August 12, 2025 • 45 mins
What happens when you win a "free house" in one of America's most complicated real estate markets? Author Anne Elizabeth Moore pulls back the curtain on her experience receiving a donated house in Detroit through a writer's residency program that promised to solve her housing concerns while supporting her creative work. The dream quickly unravels as Moore discovers her "free" home carries hidden costs—not just financially, but ethically. With journalistic instinct and careful research, she uncovers that her house had been taken from Tamika Langford, a Black woman who had been making regular tax payments but lost her property through county foreclosure without proper notification. Moore's memoir takes us beyond her personal housing saga to examine the broader landscape of Detroit after the housing market crash.
Show Notes:
- 2022 Guardian Article Diving Deeper into Anne’s Story: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/18/detroit-house-free-property-tax
- Further Reading:
- To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/4mr2A0A or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
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Stephanie Rouse (00:00):
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(00:42):
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Join us as we get Booked OnPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:10):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor Anne Elizabeth Moore on
her book Gentrifier, a memoir.
We've only covered a memoir oneother time on the show, but
they have such a uniqueperspective to offer.
Anne has a very interestingperspective with having won a
free house in Detroit during theaftermath of the housing market
crash.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:26):
I really enjoyed this style and pacing of this
book and really shows you how itactually feels to move to a new
city and a new neighborhood andall the trials and tribulations
that she went through in hertwo years with her quote unquote
free house and how complicated,both actually and emotionally,
everything turned out to be.
Stephanie Rouse (01:49):
I think Anne, being a journalist, definitely
shaped her response to findingthat the house she was given was
actually somebody else's house.
Instead of just turning a blindeye and selling the home, she
took the time to seek out theowner and get her story.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:58):
And we also want to point out here at the top of
the episode that Anne wrote afollow-up piece for the Guardian
.
That is also a must read ifthis topic is of an interest to
you, and we've linked that inthe show notes as well.
And I'd recommend reading thebook first and then the article
personally, because the bookkind of leaves you with some
questions and then the articlewraps up those questions.
So let's get into ourconversation with author Anne
(02:20):
Elizabeth Moore on her bookGentrifier, a memoir.
Stephanie Rouse (02:27):
Anne, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about your bookGentrifier a memoir.
You wrote this book to documentyour time living in Detroit in
a house that you won.
Can you start off by giving ouraudience an overview of what
that program was, that resultedin you moving to Detroit and
what made you decide to applyfor it in the first place and
make the decision to followthrough and move?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (02:47):
Absolutely , and thanks for having me.
The organization was actually agreat idea, as all sorts of
organizations are thateventually crumble, and they
were intending to offer likefree long-term housing for
writers, almost like a permanentwriting residency, and I had
been urged to apply by someonethat was on the board, and then
(03:09):
what was interesting about mysituation was that I apparently
did so really quickly and thencompletely forgot about it.
So then they started announcingfinalists, or like the amp up
to announcing finalists, and Iwas like, oh, I should have
applied for that.
That's such a good idea.
Like giving a house to a writeris such I love everything about
that.
It resolves so many issues aboutblah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
(03:31):
or you know, I sort of boughtinto the fantasy of it in that
moment.
And then once they startedannouncing the actual names of
the finalists, I was like, oh,now I have to really think about
this because my name was onthere.
But one thing to keep in mindwas that it was like close to a
year between the application andthen the announcement and a
bunch of other stuff happened inthere.
(03:52):
So I actually had several yearsto think about it before the
actual move and the whole time,of course I was like no one
gives away houses, so how isthis going to fall apart?
But you know, the only way outis through right, like there is
always going to be somethinginteresting.
That happens when you are atleast kind of offered what
(04:13):
appears to be a flawlesssolution to all of your problems
in a city where housing andaccess to housing is a major
central concern.
So at some point I was like Ijust I'm on this ride and I just
have to stay on the ride.
Jennifer Hiatt (04:31):
As you mentioned , the ride took you to Detroit
and one of the observations thatyou've made multiple times
throughout the book is thatDetroit did not really seem like
a place that cared all thatmuch about reading books or, to
be honest, your overalljournalistic profession in
general.
So how did you cope with that,as you were coming up with that
realization while still tryingto create a sense of place which
(04:54):
I thought you did an amazingjob and support around the
literature and the writing andthe bookmaking processes?
How did that all come together?
How did you work through that?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (05:02):
Well, the lack of books and the sort of
diminished participation in bookculture and reading in Detroit
really is entirely manufactured,and that's also kind of made
clear in the book, but it'shidden in discussions of
education policy and questionsabout school library access to
book.
So, while I was there, eventhough residents themselves are
(05:25):
totally happy to read and likeexcited about whatever weird
things their neighbors are up towhich I, as you suggested,
tested multiple times they'recompletely willing to like buy
into whatever it is the weirdois doing, even if that's books.
A group of students, whilewhile I was there, actually sued
the public school system fornot providing them a standard
(05:48):
high school education, whichprompted the governor to declare
that students have no right toeducation.
Middle school and youngerschool libraries were being
emptied.
While I was there, I personallyled a drive to put books into a
school library that didn't everhave them, and so these are
(06:10):
failures on an institutionallevel and, I think, across a
couple of institutions that thenmake it appear on an individual
level that books aren't thatnecessary or interesting.
The real problem is not prizingeducation or literature or even
access to reading materialsacross a spectrum of ages.
Stephanie Rouse (06:34):
And what I found really interesting about
your book was describing how youreally became part of this
Bengali community that was onyour block, that they kind of
pushed their way into your livesalmost it seemed like they were
more than happy to invite youto their events and to develop
this relationship with some ofthe younger girls on the block.
But you ultimately left Detroitbecause you felt kind of alone
(06:56):
and isolated.
Can you talk about thedifferences in feeling welcome
in the city versus kind of yourimmediate neighborhood and why
there's that stark contrast thecity versus kind?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (07:05):
of your immediate neighborhood and why
there's that stark contrast.
Yeah, I mean, when it becomesclear that an institutional
failure is taking place, whetherthat's at the city level, which
I think is a big problem inDetroit, or at the county level,
which is an even larger problem, I'm worn down by having to
sort of constantly navigate thesystem that's made deliberately
impossible to deal with.
(07:25):
And I'm like a white Englishspeaking native born person, and
so doing that and then feelinglike I have to then figure out a
way to translate certaindocuments into Bengali or
explain to my neighbors how tolegally install a fence, so that
was just wearing.
But also it became just verydepressing to go to public
(07:49):
events or spend time in largegroups of people where everyone
was being worn down by thesesame systems.
At some point that sense startsto feel like America in general
right now, where you're justlike oh there's, I can't, I
don't even know what I could do,like I'm so tired of struggling
to survive that I can't evenfigure out a way to make anyone
(08:13):
else's life happier.
So ultimately I made thedecision to leave but have been
able to maintain myrelationships with my neighbors
to some degree, so being awarethat my neighbor.
Girls were getting to an agewhere they were going to be
using social media more often,made the move a little bit
easier.
Stephanie Rouse (08:30):
Have you kind of kept abreast of what's
happening in Detroit enough toknow?
Has any of that been changingin the last couple years?
Are they moving past some ofthose institutional issues that
are making it challenging tokind of create community there?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (08:43):
There have been a couple of different
things that have taken place, inparticularly to better issues
that are making it challengingto kind of create community
there.
There have been a couple ofdifferent things that have taken
place, in particularly tobetter support the various
immigrant populations.
Now it is possible to getdocuments in Bengali and there
are translators available atmany events, if not all of the
events that the city supports.
I think that's just again on acity level and not on a county
(09:06):
level, which means, of course,that a lot of the housing stuff
is left out of that property taxstuff and property maintenance
stuff.
But on a city level I thinkit's become much easier.
Not only that, but the areathat I was living in was
designated Banglatown, I think.
Actually, I was on vacationwhile that happened, so I think
it was during the time that Iwas living there and having the
(09:29):
city prize, that particularcommunity within a city that has
one of the largest Blackpopulations in the country, I
think does something to the waythat people engage with the city
, and so all of that has beensuper helpful.
The housing policy is a totallydifferent story.
Jennifer Hiatt (09:52):
One of the stories from the book that kind
of broke me.
When the city would like put upthe signs that said, hey, the
street sweepers are coming, likemove your car and then nothing,
or they would come and do likethe one side of the street, or
even worse, you havehorrifically broken sidewalks
that no one can actually safelywalk on and they come and patch
(10:15):
two sections in front of nowhere.
And to your point earlier ofjust like how are you even
supposed to feel any optimismwhen city services are broken
down so hard?
I just couldn't move past it.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (10:30):
Yeah, all of that was heartbreaking and I
cannot believe that I am aperson who will cry when street
sweepers don't show up.
