Mama Shu’s Vision
In 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt came to Detroit to break ground for construction of the first federally funded public housing development--townhouses and towers for the city's African-American "working poor" that at full expansion contained as many as 10,000 people. By 2012, the Brewster-Douglass Projects had been demolished and Detroit was just beginning to show signs of a revival after a half-century decline triggered by massive white flight to the suburbs.
During a recent conference in Detroit--the annual convening of NEWHAB/Energy Efficiency for All, a growing network of urban and environmental activists dedicated to creating energy-efficient affordable housing--I went on a tour that revealed new dimensions of this area's ongoing struggle with racism and poverty. The highlight was our group's visit to Avalon Village, in Highland Park, a city within Detroit, just a few miles from where Brewster-Douglass once stood. At first glance, you might say that it's nothing much: a street with empty lots and rundown houses. But the "village" is a vision that started with one person and has become a collective grassroots effort; it's an entrepreneurial start-up, not a government project. the person is Mama Shu (Shamayim Harris), a former school administrator in one of the nation's poorest cities who, as she tells it. had a vision of what could become of a street she glimpsed on the way to work.
She bought the house on the corner for $3,000 and started to fix it up. She partnered with a nonprofit in the city, Soulardarity, that erected a solar street light next door; the area's streetlights had been removed because the city didn't pay its utility bills. With donations--cash, in-kind help--she began to buy lots at $300-500 apiece and a few of the houses. She turned the lot next door into a park for her infant son, killed by a car. She is turning the house next to that into a "homework house" for the neighborhood children--a safe place to meet, work, eat, and do school work. A Kickstarter campaign raised $243,000 in 30 days. She brought in a metal shipping container and turned it into a neat, well-decorated small shop--filled with incense, candles, and other goods for sale by women in the area. She and her allies have been at this for years.
When Mama Shu takes us on a walking tour of the neighborhood, more of the vision unfolds. Here will be a wellness center. There will be a park. This house will be torn down, that one will be fixed up. She points out a basket of flowers on a stand along the street. It covers the base of a removed streetlight--a small touch to bring beauty and caring where ugly loss occurred.
Yes, it's a feel-good story. She's been in People and on Ellen. On some days I might discount it as being at such a small scale and taking so long to get results--a drop in the bucket, hardly a "system change" effort. But two things captured me, beyond Mama Shu's infectious can-do attitude and the tasty lunch she served us in her son's park.
First, large changes almost always start with small changes, and small changes start with self-drive, the will to make a change. Self-drive in a person or a community can be suppressed and extinguished. But here it was, alive and well.
Second, Mama Shu's vision for Avalon Village is quite different from the vision that built Brewster-Douglass. She wants a place that runs on renewable energy and is highly efficient in its use of energy and water, a place that is green, not just built up, and taps nature's healthfulness, a place that is resilient, much like she has been. This vision--at the heart of what NEWHAB is about--is taking hold in cities around the world, especially the affluent cities and gentrified neighborhoods. Avalon Village says, in its small way, that this is a vision for everyone.
Mama Shu photo: Eclection Media
