Press Archives

Detroit's Housing Crisis Is the Work of Its Own Government

Vice News

The city overtaxed homeowners for years. Those who couldn’t pay are still feeling the pain.

People Are Making Big Money Kicking Detroit Residents Out Of Their Homes

Vice News / HBO

A VICE News HBO piece on Detroit's tax foreclosure problem, including an interview with Loveland CEO, Jerry Paffendorf, at the Loveland office in downtown Detroit

Quicken Loans aims to help 65,000 Detroit households avoid tax foreclosure

Detroit Metro Times

Through the "Neighbor to Neighbor" effort, QLCIF and the United Community Housing Coalition will partner with about two dozen community groups and nonprofits to reach some 65,000 Detroit households behind on their taxes by yearend. The door knockers will notify homeowners of assistance available and then point them to upcoming workshops where they can get help applying for the programs.

Tech, Open Data Are Crucial in Long-Term Recovery Following Hurricane Harvey

Government Technology

Rosenburg says that with Loveland, his volunteers can go door to door, stand in front of a home, answer a series of questions on a device, and feed accurate information to a database in real time, along with pictures that precisely illustrate damage. SBP can then use that data to direct volunteers, and, perhaps more important, to show governmental response agencies at all levels exactly what’s happening on the ground and who is still in need. Simply put, mapped GIS data is a vital reference.

Who owns that house down the street? “Flint Property Portal” goes live with answers

East Village Magazine

Flint residents have a new way to find and report information about properties in the city–from who owns them, to demolition status, to building conditions–thanks to a new website that went live Aug. 21.

How Mapping Disasters Can Help Devastated Communities Rally

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Beers said one advantage of using the mapping software is that she can analyze the data in real time, making critical information available to volunteers and other relief organizations almost instantaneously. “They could see the results without me having to take my computer all over town,” she said.

New Technology Helps Tackle Blight in Bibb County

13WMAZ

“There are a lot of people who actually want to get involved. They want to buy properties. They want to revitalize Macon, so it helps with the conversation of we want to improve our community,” said Dixon.

Opinion: We can do something to stop tax foreclosures

Detroit Free Press

Auctioning these homes tends to lead to vacancy and dereliction. Eventually, they will need to be demolished. The auction works against three of Duggan’s major goals: grow the population, eliminate blight, and don’t push out poor people.

Loveland mapped every foreclosed and auctioned property in Detroit since 2002

Detroit Metro Times

We all know tax foreclosures are a problem in Detroit, but this map from Loveland Technologies really puts the horror of the situation into perspective. Shown are all of the properties that have been foreclosed [and auctioned] in the city over the past 15 years.

Mapping Detroit, Inch by Inch

New York Times

Loveland’s ambitious project cannot fully solve the problems vacant and abandoned properties have wrought in the Motor City, but it shows how technology can be used as one tool among many in solving the seemingly intractable challenges of urbanism.

Researchers find Detroit Public Schools have struggled from the beginning

Michigan Radio

John Grover and Yvette van der Velde co-authored the report, A School District In Crisis. We’re walking through Hutchins because the authors think it’s a classic example of how nearly 200 buildings have been closed in the last 20 years, how neighborhoods have suffered because of the empty buildings, and how the Detroit School District continues to spiral downward.

The Blight-Fighting Solution for Saving 40,000 Detroiters From Eviction

Next City

Jerry Paffendorf thinks he knows the secret to reducing vacancy in Detroit — and he wants to be the city’s next tax auction czar.

Detroit Battles Blight Through Crowdsourced Mapping Project

Forbes

Thanks to Loveland Technologies’ Motor City Mapping project, neighborhood groups, city officials and potential property developers can check the precise condition of almost 400,000 buildings.

Mapping Detroit

re/code

In Detroit, says Loveland Technologies CEO Jerry Paffendorf, “Underlying every other crisis in the city was an information crisis.”

We need to rethink foreclosure in Detroit

Detroit Free Press

For years, we have asked: How much is it worth? How much can you get for it? These are the wrong questions. The standard by which every property decision in Detroit should be gauged is this: What impact will it have on the neighborhood?

Hamtramck and Highland Park to Begin Surveying Blight

dbusiness

"This application is going to revolutionize what the city is doing — making compiling and combating blight so much easier."

Survey to assess Highland Park, Hamtramck properties

Detroit News

Beginning Monday, residents in Hamtramck and Highland Park may see surveyors canvasing the streets — smartphone in hand — to capture images and assess the conditions of 13,000 parcels in both cities.

Mapping Blight in Detroit?

Here and Now

The company’s programs and databases give Detroit “x-ray glasses” on its troubled properties, allowing authorities to start rebuilding and investors to find opportunities.