But it devastated my neighborsand people were like so excited
Because I mean, first of all, alot of the women in my immediate
area, the couple of housesaround mine they just they
(10:52):
didn't leave their house, theywere, you know, housewives, so
it was like a major event intheir day and we're all very
excited about it and it feltlike a parade Each time they put
up the new signs and thennothing, and then having to
explain later, for example, thefence situation, that legally we
(11:13):
needed to deal with this kindof permit or maybe we should get
permission from this guy ormake sure you actually own the
land before you do this.
It was really hard to thenexplain why we had to follow the
rules, but that the city itselfdidn't care, and that became so
(11:34):
depressing and so dishearteningand it just it didn't end.
I think now some of that hasended, but I I think some of the
reason that it has ended is notonly like the Banglatown
designation, but income rateswere on an upswing in my
neighborhood as I left, and so Ithink that that is not about
suddenly prizing the Bengalicommunity of Detroit.
(11:55):
It's about average incomelevels and people's ability to
start tossing around theirwealth totally justifiably to
get stuff in their neighborhoodtaken care of.
I don't think the system itselfis that much better, but things
have shifted a teeny bit.
Jennifer Hiatt (12:14):
Yeah, it's always a little disheartening
when you learn that investmentcomes with income levels rising
and disinvestment is whathappens any other time.
At one point you were invitedto participate in a discussion
about bringing awareness tolocal neighborhood concerns.
It was actually hosted by apolitical candidate whose
platform was supposedly to tryand help the community.
(12:35):
You shared that it would beeasier for journalists if city
council meetings weretranscribed and available online
.
But you were attending thismeeting as a resident, not a
journalist, which I think waskind of an important perspective
shift.
And then, when you shared yourprofession, you were asked to
leave because potentially youcould write about it.
You had said that you were notplanning to, but because there
(12:58):
was potential that you could,you were told to get out.
What was the concern that theyhad about writing about the
problems facing the neighborhood?
When they hosted a public inputsession to talk about the
problems facing the neighborhood?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (13:11):
I mean when you put it that way.
I don't know, but it was very,very common, I think, because of
the manufactured scarcity ofliterature and writing and
journalism manufactured scarcityof literature and writing and
journalism I think it was verycommon for business leaders and
business owners to seejournalists as the enemy Again.
(13:31):
This is another thing that youknow was tested in Detroit and
then is now playing out in therest of the country, that we've
now come to a point wherereporters and journalists and
anyone that's seen to be, youknow, on the sort of fact
finding side or theinvestigative side, is the enemy
(13:51):
, because they have thepotential to say something that
is less than positive about whatyou're doing.
You know, I saw it over andover and over and I kind of use
that one particular example inthe memoir as the one where it
was most clear.
But there were a number ofpeople that just refused to
(14:12):
answer questions once they foundout I was a journalist, which I
don't know why else I wouldhave been asking in many cases,
and it was very difficult toeven think about trying to write
journalism in Detroit while atthe same time trying to function
as a member of society there.
(14:32):
And then what do you do, areyou like?
Well, I guess I don't have towork.
That's cool.
It's not like there were a tonof journalism jobs in the city
anyway, but yeah, that's anotherthing.
That sort of felt like itcontributed significantly to my
sense of isolation andfrustration.
Stephanie Rouse (14:49):
So you already mentioned earlier how the
housing piece of all of this isstill technically broken.
I think there's a few aspectsthat we'll get into, one of them
being the mortgage lendingpractices and financing in
Detroit, which was kind ofshocking to read the section
where you present that redlining was still in effect even
just 10 years ago.
(15:09):
And then there's all thesequestionable financing
mechanisms like land contractsthat often took significant
amounts of investment frompeople and then didn't result in
a home, but there was a quickand loan program that, as you
were leaving the city, that wasstarting to help provide more
stable financing in the city.
Do you see that there are moreethical lending practices today,
(15:29):
that they're kind of movingpast some of that very
detrimental housing practices?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (15:35):
Yeah, I'm not sure on average how people
are getting housing purchasesfinanced these days, because you
really have to be living there,you have to be operating in
community with people to reallyget into the nitty gritty of how
they're paying for something.
And I'm just not there.
But the Quicken Loans programhas emerged into this thing that
(15:57):
we see nationally called RocketMortgage, and it to some degree
seems to be working.
On the other hand, quickenLoans was one of the sort of
major instigators offoreclosures in the city, and so
there was this sense that theywere trying to kind of buy back
trust and you know I'm a totalcynic about people with a ton of
money to throw around, and so Inever felt like that was really
(16:20):
the best way to go.
But one thing that I know reallythe best way to go, but one
thing that I know and that I'vetalked to a lot of people in
sort of housing justice spacesabout, is the private mortgage,
which is a completely like,fascinating, mind-blowingly
interesting way of transferringwealth from one person to
another, and it's usually usedfor family members.
(16:42):
When I moved to New York, Ibought this house under a
private mortgage and it's beenso fun, first of all to write a
check to an individual everymonth that I know and not a bank
that's going to do some kind ofevil thing with it across the
board and not going to, you know, suddenly increase rates or
whatever.
And it's actually been sopleasurable that we're talking
(17:04):
about sort of continuing thatrelationship into the future.
I was sort of trying to seedmore and more the idea that this
might be a way forward for alot of folks in Detroit, but
again, I'm not sure how muchthat took.
Jennifer Hiatt (17:19):
Like land contracts should be so much more
regulated than they are.
It's horrific that someone cantake your down payment even
people who are like genuinelytrying to do good with a land
contract which probably isn'tmany people, but they do exist,
I'm sure for either partyoverall to do great, because
(17:47):
land owner can just end at anytime, so the person who's trying
to buy has no security underthat.
You know at least with amortgage like you know that they
have to go through a processand it has to get noticed.
You don't really have to give alot of notice with land
contracts.
It's wild.
No, it sounds like a privatemortgage is a better way to set
up.
Basically the same thing.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (18:03):
Yeah, because it is structured, it is
regulated and the penalties areexactly as clear as they are in
a real mortgage.
But our bank mortgage I shouldsay but yeah, with a land
contract it was a pretty commonscam for a while and I don't
know how common it is, but I'mpositive it still happens is
that a house would be listedunder sort of a rent to own
(18:24):
agreement or something that likeobscured the fact that it was a
land contract and then youwould move in with a down
payment.
The idea was that you would payoff a little bit every month,
like a mortgage does, and theneventually you would own the
house and that was allstipulated in the land contract
that you signed.
Yeah, you can be evicted at anytime.
(18:47):
There's no authority, that sortof checks over a land contract
to make sure that no weirdclauses got stuck in there, and
pretty frequently people wouldjust advertise the same house
over and over and over asavailable for a rent to own
situation.
Housing scams are so common inDetroit.
I don't even remember whetheror not I put this in the book,
(19:07):
but someone listed my house as arent-to-own option and I got an
email from someone at one pointthat was like so when do I get
the keys?
And I was like I don't know you, nor do I have any idea what
you're talking about.
And he was like oh yeah, no, Ipaid X amount of dollars on such
(19:27):
and such date.
Here's the receipt that yougave me.
But I was talking to yourpartner, bill, and he said I
could move in.
He just was going to email meback about the date and I was
like this is A super bad, but B.
There's no mechanism that I caneven go through as the
homeowner to clarify that Ididn't do this.
(19:48):
We had it taken down from thewebsite, where it was still
listed as available, but itessentially was just his down
payment was lost, his plans tomove were screwed and there was
nothing anyone could do about it.
Stephanie Rouse (20:03):
You did cover that in the book and I thought
that was just such an incrediblestory that people are out there
doing that and I don't know ifit would be investors.
But in an article that youwrote as a follow-up to the book
, you put that a staggering 90%of all properties between 2005
and 2015 were investors buyingin bulk.
So I think that even limits theopportunity in Detroit for
(20:26):
better lending practices likethe private mortgage.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (20:30):
Exactly when you have people who and the
same thing is happening withlike farmland up where I live
now in upstate New York when youhave people whose job is to try
to profit from vast amounts ofland, they don't care about
ethical lending practices.
They care about making as muchmoney, accruing as much
resources as quickly as they canand turning it over as fast as
(20:53):
possible.
There are a couple differentthings about how that plays out
in Detroit and in Wayne County,which sort of covers the exact
area of Detroit, including thetwo cities that are inside
Detroit.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
I'm getting all worked up againjust thinking about it.
Jennifer Hiatt (21:12):
And it does seem that the relationship between
the county and the city wassuspect at best.
Maybe I don't know how to putit, but the city really had no
control, which I get that in alot of places counties are I
mean here in Nebraska it's thesame counties are the entity
that has control over housing,but in a place where the city
and the county were basicallythe same, it felt like the city
(21:35):
either did not care or had noreal power over the ability to
correct these issues either.
And as a employee who works fora city that takes up a good
chunk of our county, a lot ofpeople don't know to reach out
to the county, so we get a lotof calls that have to be managed
by the county.
