Boulevard House


The Boulevard House, now the Southwest Detroit Community House, is located in Southwest Detroit, Michigan and situated right on the Boulevard, in the articulation of Mexicantown, Mexican Village, and Hubbard Farms. It is the University of Michigan's settlement house, providing space for praxis among community scholars, community activists and residents. Since it was established in mid-2012, the Boulevard House has been used to create a place-based space to develop projects, engage community and support social change.

History of the Settlement House Movement

The Boulevard House reflects the traditions and approach of the settlement house model in U.S. social work. Inspired by England's Toynbee Hall, the approach was adopted in the United States in the late 1880s and 1890s with such organizations as Stanton Coit's Neighborhood Guild, Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement and Jane Addams' Hull House. The term "settlement house" mirrored a belief that community outreach should be done from within a community, and the houses provided a residential and community space for those working on local social issues. Original settlement houses often taught adult education and English language classes, provided schooling for immigrants' children, organized job clubs, offered after-school recreation, initiated public health services, and advocated for improved housing for the poor and working classes. In most modern iterations, settlement houses evolved into community centers and no longer provide residential housing for its workers. United Neighborhood Centers for America is the current settlement house membership organization and estimates there are 150 active settlement houses in the U.S.

Purpose

The Boulevard House works for the needs and benefits of the neighborhood and larger community, using the models of community-based participatory research and empowerment evaluation. Using these models, the Boulevard House is a space for observation and discussion, creating opportunities for community engagement, action and change initiatives. It is based in community-embedded praxis, which identifies five aspects of social change needed to produce positive and sustainable effects on the social, political and economic systems. Those aspects include comprehensiveness, synchrony, integration, long-term perspective, and inclusiveness.
In addition to the above, the Boulevard House adheres to certain practice principles and integrates ongoing community feedback and discovery. The principles of practice are as follows:
  • Recognize community as a unity of identity
  • Build on strengths and resources within the community
  • Facilitate collaborative, equitable involvement of all partners in all phases of the research and practice
  • Integrate knowledge and intervention for mutual benefit of all partners
  • Promote a co-learned and empowering process that attends to social inequalities
  • Involve a cyclical and iterative process
  • Disseminate findings and knowledge gained to all partners
  • Involve long-term commitment by all partners

    Call to Action

Source:
Between 2008 and 2011, the economic downfall of Detroit affected community service programs. Detroit is increasingly recognized among critical social policy theorists as one of the first industrialized, Western democracy cities dramatically emerging from a post-industrial to "neostructural" society. In Detroit, new forms of governance are emerging through a local experience of painful abrogation of democratically elected municipal leadership. Population declines resulted in fewer federal and state resources supporting the traditional range of community services; for example, Detroit's Department of Public Health and City of Detroit Human Services closed, with services eliminated or outsourced to the private sector. Only a few programs survive and thrive through mergers, and many more community programs dramatically reduced services, merged or are in the process of closing.
In response, a group of residents, university faculty and social workers began looking at other Detroit neighborhoods which were successfully working to maintain quality of life. As a result, the collaboration applied their knowledge of the settlement house ideal and potential for community work, creating a settlement house reflective of the 21st century.
This creative opportunity fit well with the engagement interests of CBI Scholars. The Community-Based Initiative is a fellowship program at the University of Michigan's School of Social Work, begun in 1999. It works to create and sustain community and social change in urban cities, neighborhoods and communities, with a specific focus on Detroit.
The Boulevard House was launched in summer of 2012 with a vision of providing project-based learning and engagement with the surrounding community. Invited to settle in the vacant property owned by People's Community Services, the project was funded by the UM School of Social Work. The concept developed with a project team at University of Michigan and a core community committee. The initial stakeholders included: Larry Gant, Maria Cotera, Tom Cervenak, Mike Garcia, Mary Luevanos, Lisa Luevanos, Diana Rivera and Gloria Rocha.
Boulevard House is a call to action to the community, CBI scholars, and all community allies to engage in creative, positive, self-determined change from the ground, up.

