Urban Blight Gets a Paint Job

  • One of the abandoned houses that a group of artists has covered in "Tiggerific Orange" paint to get the attention of city officials in Detroit. (Photo courtesy of the artists... who wish to remain anonymous)

Football fans are gearing up for the bright lights and glitz of this year’s Superbowl in Detroit. One event that won’t make the halftime show is a tour of the city’s dilapidated and abandoned buildings. They’re everywhere. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Guerra reports on a group of artists sneaking around late at night hoping to draw attention to the urban decay:

Transcript

Football fans are gearing up for the bright lights and glitz of this year’s Superbowl in Detroit.
One event that won’t make the halftime show is a tour of the city’s dilapidated and abandoned
buildings. They’re everywhere. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Guerra reports on
a group of artists sneaking around late at night hoping to draw attention to the urban decay:


When you drive around Detroit, you can’t help but notice the abandoned buildings. Houses with
caved in roofs and charred out insides line the streets. I met up with Christian, an artist who’s
been living in Detroit for the past 15 years. He says when people from the suburbs drive into
Detroit… they don’t see a city so much as a burnt out chasm, and that’s not the kind of symbol
he wants associated with his hometown.


“I just think that the symbol of a burnt out abandoned house is a horrible symbol to grow up
around for the kids in the city. Some people have to look at beaches and mountains, these people
have to live with this sort of symbol of defeat. You almost feel like a social responsibility to do
something about it, you know.”


So Christian, along with his friends Jacques, Greg and Mike grabbed some smocks, a bunch
of rollers, and gallons of orange paint, but not just any orange paint… this is the shockingly
bright, stop-you-in-your-tracks kind of orange paint that you can’t help but notice… it’s called
Tiggerific Orange. And with that, the artists headed out in the middle of the night to paint their
first abandoned house. It should be noted here that what the guys are doing – trespassing and
vandalizing property – is illegal. So they’ve asked that their last names not be used…


Around 3 a.m. – while painting their first house – Christian noticed that they had some
company… the police:


“Well I was outside and they came by and he said ‘what are you doing?’ And I said we’re painting
the house. And he said ‘why?’ And I said because it needs a paint job, and he said ‘Have at it
bro!’… and he drove away… and it was like all right, cool!”


From there the guys went on to paint eight more houses around the area. They’re very choosy
about which houses to paint. The structures have to be residential and clearly abandoned. Also,
they have to be in a high traffic area.


(sound of cars driving by)


Mike – one of the painters – took me to a side street above two freeways. There, the artists had
recently slathered Tiggerific Orange paint on six abandoned houses clustered together.


“You wanna go closer? Just watch your step…”


From pretty much every angle along the freeways you can see all six houses. Each has fallen
victim to arson. Tires, wood planks and garbage cover what was once somebody’s front yard.
Even some of the debris is splashed with orange paint.


“There’s part of the floor that is fallen and is now perpendicular to the ground…so we painted
the underside of that floor…”


Through the windows you can see dirty, old-looking stuffed animals litter the floor. Mike says he
sees that kind of stuff left behind all the time.


“Families used to live in these buildings and now the buildings are not worth enough to tear it
down, the property’s not worth enough to bulldoze, and that’s not a judgment on the city or anything. I wish
it was worth someone’s time to bulldoze. If I had the resources to do that I guess I would, but all
I can do is spend a couple hundred bucks on paint.”


Mike would need a lot more than a couple hundred bucks to bulldoze those houses. Amru Meah
– the Director of Detroit’s Building and Safety Engineering Department – estimates the average
demolition cost for a residential building to be somewhere around 5500 dollars.


“No city could actually effectively demolish every building that became an eyesore or in bad
shape because you could actually have a situation where you gotta whole bunch of buildings… so
you’d run around and try to demolish two, three, four thousand buildings a year. That’s not
realistic.”


But the Tiggerific Orange paint is working. Of the nine houses painted so far, two have been torn
down, and according to Jacques – one of the guys with the orange paint – putting pressure on
city officials and creating awareness are huge motivators.


“People will drive by the houses on the highways and they’ll kind of catch a glimpse of it, but
they’re on the highway so they just drive right by. So the next time they go down the highway
they might remember, ‘oh my god, I want to look for that orange house!’ And so as they’re
looking for the orange house, they’re looking for all the other houses in turn. What that does is
that that raises sort of an awareness of what’s going on, and as we’ve already seen as two houses
have been destroyed: awareness brings action.”