You would think that citypeople would have more control
(21:56):
over that.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (21:57):
Yeah, it's super weird and then it's
confusing for residents and,considering the amount of
grifters who have been involvedin both city government and then
state government but then lessobviously also in county
government, what you have is alot of people like blame gaming
each other so that there's noteven really a traceable line to
(22:23):
follow when you have a grievanceor a problem or there's a clear
legal violation.
Jennifer Hiatt (22:29):
Many of the residential blocks in Detroit
have empty lots where housesonce stood.
Of course and I have been toDetroit a few times and,
honestly, the impact of justseeing this kind of neighborhood
devastation is profound.
I will not ever forget thefirst time I was visiting a
friend Uber took me through hisneighborhood and his was one of
(22:49):
only like seven houses standingin a three block area.
I remember it.
So can you talk about how itimpacted your perception of your
neighborhood when you werefirst there, but then, of course
, the city as a whole?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (23:01):
Yeah, for sure.
And I will start byacknowledging that there is a
part of me that loves whenthings get that weird, like all
of the sudden to have a clearlyhousing-oriented neighborhood
like many of the spaces inDetroit were one of the most
populated cities in sort ofyears past be just decimated to
(23:24):
the point that they're often,you know, one or two houses
separated by several yards on ablock and then just nothingness
or overgrowth, or sometimes ahouse that is about to be torn
down or that is on the list tobe torn down will be sort of
overgrown and there will be atree coming through it or
something.
And that is on the list to betorn down will be sort of
(23:46):
overgrown and there will be atree coming through it or
something, and that is anaesthetically fascinating
situation that is alsosociologically a absolute,
terrifying nightmare.
It felt often like I had beendropped into some horror movie
or some science fiction moviewhere all of a sudden everyone
was gone, but also their houseswere gone, like all history of
(24:08):
people was gone, and you knowwhat that means.
I think for a lot of peoplethat live there to feel that
expanse of weirdness is thatyou're constantly reminded of
the loss of the people in thecity who couldn't survive the
constant pummeling from the citygovernment and the county
(24:30):
government and left, went to golive with family elsewhere,
tried their luck renting in adifferent part of the country.
But I think when you don't livethere, it's very easy to
experience it on a purelyaesthetic level, unless you are
an urban planner or someone whosort of pays attention to stuff
like that.
And so then we had stuff likethe ruin porn that made in 2014,
(24:54):
made Detroit such a popularplace for urban spelunkers, who
really didn't acknowledge theloss of human lives and culture
and vitality that those thingsrepresented.
Yeah, so that's a complicatedone, because it is really unique
.
It's like driving through theBadlands, which I you know, I'm
from South Dakota and I alwaysforget, before I get to the
(25:16):
Badlands, that it is gutting,it's jaw dropping and a similar
thing would happen every otherday in Detroit, and also that it
represents a very seriousproblem that needs to be
addressed, still to this day.
It needs to be addressed.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:33):
Yeah, we've talked about herbicide on this
podcast before or theintentional destruction of
cities, most often associatedwith war, but that's generally
how I felt going through some ofthat.
And my friend had one requeston the whole vacation.
It was that I did not take anypictures of any of the ruined
buildings because the ruinedporn was so popular at the time.
(25:55):
Yeah, he was like please justshow my city in a light that
doesn't look like that, becausethere are a lot of beautiful
things about Detroit too, sofeel that that, because there
are a lot of beautiful thingsabout Detroit too, so feel that,
yeah, absolutely it is.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (26:10):
It's a.
It's an incredibly complicatedthing.
I think now it's evened out alittle bit.
That's ruined.
Porn does not necessarily driveinterest in the city, but it is
something that we have to havea much stronger ethic around
thinking about and talking aboutwhen we, when we do so.
Stephanie Rouse (26:22):
I feel like we've made it quite far into
this conversation withoutbringing up gentrification when
your book is called Gentrifier.
But you point out early in thebook that your role in
gentrification is complicated.
Towards the end of the book itbecomes more clear why.
Can you explain why it's not asstraightforward as a commonly
understood definition ofgentrification?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (26:43):
Absolutely .
I mean, gentrification istricky, in the first place
because no one means the samething when they use the term.
Really, there's sort of acommonly understood notion of it
, often about white peopleliving in places of visible
poverty.
That is sort of understood tobe a sense of gentrification.
(27:04):
And then the potential formoney to start flowing through a
place that has not seeninvestment in a while.
And those are both like awalking around with your pals
kind of like you point to thefanciest house on the block and
you're like, ah, gentrification.
But that really only describesa very slim portion of what
gentrification looks like andhow it operates.
(27:26):
And what I began to see at firstwhen I moved into the house was
that nobody had wanted to livein my house.
It had gone up for sale severaltimes.
So the city gave it to theorganization for a dollar $500.
(28:06):
I don't remember what theinitial investment was, maybe it
was $5,000.
And then to support the programof giving that house away to a
writer.
So then it's a more complicatedthing than someone going in and
trying to take a step back evenfurther to figure out how the
city had come about acquiringthat property in the first place
.
And that's where I thinknotions of the house that I was
living in had been at one pointabandoned, and then it had been
(28:29):
put under a foreclosurenotification, but then it was
sold in a somehow murkyoff-the-books way from some guy
who saw it and had keys to it,apparently, who then sold it to
a woman named Tamika Langford.
And Tamika Langford bought it,entirely believing that she was
(28:50):
participating in an above boardlegal exchange of money for
property, and then continued tomake regular payments on the
back taxes that were owed whichwas why it had been foreclosed
on in the first place or wasunder foreclosure in the first
place and paid her down paymentand the whole thing.
Every time she made a paymenton the taxes would visit the
(29:15):
county office.
The county never bothered toinform her that, in fact, this
was a house that was alreadyunder the foreclosure property,
was a house that was alreadyunder the foreclosure property,
and so, at some point, withouther knowledge or consent, the
property was then relisted onthe auction website and put up
for sale again.
Now, that was the first timethat it was up for sale in the
(29:39):
2010s.
I think that happened in 2012.
And then it went up again thenext year, in 2013.
It was given to theorganization that gave it to me
in 2014, I believe.
So then, the question of how wethink about gentrification in
relationship to this particularproblem set of experiences is
(30:00):
that the city was going to takethat Black woman's house, no
matter what, and they were goingto ensure that someone with
some kind of status or power orrenown would move into it, and
so they gave it to someone.
Who was going to give it to awriter, right?
I'm not convinced that theybelieved that all of the writers
(30:21):
would be white, and we were not, but the city saw a way to get
rid of someone they saw asundesirable and bring in someone
that they thought was gonnamake their lives easier.
I'm sorry, I just said the city, and I mean the county, and
like it's all really complicated, deliberately complicated so
that I can never give you theclear answer, but the bottom
(30:44):
line is that gentrification, tomy way of thinking now, is a
series of systemic policies thattry to push out people in
poverty and bring in people withsome kind of privilege, whether
that's racial or financial orcultural or whatever, and that
is something that I definitelyparticipated in without being
(31:08):
aware of any of the existence ofa single one of those
structures.
Jennifer Hiatt (31:13):
Yeah, actually one of the questions you posed
pretty early on is ifgentrification is the
replacement of lower incomeresidents of a home by
middle-class ones, or folks ofcolor by white folks, or of
immigrants by non immigrants.
Is it possible forgentrification if there's no
competition for housing?
But in reading your follow uparticle, there really is
(31:34):
competition for this housing insome way.
Originally I was like, well,were you able to reach some kind
of conclusion on that question,but now it's like it's a whole
separate question.
Like you said, it's about thesystems that are working against
people, not necessarily thecompetition for housing that is
there.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (31:50):
Yeah, and I talked to Tamika Lanford
specifically about that house.
Do we want to talk about waysof making sure that we can get
you?
You know that house had beensold by then.
But like, do you feel likethat's what you need to to be
done with this?
And she sort of said, yeah, I'mowed a house, I am owed a house
(32:13):
by the city and she completelyat one or two, maybe three tops,
you know, with interest.
But she was in deliberatecompetition for my exact house
(32:36):
in a process that was absolutely100% shielded from me until I
went through a whole legalprocess to clear the title and
then another whole process totrack her down, even though I
had been told she was dead inthat legal process to track her
down, convince her to talk to meand get her story on tape.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:48):
Yeah, it took effort on your behalf and I'm
also a lawyer, so I get reallymad when the legal process is
used to protect people, and Iknow it always is.
But what if it wasn't you right?
What if it was somebody who wasjust happy to go through the
quiet title process with a lawfirm?
That's suspicious at best.
With what was there.
It was like quiet titlecom,yeah yeah, and you could have
(33:13):
just moved on with your life andyou could have just been like
okay, well, I got the house andI sold it, and if you hadn't had
a journalistic instinct tocontinue forward, this would
still be happening with thatparticular house and nobody
would be even aware of whathappened here.
