I just bought a house in Rivertown and I'm looking to do a variety of deferred maintenance and restoration tasks. Unfortunately I'm having a number of instances where various contractors [[e.g. firewood, heating/cooling, flooring) claim not to service my area. These guys are all no more than 15 or 20 minutes from my house, and their 'service areas' extend 30+ minutes into the outer 'burbs. It's pretty clear to me that some combination of racism/overblown fears of safety is keeping them out of the city [[one guy told me he services all of metro Detroit except Detroit and Pontiac...like, wtf). I should add that I am a white male, and have only communicated with these people via phone or email.

Has anyone else experienced this? How do y'all handle it? I'm not from the area, and while I've heard about some city/suburb animosity here, what I've repeatedly experienced just blows my mind. And it's doubly bad, because unfortunately not many qualified contractors are willing to locate inside the city to begin with.