How Detroit has streamlined its fight against blight

PBS

We want blexting to be part of what it means to be a citizen. You mow your lawn. You take out the trash. You blext properties in your neighborhood.

Detroit and Big Data Take On Blight

Bloomberg View

Impressed with Paffendorf's zeal, the city's Blight Task Force, established by President Barack Obama and funded by foundations and the state Housing Development Authority, hired his team to visit every property in the city.

'Blexting' (blight+texting) app enlists community to help Detroit fight blight

mlive.com

Now, with the Motor City Mapping project’s Blexting app live, anyone can “blext” a property to keep the information on the city’s 378,723 properties updated, while also providing a tool for the DLBA and the Blight Removal Task Force in informing its decisions.

Residents in Detroit get trained to use smartphone app, help update blighted property database

Fox Business

Several other cities, including Chicago and New Orleans, have shown some interest in the app based on how it's been used in Detroit, said Lauren Hood, community engagement manager for Detroit-based Loveland Technologies.

The Post-Post-Apocalyptic Detroit

The New York Times

The lack of good information was standing in the way of rational decision-making. When problems could be mapped, Paffendorf believed, they came to seem less hopeless, more explainable, more fixable. Hence the idea behind Loveland.

Detroit Maps Entire City to Find Bad Buildings

NPR

Lauren Hood works with Loveland Technologies, a company that developed a new way of mapping Detroit. They call it "blexting"

A Picture of Detroit Ruin, Street by Forlorn Street

The New York Times

“If you know how to work a cellphone, you could do this,” said Tamera Smith, who described herself as a mother studying to be a medical assistant who does hair and nails on the side. She reached out an open car window to take a picture of a shuttered business, then rode on to the next place.

LOVELAND's Passion: Battle Blight

Crain's Detroit Business

Few people on the committee had heard of Loveland, let alone that Paffendorf was a mastermind behind the campaign to manufacture and install a 10-foot-tall bronze statue of Robocop.

10 Most Innovative Companies in Local

Fast Company

With its mobile app Blexting (that's blight + texting), the Detroit-based company is powering Motor City Mapping, the first attempt to catalog the condition of every piece of property in the city.

A Stunning Visual of Detroit's Tax Situation From Why Don't We Own This

Curbed

Starting Friday morning, users will find a new, more powerful WDWOT, with added features and information. And it's right on time -- this year's foreclosure map is absolutely terrifying.

Wayne County Foreclosed Property Auction: Jerry Paffendorf And Alex Alsup Talk No Property Left Behind

Huffington Post

Building on that, why not clearly show people where they are, what they are, let them talk about them, apply for them, consider best options, offer contracts to clean, build or deconstruct them? Then migrate the successes of that to dealing with the city's other 120,000 or whatever number of vacant lots and buildings. That's part of our focus with Why Don't We Own This? and we're ready to work with any level of government that can make it happen at scale.

Deal With It, Detroit

Huffington Post

With properties freshly left-over from the auction, there's a total logic for why they should be tracked and managed this way, serving as a sort of virtual land bank. Successes from the approach can then be applied to the tens and tens of thousands of other empty buildings and vacant lots not at this auction.

Online tool helps buyers navigate auction

Detroit News

"We are trying to build a better Detroit through transparency," he said. "The city is just so bad at that. There is an uninformed people and an uninformed marketplace, which makes it somewhat impossible for a democracy and a market to function properly."

Expect More Detroit

Huffington Post

I recently met up with Jerry P. holding a roundtable discussion at a bar called PJ's Lagerhouse, where each night that week, they had posted up for hours and invited anyone interested in learning more, contributing opinions, or spreading the word. Keep in mind that they stand to make zero dollars from the sale of any of the homes.

Wayne County To Hold Tax Auction On Foreclosed Properties Starting June 22

Huffington Post

For those who want to streamline the process, the Detroit-based tech startup Loveland Technologies is offering a free online service that provides information about the auction's properties at whydontweownthis.com, which features an easy-to-use interactive map and Google Street View images of properties.

The Rust Belt Revival: What's Happening in Detroit, Michigan

Details

Making this information transparent, Paffendorf reasons, will spur the sale and repair of properties—a vital service in a city where more than a third of all residential parcels are vacant.

Detroit Civic Engagement Grants Award Groups $65,000 From Knight Foundation, CEOs For Cities

Huffington Post

LOVELAND Technologies is planning a project called Imagine Detroit Together, a technological and organizational infrastructure that allows Detroiters to link up with one another rapidly for large-scale demonstrations of unity.

Jerry Paffendorf Wants To Transform Detroit Real Estate, Make Some Cool Stuff

Huffington Post

"You try things and some work, some don't, you retreat back into your shell a little bit, and then you try again," he says. "I try to just listen to people, go to neighborhood meetings. Social permission goes a long way. You'll get smacked if you don't make friends, don't put in some time to get people's stories."