Like we would have just rippeda house from someone and no one
would have been the wiser.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (33:33):
Yeah, and that obviously does happen every
single day.
Still, I was shocked that noone wrote about the quiet title
process.
I was shocked that no one wroteabout it as a follow-up to the
Detroit housing crisis, which,whatever, it's not like that's
over.
But I have been shocked thatthere's been no light shown on
the quiet titling processbesides what I committed to
(33:54):
paper myself.
And yeah, it's because when youare in the situation where you
need to quiet a title, you justwant to pay your money, get it
done.
You're like already in legal andpossibly financial straits and
you just you got to believe yourlawyers, because they're
lawyers, they don't lie to you.
Except for that, my lawyer toldme a woman was dead when she
(34:16):
was in fact alive, and kind ofangry at me, angry at them.
That's kind of the thing thatmakes the sort of Detroit
housing crisis so complicated isthat the system itself is
deeply corrupt, filled withgraft and cruelty and
problematic as hell.
But then there are theseindividual companies that pop up
(34:38):
to like snake their way throughit and make a buck off of the
confusion and the overwhelmingspeed of the county's
foreclosure decisions, and thoseare the people that want to
kick the journalists out of theroom, right?
That's why we don't know thatthis happens all the time.
Yeah, so it's a very, verymultifaceted like that.
(34:59):
It's just going to take yearsand years and years to clean all
that up so that it's bothcomprehensible and fair and you
know that there's anytransparency to it.
Jennifer Hiatt (35:10):
I had hoped that the Supreme Court case, the US
Supreme Court case.
It went up on foreclosuresbecause in the city of Detroit a
woman's home was foreclosed onover a very small amount of
money, like $900 that she had inback taxes, although she
thought she was up to date onher taxes because, again, no
(35:31):
notice, and then the countyforeclosed on her and then sold
her house for hundreds ofthousands of dollars and then
kept all of that money throughthe court system, which, by the
way, michigan courts did notnecessarily support her.
In that claim, which was againwild to me she hadn't had the
(36:01):
resources to take it all the wayto the Supreme Court and get
the ruling that they got, whichwas that's a takings and you
cannot just take people'shundreds of thousands of dollars
for $900 in back taxes.
We wouldn't be aware again thatthis was happening.
But also that didn't bringpeople to the realization of
what was going on.
We have an entire Supreme Courtcase about it and yet nobody is
(36:22):
like what the hell is happeningover there or in any other
small town.
It's infuriating obviouslyInfuriating.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (36:28):
I will add something to your fury that
when I published the piece inthe Guardian it was immediately
sort of seen as like elucidatingand frustrating and did sort of
shed light on a bunch ofaspects of this stuff that we
did not understand.
And then, pretty soonthereafter there was a targeted,
(36:50):
mostly Twitter campaign thatsort of then spread to other
forms of media to denounce thepiece and me, which then
suggested that I kill myself,and it was sort of picked up by
bots in a campaign that sort offollowed the timeline and
(37:11):
structure of the campaignagainst Amber Heard and the
Johnny Depp case, which then itturns out is something that is
just, is a service that you canpurchase.
It's something that you canprovide as like a PR fix.
I don't have any evidence thatthe county was behind this and
it starts to sound like aconspiracy theory, but the
(37:33):
campaign did spread from socialmedia to my unlisted phone
number and then I had peoplecalling me and giving me my home
address.
So I did have to leave town fora couple of weeks.
I did have to have an armedguard watching my house and
during that time I could havebeen promoting this, talking
about the ideas, whatever.
I was essentially silencedfairly permanently on this and I
(37:57):
think that changes the game alittle bit.
As I said, I don't have anyevidence that the county was
behind this, but I did FOIAinformation.
I did a FOIA request forinformation about me personally
and Tamika Langford after thepiece came out, and there was
all sorts of obfuscatingtechniques that were thrown in
(38:18):
my face, and so I also don'thave any evidence that they were
not involved in something likethis, and I think that is a real
problem.
When we start to think aboutthe potential and the ease with
which governments that are notoperating in the best interests
of the people are then usingcontemporary media campaigns and
(38:41):
threatening and harassingtechniques to shut down dissent,
then we have a much, much, muchbigger problem than like your
urban policy sucks.
Then it's like your urbanpolicy is meant to destroy
people's lives and to profitfrom them for as far as they can
into the future, and that isyour policy.
(39:01):
It's not just failing, it's tomake people as miserable as
possible so they leave and youcan sell the land for much more
money.
So that's my, you know, sort ofshort diatribe about how the
reason that we don't end uphearing about a lot of this
stuff is because there are a tonof ways that the people who are
sort of thinking about andwriting about this stuff get
(39:23):
silenced, in addition to itsounding kind of boring.
You know like I want to writeabout the quiet title process.
Well, no publication on earthis going to let me do that.
Publication on earth is goingto let me do that.
Stephanie Rouse (39:34):
Well, and also on that I mean, and through your
experiences, you highlight thedifferences.
I think everyone that followedwhat's happened in Detroit just
understands that it's themortgage companies that
foreclosure was mainly happeningbecause of their unethical
practices.
But it really wasn't.
It was a lot of the taxforeclosure and it was the
county that was more responsiblefor displacing all these
(39:56):
families during that time.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (39:57):
And still today it sounds like yeah, and I
think you know there has beenan organization pushing legal
reforms forward for housingrelated issues for years and
their efforts just keep gettingstymied.
But it is true that, like,where this whole magilla of
problems becomes hopeful is whenyou realize that like, oh,
(40:20):
these are actually public policyissues and there are
theoretically ways of respondingto that in a democracy.
It's just that is also a longprocess that doesn't really give
people the immediaterestitution that they require.
Give people the immediaterestitution that they require.
Jennifer Hiatt (40:34):
So, as we've been discussing, ultimately,
after many issues regarding yourquote, unquote free house,
which, by the way, was also like$20,000 in roof repairs you
were able to sell it and moveaway from Detroit and I think
it's fair to say that it seemslike the experiment with the
organization ultimately was notsuccessful.
But would it have been?
Do you see a scenario wherethis type of program could have
(40:56):
been successful in areas thatneed to bring in people for
excess housing without all ofthe corruption?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (41:03):
When I wrote the book I did.
Part of the reason for writingthe book in the way that I wrote
the book was to have somethingthat could kind of feed a
conversation about ethicalhousing for artists.
But the fact that theorganization itself fell apart
immediately when I moved inmeans that that wasn't ever
going to be the correctconfiguration of people, and I
(41:25):
would also say that theorganization did not fully
comprehend the array of issuesbehind this and so didn't do the
policy advocacy, economiceducation, neighborhood
investment, campaigning thatwould have been required to make
something like this work.
While I saw a way for that to betrue in 2020 when I was writing
(41:49):
the book 2021, I do not believeit is possible now because we
will have to reinvigoratesupport for the arts, which is
going to take a really long time.
We will have to reinvigorate aconversation around equitable
access to housing.
We will have to resolve therest of the housing crisis
(42:11):
before we start getting toquestions about like, where are
artists going to live?
And then I think we also aregoing to have to do a lot of
education and thinking andfeeling around how we interact
and respond to our neighbors.
I am just currently not feelinglike housing for artists is the
number one priority, butobviously it is my number one
(42:32):
priority.
So it's complicated, likeeverything else I've said today.
It's just complicated.
Stephanie Rouse (42:39):
And as this is Booked on Planning, in addition
to your book, which we alwaysrecommend our listeners check
out, what other books would yourecommend our readers get a copy
of?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (42:48):
Well for sure Matthew Desmond's Evicted
is absolutely bedrock here forunderstanding any sort of
housing policy whatsoever.
I had read that several yearsbefore the Detroit situation
even was on my radar, but thenalso after the Detroit situation
was on my radar and I moved toNew York, I experienced eviction
(43:11):
a couple of different times andthat book was constantly
churning in my mind.
It just described the processand the emotional toil and
expense so well that I thinkthat everyone should read it.
But absolutely for sure it hasto be bedrock for urban planning
, as well as Brian Goldstone'sNew there Is no Place For Us,
which does a really excellentjob of tracking several families
(43:35):
as they experiencehouselessness in Atlanta.
You know, carrying the storiesof individual people living in
real cities I happen to think isthe most important way to
develop effective policy.
But also keep in mind that I'mnot an urban planner, even
though I secretly would love tobe.
Stephanie Rouse (43:54):
What's interesting is our author from
two episodes ago suggested thatsecond book.
There Is no Place For Us, andI'm pretty sure we've had
evicted a few times because itis an amazing book.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:04):
Amazing.
He's on my favorite podcast,which is this Is when it Gets
Interesting.
Matthew Desmond is the featuredinterviewer for this week, so
Well, anne.