But, as Jacques points out, four guys can only paint so many houses on their own:


“One of the beautiful things about the project is that it’s such a simple move. All we’re doing is
taking a roller, taking a paintbrush and painting the façade of a house orange, and it’s already
had so many ramifications. So, you know actually we would encourage anyone out there who feels the desire
to do it to just go pick up a roller and paint a house.”


But keep in mind… just because the police let the orange painters off the hook the first time…
doesn’t mean they’ll be so lucky in the future.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Keeping Resources Safe From Terrorism

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water resources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water sources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The terrorist attacks prompted alarm across the nation, and even people in areas that will likely never be the targets of terrorism are wondering aloud about their vulnerability.


Peter Beerings is the terrorism prevention coordinator for the city of Indianapolis, and speaks on the subject across the nation. Beering says because the U.S. has such great wealth well beyond its cities, it is vulnerable.


“We have vast expanses of natural resources, forests, parks, things that we consider to be natural treasures are just as easily national targets. But, it is important, I think, to remember that while we are vulnerable by virtue of our size, that this is not particularly something of interest other than to, perhaps, a single issue aggressor.”


By single issue aggressor, Beering means these areas aren’t likely to be the targets for international terrorists, but are occasionally targeted by fanatics for single causes. For example, forest fires have been ignited to protest development near wilderness areas, and an extortionist threatened to poison the water in Phoenix.


A small town about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis also has been a target of a terrorist group. Dave Rollo sits on the Bloomington, Indiana Environmental Commission. Last year, environmental terrorists repeatedly hit Bloomington, destroying highway construction equipment, burning a house under construction in a sensitive watershed, and spiking trees in a nearby state forest to prevent logging.


“It really brought terrorism home to a small town such as
Bloomington when this sort of activity usually takes place elsewhere. So, I think that public officials, especially, had to rethink many things about how we– how Bloomington has to safeguard the community from these acts.”


Rollo says one thing is certain. Bloomington lost its complacency about the possibility of terrorism. After a period of fear and confusion, the city is now struggling with the proper security measures.


“How does one go about safeguarding a forest from deliberate arson, or how does one go about safeguarding a water supply the size of Lake Monroe which is the largest lake in Indiana. It’s an enormous challenge.”


And it’s a challenge that governments have been unwilling to talk about publicly, at least until now.


Jim Snyder is a researcher at the University of Michigan. At the direction of the President’s commission on critical infrastructure protection, he co-authorized a report on protecting water systems, possibly the most vulnerable target. But instead of getting information to the water purification plants across the nation, the government buried it, fearing that it might cause panic or give radical ideas.


“Some ten years ago we wrote a manual on how to secure water supplies for the EPA, but because they’re always worried about getting that notion into the public eye –which of course now any of these things are in the public eye– but they basically decided not to distribute that manual.”


Snyder says the manual outlined simple things, such as an emergency response plan, locking gates in sensitive areas and securing wells, and having guards on duty at water plants, things that would dissuade vandals or disgruntled employees. However, Snyder says, there’s little to prevent a determined terrorist with the right knowledge from poisoning a water system, undetected with contaminants small enough to fit in a backpack.


“It is certainly possible to put something in the water (which would go) which would be odorless, colorless, tasteless, uh, and not detected. And, your best indication that you have a problem are sick people or dead people.”


The terrorism prevention experts say no one can predict or prevent all acts of terrorism. But cities and utilities can make it more difficult, and that might be enough to dissuade some of these single-issue aggressors. Peter Beering in Indianapolis says natural resources have one more thing going for them.


“The good news is that these are comparatively uninteresting targets to an aggressor. And, as we learned, unfortunately, in New York and in Washington, that certainly there are much higher profile targets that are of much greater interest to people who are upset with the United States.”


Beering adds that should not be an excuse to ignore the risks to natural resources. He recommends every municipality assess its risks and take proper measures to secure its vulnerable areas.

KEEPING RESOURCES SAFE FROM TERRORISM (Short Version)

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The experts say although a determined attack by a terrorist probably cannot be stopped. Security measures can be taken that would cause them to look for an easier target. Jim Snyder at the University of Michigan has co-authorized reports on water protection for the defense department. He says natural resources such as community water supplies and forests can and should be better protected.


“There’s lots of security measures that can be taken that are, compared to the value of the asset, is relatively minor expense. So, I suspect, because of this latest incident in New York and Washington, that there probably will be a renewed attention to all kinds of infrastructure.”


Snyder and other terrorism protection experts urge local governments to assess their risks and secure vulnerable areas. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.