The Detroit home's living room after carpet removal, painting and floor refinishing.
Original fixtures evoke a past era in the repainted bathroom. "Hot pink works wonders," McMahan posts on Facebook.
"I can’t explain to people why we bought a house in Detroit," freelance writer Dana McMahan of Kentucky writes at The Morning News, an online magazine based in New York City.
She and her husband Brian closed a land contract deal in June, buying a 1919 red brick home with about 4,000 square feet, "standing just off a grand, tree-lined avenue." She doesn't identify the neighborhood.
Though she calls it "a vacation house," the property also is an investment. "We hope in a few years to clear a bit of income from the two rental units and maybe Airbnb our third-floor studio apartment in between our own trips to the D," McMahan writes.
Yet as the couple wonders how to "pay for the growing list of things we need to do," the travel and food writer acknowledges: "It feels impossible to explain the philosophical reasons behind this seemingly mad decision. . . . . I try to keep the fear at bay, the wonder at what we’ve gotten ourselves into."
I can’t explain it to myself when I’m sitting on the floor of our attic apartment, trying to keep my sobbing quiet so our tenants don’t hear me asking my husband what we have done.
Anyone who knows me and my husband, Brian, even a little bit knows about our yearlong scavenger hunt for a house in Detroit, and saw the triumphant moment when we finally got the keys to our behemoth. They’ve since seen the work on Facebook and Instagram — if they haven’t grown bored and un-followed me — photos of painting and floor sanding and power-washing, gripes about the contractor. And they all wonder, as I do: What the hell am I doing with a house in Detroit when I live in Louisville, Kentucky?
But still, it’s the first question I get when I run into people I know or make new acquaintances: “Why did you buy a house in Detroit?”
The short answer is I went to write a travel story and fell in love with the city. The Detroit I found upturned all the notions implanted in me by the national media.
Here was a woman building a hotel out of shipping containers; a company making luxury watches by hand (using the hands of former auto workers); a boxing coach dedicated to his young athletes’ success at school; a man making art from the detritus of Detroit’s collapse; and everywhere people so freaking friendly I felt like I’d stumbled into a stage set. I toured the city first with the tourism office, and then on my own with Brian, determined to see all the city, not just its shiny bits.
I met with an intensely private photographer/fixer of sorts, John, who filled in some back story on the city and marked up a map of Detroit, scrawling X’s where he said I should not venture. I went from craft cocktails in hip Corktown to a jazz lounge off 8 Mile where our server told us Detroit just needs a little love (the lede to my travel story). The love it needed I found brimming in my globe trekker’s heart.
As for the long answer? Well, words are my living, but I haven’t found the right combination of them to explain just why we put everything we have into this endeavor.
People usually think it’s for the bargain. And indeed, houses sell for absurd prices in Detroit. It sounds like urban legend, but $500 houses are all too real. The boarded-up house kitty-corner from ours just auctioned for $1,200. Our house cost $17,000.
Earlier report at Deadline on Dana McMahan:
Travel Writer Talks Up Detroit Beyond Fodor's 'Go Right Now' Article, July 13, 2013