Stephanie Rouse (44:14):
Thank you so much for joining us on the show
to talk about your bookGentrifier memoir.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (44:19):
You are so welcome.
I really really enjoyed it.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:23):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author and Elizabeth Moore onher book Gentrifier a memoir.
You can get your copy throughthe publisher at catapult books,
or click the link in the shownotes below to take you directly
to our affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
Booked on Planning.
(44:43):
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Join us as we get Booked OnPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:10):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor Anne Elizabeth Moore on
her book Gentrifier, a memoir.
We've only covered a memoir oneother time on the show, but
they have such a uniqueperspective to offer.
Anne has a very interestingperspective with having won a
free house in Detroit during theaftermath of the housing market
crash.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:26):
I really enjoyed this style and pacing of this
book and really shows you how itactually feels to move to a new
city and a new neighborhood andall the trials and tribulations
that she went through in hertwo years with her quote unquote
free house and how complicated,both actually and emotionally,
everything turned out to be.
Stephanie Rouse (01:49):
I think Anne, being a journalist, definitely
shaped her response to findingthat the house she was given was
actually somebody else's house.
Instead of just turning a blindeye and selling the home, she
took the time to seek out theowner and get her story.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:58):
And we also want to point out here at the top of
the episode that Anne wrote afollow-up piece for the Guardian
.
That is also a must read ifthis topic is of an interest to
you, and we've linked that inthe show notes as well.
And I'd recommend reading thebook first and then the article
personally, because the bookkind of leaves you with some
questions and then the articlewraps up those questions.
So let's get into ourconversation with author Anne
(02:20):
Elizabeth Moore on her bookGentrifier, a memoir.
Stephanie Rouse (02:27):
Anne, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about your bookGentrifier a memoir.
You wrote this book to documentyour time living in Detroit in
a house that you won.
Can you start off by giving ouraudience an overview of what
that program was, that resultedin you moving to Detroit and
what made you decide to applyfor it in the first place and
make the decision to followthrough and move?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (02:47):
Absolutely , and thanks for having me.
The organization was actually agreat idea, as all sorts of
organizations are thateventually crumble, and they
were intending to offer likefree long-term housing for
writers, almost like a permanentwriting residency, and I had
been urged to apply by someonethat was on the board, and then
(03:09):
what was interesting about mysituation was that I apparently
did so really quickly and thencompletely forgot about it.
So then they started announcingfinalists, or like the amp up
to announcing finalists, and Iwas like, oh, I should have
applied for that.
That's such a good idea.
Like giving a house to a writeris such I love everything about
that.
It resolves so many issues aboutblah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
(03:31):
or you know, I sort of boughtinto the fantasy of it in that
moment.
And then once they startedannouncing the actual names of
the finalists, I was like, oh,now I have to really think about
this because my name was onthere.
But one thing to keep in mindwas that it was like close to a
year between the application andthen the announcement and a
bunch of other stuff happened inthere.
(03:52):
So I actually had several yearsto think about it before the
actual move and the whole time,of course I was like no one
gives away houses, so how isthis going to fall apart?
But you know, the only way outis through right, like there is
always going to be somethinginteresting.
That happens when you are atleast kind of offered what
(04:13):
appears to be a flawlesssolution to all of your problems
in a city where housing andaccess to housing is a major
central concern.
So at some point I was like Ijust I'm on this ride and I just
have to stay on the ride.
Jennifer Hiatt (04:31):
As you mentioned , the ride took you to Detroit
and one of the observations thatyou've made multiple times
throughout the book is thatDetroit did not really seem like
a place that cared all thatmuch about reading books or, to
be honest, your overalljournalistic profession in
general.
So how did you cope with that,as you were coming up with that
realization while still tryingto create a sense of place which
(04:54):
I thought you did an amazingjob and support around the
literature and the writing andthe bookmaking processes?
How did that all come together?
How did you work through that?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (05:02):
Well, the lack of books and the sort of
diminished participation in bookculture and reading in Detroit
really is entirely manufactured,and that's also kind of made
clear in the book, but it'shidden in discussions of
education policy and questionsabout school library access to
book.
So, while I was there, eventhough residents themselves are
(05:25):
totally happy to read and likeexcited about whatever weird
things their neighbors are up towhich I, as you suggested,
tested multiple times they'recompletely willing to like buy
into whatever it is the weirdois doing, even if that's books.
A group of students, whilewhile I was there, actually sued
the public school system fornot providing them a standard
(05:48):
high school education, whichprompted the governor to declare
that students have no right toeducation.
Middle school and youngerschool libraries were being
emptied.
While I was there, I personallyled a drive to put books into a
school library that didn't everhave them, and so these are
(06:10):
failures on an institutionallevel and, I think, across a
couple of institutions that thenmake it appear on an individual
level that books aren't thatnecessary or interesting.
The real problem is not prizingeducation or literature or even
access to reading materialsacross a spectrum of ages.
Stephanie Rouse (06:34):
And what I found really interesting about
your book was describing how youreally became part of this
Bengali community that was onyour block, that they kind of
pushed their way into your livesalmost it seemed like they were
more than happy to invite youto their events and to develop
this relationship with some ofthe younger girls on the block.
But you ultimately left Detroitbecause you felt kind of alone
(06:56):
and isolated.
Can you talk about thedifferences in feeling welcome
in the city versus kind of yourimmediate neighborhood and why
there's that stark contrast thecity versus kind?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (07:05):
of your immediate neighborhood and why
there's that stark contrast.
Yeah, I mean, when it becomesclear that an institutional
failure is taking place, whetherthat's at the city level, which
I think is a big problem inDetroit, or at the county level,
which is an even larger problem, I'm worn down by having to
sort of constantly navigate thesystem that's made deliberately
impossible to deal with.
(07:25):
And I'm like a white Englishspeaking native born person, and
so doing that and then feelinglike I have to then figure out a
way to translate certaindocuments into Bengali or
explain to my neighbors how tolegally install a fence, so that
was just wearing.
But also it became just verydepressing to go to public
(07:49):
events or spend time in largegroups of people where everyone
was being worn down by thesesame systems.
At some point that sense startsto feel like America in general
right now, where you're justlike oh there's, I can't, I
don't even know what I could do,like I'm so tired of struggling
to survive that I can't evenfigure out a way to make anyone
(08:13):
else's life happier.
So ultimately I made thedecision to leave but have been
able to maintain myrelationships with my neighbors
to some degree, so being awarethat my neighbor.
Girls were getting to an agewhere they were going to be
using social media more often,made the move a little bit
easier.
Stephanie Rouse (08:30):
Have you kind of kept abreast of what's
happening in Detroit enough toknow?
Has any of that been changingin the last couple years?
Are they moving past some ofthose institutional issues that
are making it challenging tokind of create community there?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (08:43):
There have been a couple of different
things that have taken place, inparticularly to better issues
that are making it challengingto kind of create community
there.
There have been a couple ofdifferent things that have taken
place, in particularly tobetter support the various
immigrant populations.
Now it is possible to getdocuments in Bengali and there
are translators available atmany events, if not all of the
events that the city supports.
I think that's just again on acity level and not on a county
(09:06):
level, which means, of course,that a lot of the housing stuff
is left out of that property taxstuff and property maintenance
stuff.
But on a city level I thinkit's become much easier.
Not only that, but the areathat I was living in was
designated Banglatown, I think.
Actually, I was on vacationwhile that happened, so I think
it was during the time that Iwas living there and having the
(09:29):
city prize, that particularcommunity within a city that has
one of the largest Blackpopulations in the country, I
think does something to the waythat people engage with the city
, and so all of that has beensuper helpful.
The housing policy is a totallydifferent story.
Jennifer Hiatt (09:52):
One of the stories from the book that kind
of broke me.
When the city would like put upthe signs that said, hey, the
street sweepers are coming, likemove your car and then nothing,
or they would come and do likethe one side of the street, or
even worse, you havehorrifically broken sidewalks
that no one can actually safelywalk on and they come and patch
(10:15):
two sections in front of nowhere.
And to your point earlier ofjust like how are you even
supposed to feel any optimismwhen city services are broken
down so hard?
I just couldn't move past it.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (10:30):
Yeah, all of that was heartbreaking and I
cannot believe that I am aperson who will cry when street
sweepers don't show up.
But it devastated my neighborsand people were like so excited
Because I mean, first of all, alot of the women in my immediate
area, the couple of housesaround mine they just they
(10:52):
didn't leave their house, theywere, you know, housewives, so
it was like a major event intheir day and we're all very
excited about it and it feltlike a parade Each time they put
up the new signs and thennothing, and then having to
explain later, for example, thefence situation, that legally we
(11:13):
needed to deal with this kindof permit or maybe we should get
permission from this guy ormake sure you actually own the
land before you do this.
