John Murden should have more free time on his hands, because he inevitably does something interesting with it. This past week, he found himself inspired by the chronicling of vacant homes in the Detroit area:
Inspired by Kevin Bauman’s 100 Abandoned Houses, a chronicling of empty houses in Detroit, I thought that a similar look at just our area would be very possible and at least somewhat interesting. My parameters in starting out were that the houses had to be obviously vacant in a way that indicated that the property was not merely between tenants. A well-maintained house that is for rent or sale is different than the property that has boarded windows and doors and has been sitting for 6 months or years and years. Here are houses that are vacant now, were probably vacant 2 years ago, and will likely be vacant 2 years from now.
In rolling around the neighborhood, the most vacant block that I found was the 1300 block of 27th Street. There are areas of high vacancy along Fairmount and pockets of Church Hill North.
