The apartment looked perfect.
I had spent several days sifting through Detroit metro area apartment listings on Craigslist. The results were not encouraging: Some of the apartments featured windows with strips of straight-up scrap metal nailed across them, and even those were barely in my price range.
I love city living. It was one of the many life outcomes I never expected. Having grown up at the outskirts of a small western Pennsylvania town voraciously reading books about horses, I thought of the city as scary, dirty, crowded and generally awful. Give me open spaces, wide skies, fresh air, dark nights, and the nearest neighbor a mile away, I thought.
Until I moved to South Bend, Indiana, after college, and into my first solo apartment on the second floor of an old, converted single-family house in the city's graciously seedy historic Chapin Park. Some of the streets were still brick, sunken, banked and grooved by a century of traffic; the paved streets had patches were the asphalt had worn away and the original brick showed through. The large late Victorian houses, refurbished or gently wearing down, stood close together like birds on a telephone line; back alleys interlaced the already haphazardly mapped out blocks; garage- and car-break-ins happened frequently; the neighborhood boasted a racial and socioeconomic diversity I had been brought up to fear. And I loved it. I loved the surprises, the funny clashes of old and new, the compost heaps in the alleys, the scary men walking friendly dogs. I loved the sense of surrounding activity, of private lives tucked away in plain sight, of quick access to the downtown and the farmer's market and the Asian grocery where they sold spices for four dollars a pound.
And I loved my apartment. The Ivory Tower. Small, clean, quiet, it featured turn-of-the-century charm in its moldings and transom windows and claw-foot cast iron tub, and bright, bi-directional light in every room. I loved the side porch outside my front door where I smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and watched the mornings filter through the old weedy trees. I loved the gleaming little kitchen. I loved hearing Simon tear through the rooms. I loved looking out my windows onto the shabby houses and rutted streets.
It's a love that has stayed with me ever since, the love of a quiet old city neighborhood. When I moved back to Erie and could afford to live on my own again, I found The Eyrie, a second-floor flat on the West Side, much like the Ivory Tower, but with hardwood floors, oak molding and a fireplace. As long as I'm on my own, this is the kind of place I want to live in.
So naturally as I planned for the upcoming move to Detroit, that's the kind of place I sought. And this one looked stunning, especially considering the search results leading up to it -- like digging through a trash heap and finding a flower. Large, airy rooms. A formal dining room. Hardwood floors. A gas fireplace. Lots and lots of windows. A dishwasher. As I clicked through the pictures, I could visualize myself there. I knew where I would put the bookcases. I could hear my footsteps moving through the kitchen into the back hallway to the bedrooms.
I wanted it. With my whole soul.
I looked up its location and it seemed to be in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Detroit. So I emailed the landlord, learned that an apartment just like it would be opening up on my planned moving day, and arranged to call him to ask some questions.
Prior to the conversation, I wrote down a list of talking points, particularly questions about the state of the neighborhood. My experience of landlords has taught me caution. Most landlords want an ideal tenant so desperately that they'll promise anything, so I looked up the non-emergency number for the local police station to verify what the landlord might say.
The arranged call time arrived. Excitedly I dialed the phone number. John picked up.
I didn't even get to my first question. He heard my voice and said, "Yeah, let me stop you right there. I don't think you want to live in this apartment." Stunned, I stammered some kind of incoherent response, and he launched into a very firm, stark description of the neighborhood.
"I mean, you're welcome to check it out if you think you'd be comfortable here," he said. "But most Caucasians wouldn't do well here. The building itself is secure because I have floodlights all over it; the place looks like the sun at night. I have security cameras and a sixteen-hundred-dollar security door on the entrance. But you'd need to get an alarm on your car. One of my tenants parked his car across the street, out of the floodlights, and when I watched the footage later, I saw a van pull up alongside it, and a man got out and stood guard in the street while another man slid under the car and gutted it. They were gone in three minutes. And this is right next to one of the best neighborhoods in Detroit, the University District. And even there, in the University District, a federal judge who lives there was taking his trash out one night and a car full of men stopped and pulled a gun on him and demanded that he let them into his house. He said no and they shot him in the leg and left.
"This is Detroit. This is the most dangerous city in America. If you're just moving to the area and you can't afford to live right downtown, you're better off looking in the suburbs. Here are some areas you might want to check out. But unless you come from a really tough place and are able to live in a really tough environment, I don't think this place is for you."
I remembered to close my mouth, thanked him for his honesty ("I wouldn't want you moving here and then finding out what it's really like and not be able to move out," he said), and ended the call.
Disappointment and shame flooded me as I stared vacantly across the room, realizing just how little I knew what I'm getting into. It's always a bitter experience when reality forces your worldview, and your view of yourself, into a new paradigm. I've lived in sketchy neighborhoods before -- I stood down a potential break-in in South Bend with a shotgun, in a neighborhood adjacent to a neighborhood where a badly decomposed body was found under the bushes in someone's backyard. A week after I moved into The Eyrie, a woman across the street was murdered. In both neighborhoods I've walked around at night by myself in perfect ease. And none of that means shit in Detroit. Far from being the badass I've thought myself, I'm just an ingenue with a soft lens blur on my wide eyes and sweet smile.
I wanted to deny it, because goddamn it, I'm a survivor, but I've gained enough self-awareness to realize that there's no point. And there's no way in hell I want to live in that kind of neighborhood, no matter how much I want to crusade against poverty and crime, or how much I want to "take back the city." I don't want to die doing it. After the sting to my pride subsided, I was able to embrace a feeling of gratitude toward John for the kindness of his brutal honesty. And also feel a sense of outrage that anywhere should be that bad. It's completely senseless. (Yes, I know. My privilege betrays itself in my shock that there could even be places where life is that grim.)
So I'm resentfully looking into the suburbs, all newer, where the apartments come in planned communities without character or soul, and where the rent will drive you broke.
But hey, it's better than getting robbed, raped or murdered.
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