It was really hard to thenexplain why we had to follow the
rules, but that the city itselfdidn't care, and that became so
(11:34):
depressing and so dishearteningand it just it didn't end.
I think now some of that hasended, but I I think some of the
reason that it has ended is notonly like the Banglatown
designation, but income rateswere on an upswing in my
neighborhood as I left, and so Ithink that that is not about
suddenly prizing the Bengalicommunity of Detroit.
(11:55):
It's about average incomelevels and people's ability to
start tossing around theirwealth totally justifiably to
get stuff in their neighborhoodtaken care of.
I don't think the system itselfis that much better, but things
have shifted a teeny bit.
Jennifer Hiatt (12:14):
Yeah, it's always a little disheartening
when you learn that investmentcomes with income levels rising
and disinvestment is whathappens any other time.
At one point you were invitedto participate in a discussion
about bringing awareness tolocal neighborhood concerns.
It was actually hosted by apolitical candidate whose
platform was supposedly to tryand help the community.
(12:35):
You shared that it would beeasier for journalists if city
council meetings weretranscribed and available online
.
But you were attending thismeeting as a resident, not a
journalist, which I think waskind of an important perspective
shift.
And then, when you shared yourprofession, you were asked to
leave because potentially youcould write about it.
You had said that you were notplanning to, but because there
(12:58):
was potential that you could,you were told to get out.
What was the concern that theyhad about writing about the
problems facing the neighborhood?
When they hosted a public inputsession to talk about the
problems facing the neighborhood?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (13:11):
I mean when you put it that way.
I don't know, but it was very,very common, I think, because of
the manufactured scarcity ofliterature and writing and
journalism manufactured scarcityof literature and writing and
journalism I think it was verycommon for business leaders and
business owners to seejournalists as the enemy Again.
(13:31):
This is another thing that youknow was tested in Detroit and
then is now playing out in therest of the country, that we've
now come to a point wherereporters and journalists and
anyone that's seen to be, youknow, on the sort of fact
finding side or theinvestigative side, is the enemy
(13:51):
, because they have thepotential to say something that
is less than positive about whatyou're doing.
You know, I saw it over andover and over and I kind of use
that one particular example inthe memoir as the one where it
was most clear.
But there were a number ofpeople that just refused to
(14:12):
answer questions once they foundout I was a journalist, which I
don't know why else I wouldhave been asking in many cases,
and it was very difficult toeven think about trying to write
journalism in Detroit while atthe same time trying to function
as a member of society there.
(14:32):
And then what do you do, areyou like?
Well, I guess I don't have towork.
That's cool.
It's not like there were a tonof journalism jobs in the city
anyway, but yeah, that's anotherthing.
That sort of felt like itcontributed significantly to my
sense of isolation andfrustration.
Stephanie Rouse (14:49):
So you already mentioned earlier how the
housing piece of all of this isstill technically broken.
I think there's a few aspectsthat we'll get into, one of them
being the mortgage lendingpractices and financing in
Detroit, which was kind ofshocking to read the section
where you present that redlining was still in effect even
just 10 years ago.
(15:09):
And then there's all thesequestionable financing
mechanisms like land contractsthat often took significant
amounts of investment frompeople and then didn't result in
a home, but there was a quickand loan program that, as you
were leaving the city, that wasstarting to help provide more
stable financing in the city.
Do you see that there are moreethical lending practices today,
(15:29):
that they're kind of movingpast some of that very
detrimental housing practices?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (15:35):
Yeah, I'm not sure on average how people
are getting housing purchasesfinanced these days, because you
really have to be living there,you have to be operating in
community with people to reallyget into the nitty gritty of how
they're paying for something.
And I'm just not there.
But the Quicken Loans programhas emerged into this thing that
(15:57):
we see nationally called RocketMortgage, and it to some degree
seems to be working.
On the other hand, quickenLoans was one of the sort of
major instigators offoreclosures in the city, and so
there was this sense that theywere trying to kind of buy back
trust and you know I'm a totalcynic about people with a ton of
money to throw around, and so Inever felt like that was really
(16:20):
the best way to go.
But one thing that I know reallythe best way to go, but one
thing that I know and that I'vetalked to a lot of people in
sort of housing justice spacesabout, is the private mortgage,
which is a completely like,fascinating, mind-blowingly
interesting way of transferringwealth from one person to
another, and it's usually usedfor family members.
(16:42):
When I moved to New York, Ibought this house under a
private mortgage and it's beenso fun, first of all to write a
check to an individual everymonth that I know and not a bank
that's going to do some kind ofevil thing with it across the
board and not going to, you know, suddenly increase rates or
whatever.
And it's actually been sopleasurable that we're talking
(17:04):
about sort of continuing thatrelationship into the future.
I was sort of trying to seedmore and more the idea that this
might be a way forward for alot of folks in Detroit, but
again, I'm not sure how muchthat took.
Jennifer Hiatt (17:19):
Like land contracts should be so much more
regulated than they are.
It's horrific that someone cantake your down payment even
people who are like genuinelytrying to do good with a land
contract which probably isn'tmany people, but they do exist,
I'm sure for either partyoverall to do great, because
(17:47):
land owner can just end at anytime, so the person who's trying
to buy has no security underthat.
You know at least with amortgage like you know that they
have to go through a processand it has to get noticed.
You don't really have to give alot of notice with land
contracts.
It's wild.
No, it sounds like a privatemortgage is a better way to set
up.
Basically the same thing.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (18:03):
Yeah, because it is structured, it is
regulated and the penalties areexactly as clear as they are in
a real mortgage.
But our bank mortgage I shouldsay but yeah, with a land
contract it was a pretty commonscam for a while and I don't
know how common it is, but I'mpositive it still happens is
that a house would be listedunder sort of a rent to own
(18:24):
agreement or something that likeobscured the fact that it was a
land contract and then youwould move in with a down
payment.
The idea was that you would payoff a little bit every month,
like a mortgage does, and theneventually you would own the
house and that was allstipulated in the land contract
that you signed.
Yeah, you can be evicted at anytime.
(18:47):
There's no authority, that sortof checks over a land contract
to make sure that no weirdclauses got stuck in there, and
pretty frequently people wouldjust advertise the same house
over and over and over asavailable for a rent to own
situation.
Housing scams are so common inDetroit.
I don't even remember whetheror not I put this in the book,
(19:07):
but someone listed my house as arent-to-own option and I got an
email from someone at one pointthat was like so when do I get
the keys?
And I was like I don't know you, nor do I have any idea what
you're talking about.
And he was like oh yeah, no, Ipaid X amount of dollars on such
(19:27):
and such date.
Here's the receipt that yougave me.
But I was talking to yourpartner, bill, and he said I
could move in.
He just was going to email meback about the date and I was
like this is A super bad, but B.
There's no mechanism that I caneven go through as the
homeowner to clarify that Ididn't do this.
(19:48):
We had it taken down from thewebsite, where it was still
listed as available, but itessentially was just his down
payment was lost, his plans tomove were screwed and there was
nothing anyone could do about it.
Stephanie Rouse (20:03):
You did cover that in the book and I thought
that was just such an incrediblestory that people are out there
doing that and I don't know ifit would be investors.
But in an article that youwrote as a follow-up to the book
, you put that a staggering 90%of all properties between 2005
and 2015 were investors buyingin bulk.
So I think that even limits theopportunity in Detroit for
(20:26):
better lending practices likethe private mortgage.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (20:30):
Exactly when you have people who and the
same thing is happening withlike farmland up where I live
now in upstate New York when youhave people whose job is to try
to profit from vast amounts ofland, they don't care about
ethical lending practices.
They care about making as muchmoney, accruing as much
resources as quickly as they canand turning it over as fast as
(20:53):
possible.
There are a couple differentthings about how that plays out
in Detroit and in Wayne County,which sort of covers the exact
area of Detroit, including thetwo cities that are inside
Detroit.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
I'm getting all worked up againjust thinking about it.
Jennifer Hiatt (21:12):
And it does seem that the relationship between
the county and the city wassuspect at best.
Maybe I don't know how to putit, but the city really had no
control, which I get that in alot of places counties are I
mean here in Nebraska it's thesame counties are the entity
that has control over housing,but in a place where the city
and the county were basicallythe same, it felt like the city
(21:35):
either did not care or had noreal power over the ability to
correct these issues either.
And as a employee who works fora city that takes up a good
chunk of our county, a lot ofpeople don't know to reach out
to the county, so we get a lotof calls that have to be managed
by the county.
You would think that citypeople would have more control
(21:56):
over that.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (21:57):
Yeah, it's super weird and then it's
confusing for residents and,considering the amount of
grifters who have been involvedin both city government and then
state government but then lessobviously also in county
government, what you have is alot of people like blame gaming
each other so that there's noteven really a traceable line to
(22:23):
follow when you have a grievanceor a problem or there's a clear
legal violation.
