Spaulding Court gets charitable

Spaulding Court is certainly a lot of things to a lot of people--the most intimidating building in Detroit, an incubator of good ideas, a community asset, an engine of change in the neighborhood--but for a dozen or so hardy souls, it's home.

We've done a lot of good over three years at Spaulding Court but we still have two occupied units with no heat.

This summer, the residents of the court and some nearby neighbors sat down, did some consensus building and figured out how to address this challenge. The plans we hatched were set in motion this morning at 9am as a dedicated crew began working to renovate a unit that will be home for our iceboxed residents.

We're running on a 4 week schedule and have 2 weeks of funding to get us going. For the most part, we borrow the money we need to work at Spaulding Court but this project doesn't generate much in the way of a return.

Since we're doing this for a long time resident who has lived through hell and is a senior citizen trying to raise an extended family, we figured that this was the right time to solicit donations.

There are no shortage of good causes in the world, but this is one is about as tangible as they come. We've got $30,000 to put together this week or else we'll have a lot of fellows sitting on their hands and a family sitting out in the cold.

Visit our campaign and make a donation today. Send it around to your friends and family. If we get this right, this is one more family that will be warm for Thanksgiving.

http://www.indiegogo.com/buildspaulding

Jon
jon@spauldingcourt.com

Can I get a little more clarity on what you're doing with the $30K? You state you already have funding to cover two weeks of work, so does the $30K you're looking to raise get spent on the one unit in the last two weeks of the project?

That seems like a lot of money to get heat in a single unit.

You can buy and rehab an entire single family home in Detroit for $30K.

So here's the longer story.

For the last couple years, Josephine at Spaulding has been living in a unit without heat. The pipes are on their last legs, kitchen is shot...etc. As we emerged from our cashflow and utility crisis this spring, it quickly became clear that Josephine's place was the job we needed to tackle next and that we needed to get it done before wintertime.

But it gets complicated. Her strong preference was to stay in the unit while major work was done [[demolition, electrical, plumbing...etc). This notion was maybe partially driven by a fear of displacement but I think mainly had to do with the quality of the individual--you don't end up the last tenant in a scary ass place by getting out of your house when there's trouble.

The crew at Spaulding worked on this problem all summer. We put together a list of 4 options, the work around yourself, two different shuffling around options and even a 4 day blitz with 200 volunteers and a tent city in the court.

Ultimately, we all agreed that one of the shuffling options was the best way forward, so it may sound a bit strange, but here you go:

The plan is to rough out and make basic improvements to a currently vacant unit. The total cost of this work is in the $30,000 range. Further, the idea is to get it done in 4 weeks so that Josephine can get warm before it gets too cold.

Once the switch happens, we'll start work on her current place [[all sorts of reasons for this one) and do pretty much the same improvements so that the tenant can get back into her place and finish the job as she sees fit. This will cost an additional $30,000.

All told, this is a $60,000 job. Half of it is doesn't produce much in the way of revenue [[per a long term rent control deal we are working through now). The place we're currently working on to serve as winter housing will eventually go to a individual or group that pays more in the way of rent while also doing a lot of the finish work.

Basically, we decided to solicit $30,000 in charitable contributions since ultimately, half the project is charitable. Then, we'd borrow the remaining $30,000 since the revenue generated from the other unit could offset debt payments.

Hopefully that makes sense.

As for the two weeks funded, it would have been more accurate to say that we'll run out of cash two weeks in. None of this was funded when we started but we knew that if we didn't start right away, we were really pushing our deadline [[Thanksgiving week). We've received a fair number of donations so far and will continue solicit them until we hit $30k.

We'll also be seeking $30,000 in loans [[we borrow from individuals) in the near future, but for now, one thing at a time.

Sorry for the long response!