Programs

2012-2014

One of the strong initial project partners, El Museo del Norte, opened the exhibit, We Will Be Heard!, at the Boulevard House in 2013. This was followed in 2014 by the current exhibit, Las Rebeldes. Preparation for these exhibits involved partners at the University of Michigan and in the community, and they collaboratively completed a lion's share of renovation work inside the house. El Museo has been a primary presence and mobilization force at the Boulevard House for the first year, and drew support from Maria Cotera, Elena Herrada, Jennifer Peacock and Mick Kennedy.
The Stamps School of Art & Design also initiated an art exhibit in spring of 2014, Una Vida Linda by Rolando Palacio, which required additional, continued UM and community partner support in preparing the space.
Over the summer of 2014, Nick Tobier and Larry Gant used funding through MCubed to host a Detroit-native artist-in-residence, Alana Hoey.
In 2014, University of Michigan held several Detroit-based courses at the Boulevard House, including locating the SSW Community-Based Initiative program classwork on site. SSA&D and the School of Music, Theater and Dance also held classes on site.

Current

After some assessment and evaluation throughout Fall 2014, the direction of the Boulevard House emerged as one which explores a major social theme specific to Southwest Detroit: the theme of contested proverbial and literal ground in a highly heterogeneous community with a number of waves of immigration, strong enclave identities, and immense development pressures associated with large-scale projects, such as highway construction and land use for a new transborder bridge.
As part of its praxis, the Boulevard House chose to engage this theme through a number of theoretical and practice models in order to engage different individuals in relevant ways. A great emphasis has been placed on art as a tool of expression, because it allows participants to express the deepest and most fundamental elements of human experience. Boulevard House's programming has been carefully crafted to occupy a niche not currently filled and which appears to be relevant within the community.
Current 2015 events include a weekly open discussion group which focuses on Detroit social issues and politics, Kaffe Politik; a quarterly event which features a themed exhibit, music and a panel, Salon Saturday; a monthly event which features a critical film on social policy, Social Cinema; ad hoc scheduling for planning Hubbard Farms events, neighborhood watch meetings, or other community-driven organizing and education; and weekly University of Michigan Social Work classes for the CBI program.

Critical Exploration of Project Challenges

The Boulevard House has experienced a number of challenges that continue to be integrated and addressed. For the first two years, the Museo del Norte project was the strongest presence in the space. El Museo featured exhibits with publicized openings and received strong community support; however, lack of consistent access to the exhibits and infrequent events compromised the space as a destination or community presence. Because el Museo was Boulevard's House primary user, it was unclear that the Boulevard House had its own mission and goals which were distinct from any one project under its roof.
However, the Boulevard House's larger mission and goals remained largely in planning stages, due to lack of staff and funding. In Fall 2014, elements finally combined to allow a more directed presence and programming. A project plan was created which prioritized completing initial remodeling work inside the space to optimize areas for galleries; office space to support community scholars in their applied research; and overnight residential space for graduate students, faculty, activists, and allies who were engaged in Detroit. This first project stage was impacted by tensions around ownership and control of the space among partners and the landlord. As this was being resolved, the renovation stage was terminated entirely, following the landlord's notice that the building was being put on the market.
With UM's long-term occupancy now in question, the program team regrouped and moved forward immediately with implementing the second stage of the project plan - creating programming within the space. The new circumstances raised interesting questions about how to create place-based space when the "place" was uncertain. While creating logistical ambiguities which must be managed, the situation mirrored critical questions about changes taking place within Detroit: What does it mean to occupy space which is tenuous as an indirect result of economic politics? Who has claim to the city and how is that expressed through land policies? In looking at occupancy, what does it mean to be authentic and legitimate, and whose voices govern the determination? If Boulevard House must relocate, does it relocate to another Southwest location or elsewhere in the city - and what questions does that raise about the service constituency of Boulevard House or effective strategies around being a transformative partner?
Applied scholars affiliated with the Boulevard House actively engage with these questions and others as they move forward with programming and project development.