Cityscape

How a $500 Bid Becomes a Rehabbed Detroit Home and a Book from a Major Publisher

April 09, 2017, 4:00 PM by  Alan Stamm

This is the first of two posts on "A $500 House in Detroit."  An excerpt is here.

For now, forget about the just-started "This Old House" series showing how Tamiko and Frank Polk fix up a 1939 house in Russell Woods on Detroit's west side.

Let's also bypass thoughts of Nicole Curtis' 2014-15 upgrade of the 1876 Ransom Gillis mansion in Brush Park for her "Rehab Addict" show.

This east-side Detroit rehab stars a young writer with bold dreams and no TV show.


Drew Philp: "People thought I was nuts."
(Photo by Garrett MacLean
)

Like the Polks, Drew Philp got his fixer-upper at a public auction. But while they paid $29,100 at a June 2015 city sale, Philp shelled out just $500 at a county auction in October 2009 for a Queen Anne-style home and two adjacent lots on Forestdale in Poletown.

He was 23 at the time -- "close to  graduating from the University of Michigan," he writes at the start of Chapter 1 of a book being published Tuesday by Scribner, a top-tier New York publisher.  

The native of Adrian, Mich., came to Detroit with guts, spirit and handyman skills -- but no video cameras following him.  

Instead, the former Michigan Daily reporter chronicled his saga in a long 2014 BuzzFeed article that has been viewed nearly 1.8 million times and that's the launchpad for this week's 304-page book with 12 chapters. (The publishing deal, by the way, lets this newcomer join such past Scribner authors as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana and Don DeLillo.)    

In an interview for the Free Press, Philp talks about his urban and literary projects. Ellen Piligian, a Detroit freelancer, sets the stage:

The book delves into the city’s complex history and current issues, his assimilation into a mostly black neighborhood and how he built his home by hand after removing about 10,000 pounds of trash, including a chopped-up minivan, with just a pitchfork and snow shovel. 

Excerpts from the Q&A-style article in Sunday's paper:

Initial reactions: "People thought I was nuts. [They] thought I was throwing my life away. . . . At the time, the only narrative was that . . . Detroit is this awful hellhole. And what I found was that was not true. . . . The people who had stayed here were some of the most wonderful people I’d ever met."

► A young outsider: "I wasn't sure how I’d be accepted as a white person in a neighborhood that was largely black. I found that people don’t want revenge. They want equality.
"They saw me working on the house every day, doing it myself and not hiring contractors or getting any grants. . . . I think I earned respect, and I love my neighbors. . . . People stop by to see how I’m doing. We do barbecues. I’ll fix stuff for them. . . .
"There’s kind of radical neighborliness that exists in Detroit that I think is rare. I know all my neighbors for blocks around, and everybody knows me. We help each other out."

Possible sequel: "I would like to turn this book into a film. [My agent and I] are thinking about that."

  • Part 2: Excerpt from "A $500 House in Detroit."   
  • Meet the author: Drew Philp will read and sign books Friday from 7-9 p.m. at Trinosophes coffee shop, 1464 Gratiot Ave. near Eastern Market.
  • Buy his book: $16.25 and shipping at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.    


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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