Detroit Neighborhood's 'Crackhead Infestation' Sign 'Changed'

DETROIT (WJBK) - It is the little neighborhood that's trying. The problem is, nobody's helping -- except for the arsonist who torched the crack house.

It is the working-class district on the southeast corner of Eight Mile Road and the I-75 Service Drive that made international news last month after FOX 2 publicized its citizens' very loud cry for help. A hand-painted billboard visible from the highway that read: WARNING THIS AREA INFESTED BY CRACKHEADS.

"I knew it was going to pop," said Andre Ventura, the creator of the billboard. "It summed up all the negativity in Detroit. Everybody's got a crackhead story. Except nobody from the city came out here and did a damn thing. No mayor. No city council. No nothing."

What Ventura did get was threatening phone calls and objections from embarrassed citizens asking that he post something more positive about a city down on its luck.

So now, Ventura has posted a new sign that reads: WARNING: CHANGE IS INEVITABLE. WE'RE PLANTING THE ROOTS OF A COMMUNITY TO REVITALIZE DETROIT.

And to prove the point, Ventura has started a community garden across from the sign on Cardone Street.

The crackheads are gone, he says, not because the cops cracked down but because somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through the window.

"I'm not crying about it," Ventura said with a giggle. He's a father after all.

But a handful of other buildings in the neighborhood have also been torched. These are crackhouses. They are abandoned playthings where children amuse themselves with matches and cans of gasoline.

"We don't got crackhouses on this block, we got new troubles who've come to the neighborhood," said Jack Fuqua, who lives a few blocks over on Hull Street.

"We got speculators buying up these houses at auction and leaving them to rot. They don't care what goes on here where people live. Kids get inside them and burn them up 'cause they got nothing to do."

And to prove the point, he pointed to the house kitty-corner to his own, a hole in the roof and scorch marks out the windows.

The house next to Fuqua's was purchased for $500 after his neighbor was forced to walk away. The brick Cape Cod was purchased by BGE, LLC and is being sold for $1,500.  Problem is the company never secured the property, Fuqua says. The windows are shattered, the back door missing, the fuse box stolen. Someone recently backed a flatbed into the side yard and dumped it. The sink inside is gone. So is the plumbing. But someone left a wig. The company has properties in the neighborhood in similar disrepair.

"It was a good place a year ago," said Fuqua, a former Chrysler line worker who was laid off and wears a cap that reads: DETROIT HUSTLES HARDER. "The city is a good place. It never did no bad to no one. The problem is that there's too many people who don't care about nothing but themselves."

I called BGE, based in Lathrup Village. A man named Broadway Benjamin insisted that the company meticulously maintains its properties. "The challenge is once it's secured, we get squatters. It's Detroit. It's that element."

Perhaps, but it doesn't excuse him ignoring his properties, leaving their upkeep to men like Fuqua and Ventura, I told him.

Benjamin promised to come to the neighborhood to mow and board his properties within 48 hours. We'll make sure.