Jennifer Hiatt (22:29):
Many of the residential blocks in Detroit
have empty lots where housesonce stood.
Of course and I have been toDetroit a few times and,
honestly, the impact of justseeing this kind of neighborhood
devastation is profound.
I will not ever forget thefirst time I was visiting a
friend Uber took me through hisneighborhood and his was one of
(22:49):
only like seven houses standingin a three block area.
I remember it.
So can you talk about how itimpacted your perception of your
neighborhood when you werefirst there, but then, of course
, the city as a whole?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (23:01):
Yeah, for sure.
And I will start byacknowledging that there is a
part of me that loves whenthings get that weird, like all
of the sudden to have a clearlyhousing-oriented neighborhood
like many of the spaces inDetroit were one of the most
populated cities in sort ofyears past be just decimated to
(23:24):
the point that they're often,you know, one or two houses
separated by several yards on ablock and then just nothingness
or overgrowth, or sometimes ahouse that is about to be torn
down or that is on the list tobe torn down will be sort of
overgrown and there will be atree coming through it or
something.
And that is on the list to betorn down will be sort of
(23:46):
overgrown and there will be atree coming through it or
something, and that is anaesthetically fascinating
situation that is alsosociologically a absolute,
terrifying nightmare.
It felt often like I had beendropped into some horror movie
or some science fiction moviewhere all of a sudden everyone
was gone, but also their houseswere gone, like all history of
(24:08):
people was gone, and you knowwhat that means.
I think for a lot of peoplethat live there to feel that
expanse of weirdness is thatyou're constantly reminded of
the loss of the people in thecity who couldn't survive the
constant pummeling from the citygovernment and the county
(24:30):
government and left, went to golive with family elsewhere,
tried their luck renting in adifferent part of the country.
But I think when you don't livethere, it's very easy to
experience it on a purelyaesthetic level, unless you are
an urban planner or someone whosort of pays attention to stuff
like that.
And so then we had stuff likethe ruin porn that made in 2014,
(24:54):
made Detroit such a popularplace for urban spelunkers, who
really didn't acknowledge theloss of human lives and culture
and vitality that those thingsrepresented.
Yeah, so that's a complicatedone, because it is really unique
.
It's like driving through theBadlands, which I you know, I'm
from South Dakota and I alwaysforget, before I get to the
(25:16):
Badlands, that it is gutting,it's jaw dropping and a similar
thing would happen every otherday in Detroit, and also that it
represents a very seriousproblem that needs to be
addressed, still to this day.
It needs to be addressed.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:33):
Yeah, we've talked about herbicide on this
podcast before or theintentional destruction of
cities, most often associatedwith war, but that's generally
how I felt going through some ofthat.
And my friend had one requeston the whole vacation.
It was that I did not take anypictures of any of the ruined
buildings because the ruinedporn was so popular at the time.
(25:55):
Yeah, he was like please justshow my city in a light that
doesn't look like that, becausethere are a lot of beautiful
things about Detroit too, sofeel that that, because there
are a lot of beautiful thingsabout Detroit too, so feel that,
yeah, absolutely it is.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (26:10):
It's a.
It's an incredibly complicatedthing.
I think now it's evened out alittle bit.
That's ruined.
Porn does not necessarily driveinterest in the city, but it is
something that we have to havea much stronger ethic around
thinking about and talking aboutwhen we, when we do so.
Stephanie Rouse (26:22):
I feel like we've made it quite far into
this conversation withoutbringing up gentrification when
your book is called Gentrifier.
But you point out early in thebook that your role in
gentrification is complicated.
Towards the end of the book itbecomes more clear why.
Can you explain why it's not asstraightforward as a commonly
understood definition ofgentrification?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (26:43):
Absolutely .
I mean, gentrification istricky, in the first place
because no one means the samething when they use the term.
Really, there's sort of acommonly understood notion of it
, often about white peopleliving in places of visible
poverty.
That is sort of understood tobe a sense of gentrification.
(27:04):
And then the potential formoney to start flowing through a
place that has not seeninvestment in a while.
And those are both like awalking around with your pals
kind of like you point to thefanciest house on the block and
you're like, ah, gentrification.
But that really only describesa very slim portion of what
gentrification looks like andhow it operates.
(27:26):
And what I began to see at firstwhen I moved into the house was
that nobody had wanted to livein my house.
It had gone up for sale severaltimes.
So the city gave it to theorganization for a dollar $500.
(28:06):
I don't remember what theinitial investment was, maybe it
was $5,000.
And then to support the programof giving that house away to a
writer.
So then it's a more complicatedthing than someone going in and
trying to take a step back evenfurther to figure out how the
city had come about acquiringthat property in the first place
.
And that's where I thinknotions of the house that I was
living in had been at one pointabandoned, and then it had been
(28:29):
put under a foreclosurenotification, but then it was
sold in a somehow murkyoff-the-books way from some guy
who saw it and had keys to it,apparently, who then sold it to
a woman named Tamika Langford.
And Tamika Langford bought it,entirely believing that she was
(28:50):
participating in an above boardlegal exchange of money for
property, and then continued tomake regular payments on the
back taxes that were owed whichwas why it had been foreclosed
on in the first place or wasunder foreclosure in the first
place and paid her down paymentand the whole thing.
Every time she made a paymenton the taxes would visit the
(29:15):
county office.
The county never bothered toinform her that, in fact, this
was a house that was alreadyunder the foreclosure property,
was a house that was alreadyunder the foreclosure property,
and so, at some point, withouther knowledge or consent, the
property was then relisted onthe auction website and put up
for sale again.
Now, that was the first timethat it was up for sale in the
(29:39):
2010s.
I think that happened in 2012.
And then it went up again thenext year, in 2013.
It was given to theorganization that gave it to me
in 2014, I believe.
So then, the question of how wethink about gentrification in
relationship to this particularproblem set of experiences is
(30:00):
that the city was going to takethat Black woman's house, no
matter what, and they were goingto ensure that someone with
some kind of status or power orrenown would move into it, and
so they gave it to someone.
Who was going to give it to awriter, right?
I'm not convinced that theybelieved that all of the writers
(30:21):
would be white, and we were not, but the city saw a way to get
rid of someone they saw asundesirable and bring in someone
that they thought was gonnamake their lives easier.
I'm sorry, I just said the city, and I mean the county, and
like it's all really complicated, deliberately complicated so
that I can never give you theclear answer, but the bottom
(30:44):
line is that gentrification, tomy way of thinking now, is a
series of systemic policies thattry to push out people in
poverty and bring in people withsome kind of privilege, whether
that's racial or financial orcultural or whatever, and that
is something that I definitelyparticipated in without being
(31:08):
aware of any of the existence ofa single one of those
structures.
Jennifer Hiatt (31:13):
Yeah, actually one of the questions you posed
pretty early on is ifgentrification is the
replacement of lower incomeresidents of a home by
middle-class ones, or folks ofcolor by white folks, or of
immigrants by non immigrants.
Is it possible forgentrification if there's no
competition for housing?
But in reading your follow uparticle, there really is
(31:34):
competition for this housing insome way.
Originally I was like, well,were you able to reach some kind
of conclusion on that question,but now it's like it's a whole
separate question.
Like you said, it's about thesystems that are working against
people, not necessarily thecompetition for housing that is
there.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (31:50):
Yeah, and I talked to Tamika Lanford
specifically about that house.
Do we want to talk about waysof making sure that we can get
you?
You know that house had beensold by then.
But like, do you feel likethat's what you need to to be
done with this?
And she sort of said, yeah, I'mowed a house, I am owed a house
(32:13):
by the city and she completelyat one or two, maybe three tops,
you know, with interest.
But she was in deliberatecompetition for my exact house
(32:36):
in a process that was absolutely100% shielded from me until I
went through a whole legalprocess to clear the title and
then another whole process totrack her down, even though I
had been told she was dead inthat legal process to track her
down, convince her to talk to meand get her story on tape.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:48):
Yeah, it took effort on your behalf and I'm
also a lawyer, so I get reallymad when the legal process is
used to protect people, and Iknow it always is.
But what if it wasn't you right?
What if it was somebody who wasjust happy to go through the
quiet title process with a lawfirm?
That's suspicious at best.
With what was there.
It was like quiet titlecom,yeah yeah, and you could have
(33:13):
just moved on with your life andyou could have just been like
okay, well, I got the house andI sold it, and if you hadn't had
a journalistic instinct tocontinue forward, this would
still be happening with thatparticular house and nobody
would be even aware of whathappened here.
Like we would have just rippeda house from someone and no one
would have been the wiser.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (33:33):
Yeah, and that obviously does happen every
single day.
Still, I was shocked that noone wrote about the quiet title
process.
I was shocked that no one wroteabout it as a follow-up to the
Detroit housing crisis, which,whatever, it's not like that's
over.
