Free Housing

When you have vacant homes, squatters are sure to follow.

The first of thousands?

Detroit vacationer, property owner, and lovable dreamer John Law. (Photo by Scott Beale.)

Note to all Flint real estate agents: A rakish West Coast gent by the name of John Law seems like an ideal candidate to purchase some Flint property. After all, he just bought a "vacation home" in Motown:

"It’s a small but comfortable three-bedroom house in good condition that sits on a shorefront plot of land along the banks of an actual river," John writes at laughingsquid.com. "The location is serene, and the price was right — the whole thing cost less than a new Cadillac Escalade. A lot less, actually. But that was only part of the appeal. Just as important to us was the idea that Detroit is poised to become a laboratory for the latest social trend: The Greening of America.

"Sure, Detroit may be the scariest place you can think of to live or even visit. Or is it? With the decline of the American auto industry, over seventy percent of the city’s populace fled to the burbs between 1966 and 1990. For those who remained, heroin and crack cocaine savaged the city’s neighborhoods. Yet when everyone else moved away, most of the thugs did too, leaving huge swaths of once-dense urban blocks very nearly depopulated — and quite a bit greener."