Who We Are
Brick and Mortar collective is a non-profit housing Co-operative association in Detroit. We provide affordable room and board to activists, artists, educators, community builders, organizers, and students. The Field Street Block Club is a medium to resource the community. We organize around prevention of home foreclosures, access to affordable co-op housing, urban farming, eviction defense and community production made possible through 3D Printers and other technologies. Both Brick and Mortar and the Field Street Block Club are affiliate organizations of the Charlevoix Village Association.
What We're Doing
The Brick and Mortar Housing Collective and the Field Street Block Club are partnering to support our shared vision of collective, community focused housing. For a year our organizations have been working on a vision of what collective spaces could be, and after a series of proactive actions and conversations,we’re excited to announce our partnership!
Our goal is to support existing collective living practices in our community by building and promoting collectively owned homes (commons). These homes will serve as affordable living spaces, while also supporting sustainable places to increase neighborhood resiliency, support education and organizing efforts.
Collective Commons, Now More than Ever
In the pursuit of this goal, our organizations have begun renovating a pair of homes on Detroit’s east side. Our two projects are in slightly different places. Brick and Mortar has been working for over 18 months to renovate our collectively owned home, and we estimates that we are just $5,000 away from completing initial repairs and making the space livable. The Field Street Block Club's Sheridan St. house is a new project of the more than 50 year old organization. Having acquired the property we estimate that we need roughly $10,000 to complete repairs.
As we observe the rise of the far right in connection with the surging wave of foreclosures, evictions and gentrification in the city, we believe that collectively owned, democratically run spaces like these are more necessary than ever.
All money donated will go toward supporting these two projects.
Values
We are aspiring feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist organizations. We work to manifest these values in our standing rules, application procedure, meeting structure and organizational culture. We do not simply want to live affordably in Detroit, we want to be part of the process of collaboration, resistance and building meaningful, impactful connections in the city.
We value art, education, sustainability and solidarity. Group discussions on politics are commonplace and we seek to push ourselves and encourage one another to be better people everyday. We aim for our spaces to not only house members, but also community meeting spaces, small scale libraries, computer services, workshop stations and more!