appreciated you putting your hard earned money toward my community news project.
Many days and nights I’ve wondered how I would ever save the money to put a down payment on a house. These days, young people are burdened with monthly living expenses far exceeding 30% of their monthly income. Combined with stagnant wages, we aren’t making enough to save unless you live with roommates or parents.
I’m glad I was able to opt into the former a year and a half ago as opposed to the latter.
Though, I do appreciate my parents for always offering a place to go. Sometimes it feels like I can’t go back to Midland. I was faced with doing so in 2020, as I graduated college at the start of a global pandemic and didn’t have an apartment starting an internship at MLive at the same time.
Zoë Jackson, a reporter at Minneapolis Star Tribune, offered me her old Kalamazoo apartment. A month later, my friend Brady Pigot offered me his bed. After that, I was forced to pack my belongings in a storage unit and sleep at the Wesley United Methodist Church on WMU’s campus until late August.
Staying in one place has always been challenging.
In 2024, the developer who purchased the late Joel Landy’s portfolio told me he couldn’t prevent the property management company he first retained to operate his new acquisition from kicking me out. It felt like retribution after I began reporting on the future of the historic Cass Corridor properties.
Good thing — I couldn’t afford to stay. Rates increased after new ownership took over.
Living with a roommate began in August of 2024, the same week I was laid off by Axios. I began saving every penny I could around then.
I can’t help but laugh that it wasn’t the half a billion dollar company I once worked for that made purchasing my first home possible. It was hundreds of individuals seeking a more honest source on what’s happening in the city and across Michigan.
It was you.
I want to thank you for continuing to support my work at Michigan Chronicle, which celebrates its 90th anniversary as Michigan’s longest continuously operating Black newspaper. I’m honored to have a byline there and see my name in a print news product again.
Readers know they can find copies of the Michigan Chronicle on news stands everywhere across the city, even in the most forgotten neighborhoods. It only felt right to move to one myself.
I’m the newest resident of Yorkshire Woods, a far Eastside community near Outer Drive-Hayes north of Morningside and East English Village. Mose Primus, the president of the community organization, tells me his neighborhood has its struggles but is coming up. We met at a city meeting last month part of the Denby/Whittier framework plan at the Heilmann Recreation Center. He says the area was mostly an afterthought until recently.
While I’ve appreciated the congratulatory reactions from whom I’ve already shared my news of first time homeownership, I can’t help but share the most thought provoking response I received so far from a man named Trey.
Trey is a Detroit police officer who told me he works out of the 9th Precinct.
Driving around my new neighborhood days before moving in, I met Trey after rolling my car window down to talk to him and his female partner inside of a white DPD squad car parked outside of someone’s garage on the corner of the street.
Trey was friendly and seemed eager to have a conversation.
“I just bought a house here, are you assigned to patrol this neighborhood?” I asked.