Bidding Insanity: Buying Auction Properties In Bulk

Curbed

Ever been at the Dollar Store and thought, what the hell, give me that WHOLE SHELF! Such is the mentality that might apply to this round of the Wayne County Tax Auction's High Roller List.

Nonprofit to be foreclosure auction stand-ins in Wayne

Detroit News

That interactivity helped one city resident sidestep a potential auction disaster. A visitor to the site saw Michael Lee's metal finishing business on the auction list and posted a message about it.

Make Sense of The Wayne County Tax Auction With This Map

Curbed

So thank goodness for LOVELAND Technologies and its founder Jerry Paffendorf who found this presentation of info wildly inadequate. "Someone needs to make this clear. Otherwise it's just a phone book."

The In Crowd

Metro Times Detroit

Either one incredibly wealthy entity buys you or a whole bunch invest in the success of your project without the legal sense of ownership and controls. The latter option is all about spiritual equity. - Jerry Paffendorf

LOVELAND and the Imagination Age

Huffington Post

The Inches are a powerful metaphor for units of measurement in a shrinking city. The project is a collaborative hybrid-reality experiment, with the idea being that the crisis faced by Detroit is so massive that an inch is a simple platform on which to build, the same way a seed can become a tree.

#140 Characters Conference: Making 'hope porn' frame-by-frame with 'Lemonade: Detroit'

mlive.com

Boston-based filmmaker Erik Proulx is working to tell a story of rebirth and reinvestment in Detroit, and to complete the project he's asking individuals to fund the project. Frame-by-frame.

Wringing Art Out of the Rubble in Detroit

The New York Times

In June a group including Mr. Paffendorf of Loveland spent $1,000 for two abandoned houses across from the vacant Michigan Central Station, a symbol of Detroit’s decline, and, along with the Packard plant, a must-stop on any hardscrabble tour. They renamed the buildings — shells filled with debris and a few squatters — Imagination Station and hope to transform them into an artists’ enclave and green space.

Raze one, raise one

Metro Times Detroit

The Imagination Station is exploding from the ashes of a firebombed flophouse standing — barely — in the shadow of Detroit's abandoned, antique train station. Painted colors splash from a second story window, and people congregate on the lawn to plan the future.

Sim City Detroit

Detroit Moxie

Detroit has real problems and in addition to all the necessary ground work it needs new online and mobile solutions for connecting and empowering people and communities, increasing transparency, fundraising, mapping, planning, globally showcasing the great local work of the less internet-savvy, making it fun to participate in reinvention, and so on down the line.

Jerry Paffendorf on Imagination Station

WDET Craig Fahle Show

A New Micro-Colony For Detroit

PSFK

We went through appropriate city channels to try and purchase a specific lot for that but have been temporarily held up by who-knows-what city decision-making process, so the physical land for Hello World has yet to fully manifest. But that’s OK! It’s all part of the inchventure, and we promise to secure the land that people inchvest in as soon as we can.

At $1 a square, people get to use imagination

Detroit Free Press

Jerry Paffendorf, who spearheads a project to sell square-inch plots of land in the city, is building on the project's healthy Internet buzz to throw a bash Saturday at the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue and the adjacent Café D'Mongo's Speakeasy.

Save Detroit! One Inch, One Dollar at a Time

Fast Company

Then there's Loveland, Jerry Paffendorf's "wild social network of people, literally built out of the dirt." Paffendorf bought a vacant lot for $500 and sold it, an inch at a time for $1 per inch, to almost 600 "inchvestors" around the world. It's called Plymouth.

Inchvesting In Detroit: A Virtual Realty

NPR / All Things Considered

Paffendorf says Detroit is a place of opportunity and creativity. He shares an optimism about the city and his project with Ricki Collins. She's 9 years old and lives next door to the empty lot Paffendorf bought. Hers is the only house left on the block. "I want people to remember this place. Remember it. And I want people to come over so we can get to know each other, learn new things about each other," Ricki says.

LOVELAND Is Rebuilding Detroit Through The Internet, One Square Inch At A Time

Motherboard.tv

One of the innovations here I think is that just as easily as you could buy a bag of virtual fertilizer at Farmville on Facebook, you could have an actual property, even if it is Loveland terms of ownership. That is a way you could make a whole bunch of ownership and redevelopment pretty seamless. We’ve got to find ways to make land ownership more simple, cheap, fun, and social. And then highly creative.

$1 later, I own part of 'Loveland'

Detroit News

I told him I plan to put a tomato plant on my square inch. The stem itself would take up about that much space, and if any adjoining landowners or passers-by want to help themselves to a tomato, that'd be fine with me.