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In-depth reporting on Michigan's largest city and surrounding communities, including deep dives into the big changes afoot in Detroit, its schools, neighborhoods, institutions and city hall.
Articles
Bulldoze away: Some Detroit neighborhoods need thinning out
An urban policy expert says the city needs to ask difficult questions about which areas can be saved in era of diminishing revenues.
A day in the life of one Detroit high-crime neighborhood
Michigan Radio’s Lester Graham tags along as a neighborhood police officer completes his rounds in the city’s MorningSide community.
Just another Tuesday for 37 first-graders with no music or art or gym
This is what it’s like to teach in a classroom with too many children, books that don’t arrive until March, and no help because there not enough teachers.
Detroit court gets tough on traffic tickets. County taxpayers get stuck with tab
A get-tough approach is sending scofflaws to jail for unpaid misdemeanor tickets. But it costs the county more to jail them than it generates for the city in ticket revenue and, now, even the sheriff is complaining.
Sorry we foreclosed your home. But thanks for fixing our budget.
Counties across Michigan profit from selling foreclosed homes and charging fees on back taxes to down-and-out residents. No place does it more than Wayne County.
One envelope holds her fate. Is she getting deported today?
A Michigan woman brings hope and a duffel bag to the airport on what could be her last day in only country she’s known since she was a baby.
The future of small business outside Detroit’s bustling downtown is uncertain
It’s not only the residents who continue to struggle in the city’s vast, impoverished neighborhoods. Small stores are barely hanging on.
The Detroit uprising: 50 years later
July 22, 1967 - It's been 50 years since the uprising
The backdoor voucher: How a Detroit school created to lift up a 'Christ-centered culture' found a way to get public dollars
Cornerstone Schools recently announced that its flagship K-8 school would become a charter this fall. It would keep the same staff and curriculum, but would now be able to collect taxpayer money.
How to cash in on a crappy home. Step one: Find a sucker to sign a land contract.
Left for dead in the 1970s, lending through (often predatory) land contracts is back with a vengeance in Michigan and Rust Belt cities after the mortgage meltdown.
More showings added for documentary on ‘67 Detroit uprisings
The documentary, produced by the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Bridge Magazine is selling out fast. A Bridge/DJC book examining the violence that shook Detroit 50 years ago is available now.
On the Detroit River, a faded dream at a city-owned marina
An African-American businessman dreamed of a place where people of color could live and boat on the river, in the shadow of high-rise luxury. It never happened.
Mom has sick husband, baby – and looming deportation to ‘home’ she’s never known
The past and new immigration policies catch up to a woman who must soon leave United States – and her family.
There’s a lot riding on Detroit’s new QLINE streetcar
To break even, streetcar must be more than a millennial mover or party tram for sports fans, experts say.
QLINE by the numbers (slideshow)
How much did it cost? How much does it need to make to break even? We break it all down for you.
Streetcar travels through some of richest parts of Detroit (interactive map)
Use this map to examine building permits and income along the route of the QLINE
Detroit cites progress, but water shutoffs actually rose last year
Residential shutoffs spiked 18 percent in 2016 - countering city officials' expectations. A staggering 83,000 homes have lost water service at some point since the city launched a crackdown on delinquent accounts in 2014.
Interactive Map: Detroit water shutoffs by neighborhood
Go block by block to scan the more than 27,000 homes that had water cut off in 2016.
Are Detroit water shutoffs and illnesses related?
"A significant difference in diagnoses" of skin or gastrointestinal infection was found in residents who lived on blocks with water shutoffs. But researchers acknowledge there's not yet enough data to prove a link.
Keeping crime victims from becoming repeat customers
A promising Detroit hospital program is steering ER patients ‒ including those engaged in crime themselves ‒ on a safer path. With video.