From Colonization to Crisis: National Chaos, Detroit Action.

A Learning and Dialogue Session with FutureRoot & Building Community Value.

Detroit’s housing crisis did not start with rising rents or interest rates. It was built over generations through policies, planning systems, and financial practices rooted in colonization, racial hierarchy, and dispossession.

Those forces shaped Detroit’s land, neighborhoods, and corridors. They determined who could build wealth, who was pushed out, and whose communities were left to carry the cost.

Join Jessica A. S. Letaw and Yodit Mesfin Johnson of FutureRoot, alongside Chase L. Cantrell of Building Community Value, for learning and dialogue that traces the path from colonization to today’s housing crisis and asks what justice requires now.

Together we will examine how these histories continue to shape redevelopment, speculation, vacancy, and neighborhood change across Detroit. We will also challenge the worldviews beneath our housing system: land as commodity versus land as relationship, profit driven development versus community rooted stewardship.

This session moves beyond surface policy debates. It invites a deeper reckoning with the systems that built our current landscape and a conversation about how community power, healing, and repair might guide what comes next.

Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how Detroit arrived at this moment and practical ways to shift the future of land and housing toward justice.

When: Thursday, April 16, 2026 | 10 AM – 12 PM

Where: Marygrove Conservancy, Brownstone Community Room, 8425 McNichols Rd.
Detroit, MI 48221.

Cost: Free. Suggested donations are welcome.

• $25 for Solidarity - Ideal for those needing a more accessible rate to participate.
• $45 to Sustain - This option helps sustain the program’s ongoing operational costs.
• $60 for the True Cost - Provides workshop participation, materials, and refreshments, covering the actual cost of delivering the workshop, including facilitator fees.
• $75 for Redistribution - Covers workshop participation and materials while also helping fund access for others.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher FutureRoot