More sad than funny
What’s better, fleeing to the suburbs, or choosing to stay in an older downtown Detroit neighbourhood and construct a house that truly gives something back to the community?
I am
not from Detroit, nor do I know anyone from there, but I happen to be familiar with the area that this building is located within. Actually to correct the identification, this building is some distance from downtown Detroit, although like downtown some of it is near the Detroit River. It is on the far Eastside in a neighbourhood known as Jefferson-Chalmers. Jefferson-Chalmers has a most discouraging profile: lower family incomes and lower test scores for its children for all levels of schooling. The housing stock of Jefferson-Chalmers is decidedly varied: from old mansions (including the former Fisher mansion which was bought by
Hare Krishnas) down to crumbling and abandoned homes or apartments. Some areas are booming in renovations and new housing, whereas most other areas of that neighbourhood are not prosperous nor "up and coming."
We must remind ourselves that while the house pictured is comical in its apparent over-top mini-fortress look, it may in fact be justified. This type of house, if nothing else, spells fear, and that fear leads to a strategy of defence to ward off potential intruders from the outer world, however widely or narrowly the latter is defined. If the area has high crime, it's easy to understand the fear expressed. In the mid-1980s, Detroit earned the dreaded title of "Murder Capitol" of the US, and remains to this day in that same company of cities that perennially are candidates for that title.
Imminent danger may exist in Jefferson-Chalmers, but there also is derangement in proximity to normalcy elsewhere in the US. There are people, for instance, who live in areas known to have low crime statistics, but who are nonetheless armed to the teeth, and will not be convinced to backoff. One of the latter group was recently detailed on American TV: burglar bars on his cellar windows, with rolling steel shudders on the rest; multiple cameras on the property, with razor-wire atop his high, iron fences; a collection of guns; state-of-the-art alarms on all the windows and doors; capped off with two vicious dogs trained to "protect". As far as we know, this man has never had any instance in his or his family's lives that would explain this troubling behaviour, but he continues to finance this type of lifestyle that eases his fears and raises others. This man and his family are not wealthy, he has a small business nearby that is also in a safe community, but then he often forgets to close his doors and/or set his alarms, prompting frequent visits from his local police. This may seem like a pathological problem, but in varying degrees, it is far from rare in this country.
Justified or not, whatever leads to houses like this is more sad than funny.