But I have been shocked thatthere's been no light shown on
the quiet titling processbesides what I committed to
(33:54):
paper myself.
And yeah, it's because when youare in the situation where you
need to quiet a title, you justwant to pay your money, get it
done.
You're like already in legal andpossibly financial straits and
you just you got to believe yourlawyers, because they're
lawyers, they don't lie to you.
Except for that, my lawyer toldme a woman was dead when she
(34:16):
was in fact alive, and kind ofangry at me, angry at them.
That's kind of the thing thatmakes the sort of Detroit
housing crisis so complicated isthat the system itself is
deeply corrupt, filled withgraft and cruelty and
problematic as hell.
But then there are theseindividual companies that pop up
(34:38):
to like snake their way throughit and make a buck off of the
confusion and the overwhelmingspeed of the county's
foreclosure decisions, and thoseare the people that want to
kick the journalists out of theroom, right?
That's why we don't know thatthis happens all the time.
Yeah, so it's a very, verymultifaceted like that.
(34:59):
It's just going to take yearsand years and years to clean all
that up so that it's bothcomprehensible and fair and you
know that there's anytransparency to it.
Jennifer Hiatt (35:10):
I had hoped that the Supreme Court case, the US
Supreme Court case.
It went up on foreclosuresbecause in the city of Detroit a
woman's home was foreclosed onover a very small amount of
money, like $900 that she had inback taxes, although she
thought she was up to date onher taxes because, again, no
(35:31):
notice, and then the countyforeclosed on her and then sold
her house for hundreds ofthousands of dollars and then
kept all of that money throughthe court system, which, by the
way, michigan courts did notnecessarily support her.
In that claim, which was againwild to me she hadn't had the
(36:01):
resources to take it all the wayto the Supreme Court and get
the ruling that they got, whichwas that's a takings and you
cannot just take people'shundreds of thousands of dollars
for $900 in back taxes.
We wouldn't be aware again thatthis was happening.
But also that didn't bringpeople to the realization of
what was going on.
We have an entire Supreme Courtcase about it and yet nobody is
(36:22):
like what the hell is happeningover there or in any other
small town.
It's infuriating obviouslyInfuriating.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (36:28):
I will add something to your fury that
when I published the piece inthe Guardian it was immediately
sort of seen as like elucidatingand frustrating and did sort of
shed light on a bunch ofaspects of this stuff that we
did not understand.
And then, pretty soonthereafter there was a targeted,
(36:50):
mostly Twitter campaign thatsort of then spread to other
forms of media to denounce thepiece and me, which then
suggested that I kill myself,and it was sort of picked up by
bots in a campaign that sort offollowed the timeline and
(37:11):
structure of the campaignagainst Amber Heard and the
Johnny Depp case, which then itturns out is something that is
just, is a service that you canpurchase.
It's something that you canprovide as like a PR fix.
I don't have any evidence thatthe county was behind this and
it starts to sound like aconspiracy theory, but the
(37:33):
campaign did spread from socialmedia to my unlisted phone
number and then I had peoplecalling me and giving me my home
address.
So I did have to leave town fora couple of weeks.
I did have to have an armedguard watching my house and
during that time I could havebeen promoting this, talking
about the ideas, whatever.
I was essentially silencedfairly permanently on this and I
(37:57):
think that changes the game alittle bit.
As I said, I don't have anyevidence that the county was
behind this, but I did FOIAinformation.
I did a FOIA request forinformation about me personally
and Tamika Langford after thepiece came out, and there was
all sorts of obfuscatingtechniques that were thrown in
(38:18):
my face, and so I also don'thave any evidence that they were
not involved in something likethis, and I think that is a real
problem.
When we start to think aboutthe potential and the ease with
which governments that are notoperating in the best interests
of the people are then usingcontemporary media campaigns and
(38:41):
threatening and harassingtechniques to shut down dissent,
then we have a much, much, muchbigger problem than like your
urban policy sucks.
Then it's like your urbanpolicy is meant to destroy
people's lives and to profitfrom them for as far as they can
into the future, and that isyour policy.
(39:01):
It's not just failing, it's tomake people as miserable as
possible so they leave and youcan sell the land for much more
money.
So that's my, you know, sort ofshort diatribe about how the
reason that we don't end uphearing about a lot of this
stuff is because there are a tonof ways that the people who are
sort of thinking about andwriting about this stuff get
(39:23):
silenced, in addition to itsounding kind of boring.
You know like I want to writeabout the quiet title process.
Well, no publication on earthis going to let me do that.
Publication on earth is goingto let me do that.
Stephanie Rouse (39:34):
Well, and also on that I mean, and through your
experiences, you highlight thedifferences.
I think everyone that followedwhat's happened in Detroit just
understands that it's themortgage companies that
foreclosure was mainly happeningbecause of their unethical
practices.
But it really wasn't.
It was a lot of the taxforeclosure and it was the
county that was more responsiblefor displacing all these
(39:56):
families during that time.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (39:57):
And still today it sounds like yeah, and I
think you know there has beenan organization pushing legal
reforms forward for housingrelated issues for years and
their efforts just keep gettingstymied.
But it is true that, like,where this whole magilla of
problems becomes hopeful is whenyou realize that like, oh,
(40:20):
these are actually public policyissues and there are
theoretically ways of respondingto that in a democracy.
It's just that is also a longprocess that doesn't really give
people the immediaterestitution that they require.
Give people the immediaterestitution that they require.
Jennifer Hiatt (40:34):
So, as we've been discussing, ultimately,
after many issues regarding yourquote, unquote free house,
which, by the way, was also like$20,000 in roof repairs you
were able to sell it and moveaway from Detroit and I think
it's fair to say that it seemslike the experiment with the
organization ultimately was notsuccessful.
But would it have been?
Do you see a scenario wherethis type of program could have
(40:56):
been successful in areas thatneed to bring in people for
excess housing without all ofthe corruption?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (41:03):
When I wrote the book I did.
Part of the reason for writingthe book in the way that I wrote
the book was to have somethingthat could kind of feed a
conversation about ethicalhousing for artists.
But the fact that theorganization itself fell apart
immediately when I moved inmeans that that wasn't ever
going to be the correctconfiguration of people, and I
(41:25):
would also say that theorganization did not fully
comprehend the array of issuesbehind this and so didn't do the
policy advocacy, economiceducation, neighborhood
investment, campaigning thatwould have been required to make
something like this work.
While I saw a way for that to betrue in 2020 when I was writing
(41:49):
the book 2021, I do not believeit is possible now because we
will have to reinvigoratesupport for the arts, which is
going to take a really long time.
We will have to reinvigorate aconversation around equitable
access to housing.
We will have to resolve therest of the housing crisis
(42:11):
before we start getting toquestions about like, where are
artists going to live?
And then I think we also aregoing to have to do a lot of
education and thinking andfeeling around how we interact
and respond to our neighbors.
I am just currently not feelinglike housing for artists is the
number one priority, butobviously it is my number one
(42:32):
priority.
So it's complicated, likeeverything else I've said today.
It's just complicated.
Stephanie Rouse (42:39):
And as this is Booked on Planning, in addition
to your book, which we alwaysrecommend our listeners check
out, what other books would yourecommend our readers get a copy
of?
Anne Elizabeth Moore (42:48):
Well for sure Matthew Desmond's Evicted
is absolutely bedrock here forunderstanding any sort of
housing policy whatsoever.
I had read that several yearsbefore the Detroit situation
even was on my radar, but thenalso after the Detroit situation
was on my radar and I moved toNew York, I experienced eviction
(43:11):
a couple of different times andthat book was constantly
churning in my mind.
It just described the processand the emotional toil and
expense so well that I thinkthat everyone should read it.
But absolutely for sure it hasto be bedrock for urban planning
, as well as Brian Goldstone'sNew there Is no Place For Us,
which does a really excellentjob of tracking several families
(43:35):
as they experiencehouselessness in Atlanta.
You know, carrying the storiesof individual people living in
real cities I happen to think isthe most important way to
develop effective policy.
But also keep in mind that I'mnot an urban planner, even
though I secretly would love tobe.
Stephanie Rouse (43:54):
What's interesting is our author from
two episodes ago suggested thatsecond book.
There Is no Place For Us, andI'm pretty sure we've had
evicted a few times because itis an amazing book.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:04):
Amazing.
He's on my favorite podcast,which is this Is when it Gets
Interesting.
Matthew Desmond is the featuredinterviewer for this week, so
Well, anne.
Stephanie Rouse (44:14):
Thank you so much for joining us on the show
to talk about your bookGentrifier memoir.
Anne Elizabeth Moore (44:19):
You are so welcome.
I really really enjoyed it.
Jennifer Hiatt (44:23):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author and Elizabeth Moore onher book Gentrifier a memoir.
You can get your copy throughthe publisher at catapult books,
or click the link in the shownotes below to take you directly
to our affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
Booked on Planning.
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