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How Long Do You Think
You’ll Stay Here?
I
’ve lived in Detroit for a little
over two years and, in that time,
I have been asked at least once
a week how long I plan to stay. I get
the question from people back home,
understandably: my parents in New
York, my extended family, my college
friends, most of whom
live on the East Coast
and have never been to
Detroit.
But here, too, the
question is a constant
from my friends, local
and transplanted, from
Lauren
Hoffman
community members
and parents of friends,
from colleagues and casual work con-
tacts, from neighbors. The questions
range from “Wow, what are you doing
here?” and “Do you like it here?” to
“How much longer are you going to
stay?” and “When do you think you’ll
go back to New York?”
I distinctly remember when, upon
meeting a local rabbi early in my time
here, the rabbi explicitly expressed that
I wasn’t worth significant investment
of time or emotion because I would be
here for two years at most.
I want to make sure I’m communi-
cating how strange this is: For more
than two years I’ve lived here, and at
least weekly I am asked when I will
leave. I hear similar things from other
transplant friends, with the exception
of those who have moved here to
join their Detroit-born life partners.
I haven’t experienced anything like
this anywhere else, and I
notice that my friends liv-
ing in New York and San
Francisco do not encoun-
ter this.
Part of it, to be sure, is the
fact of being newish and of having
no family ties to this place;
e; part of it
is the assumed itinerancy of early
adulthood. But part of it, I believe,
is a sinister, subtle and deeply
eply set
sense of regional inferiority.
ty. I am
asked when I will leave because
cause it
is believed that I would not
ot want
or actively choose to stay.
Southeast Michigan is used to
young people leaving. For decades, our
universities graduated tens of thou-
sands of students straight to Chicago,
the Bay Area and New York; if they
returned, it was years later, to raise
children near supportive parents.
Even as the outflow measurably
slows, the transplant from another
city remains a relative rarity. We are
less and less unusual with each pass-
ing year, but there is a lasting element
of undue excitement at finding that
someone comes from elsewhere. I
find that it opens doors in a way that’s
unwarranted: My opinion on local
affairs I may know nothing about is
asked and respected, just being from
New York becomes a credential on
job applications; new acquaintances
are illogically impressed upon hearing
only where I am from.
Thinking about graduate school
in my future, I am observing that a
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degree from out of
state carries mysti-
fying cache that no
amount of local net-
work-building
work-build
l ing g out-
weighs.
w
we
e i ig g hs. It’s assumed
ass
ssum
umed
e
ed
that I am
th
m or will soon
be bored,
b ored
d, that I will be
elsewhere
pulled els
lsew
ewhe
h re
r by better
b tter
be
e opportu-
opp
portu
t -
nities or simply because I’ve tired of
a study-abroad-esque experience in
Michigan.
This is deeply insulting to Detroit
and people who are from here and stay
here. It reveals serious underestimation
of Detroit as a place where someone
might want to move and stay and live.
Frankly, it suggests that I should leave
— that I am passing up these unidenti-
fied opportunities elsewhere or, that by
staying, I’m negatively impacting my
social capital, even locally.
And when Detroit born-and-raised
people, with their deep and expansive
local networks, assume new kids won’t
stay, they implicitly choose not to form
deep bonds or welcome newcomers
into those networks, creating a subtle
isolating effect that perpetuates the
divide and shallowness of engagement
that ultimately makes it easy to leave.
The belief that Detroit “isn’t good
N OT T I N G H I L L
of W EST B LOOMFIELD
Lauren Hoffman is a millennial transplant to
Detroit, works at Rock Ventures and is actively
involved in the Detroit Jewish community.
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enough” is ludicrous, but contagious.
We will need to move past that narra-
tive if we want to be the kind of city that
attracts talent, that embraces the migra-
tion of a young and ambitious global
workforce, that creates the kinds of
professional, residential and educational
opportunities that make people, wher-
ever they are from, want to stay and that
provides a viable option for young peo-
ple to settle more permanently.
As the city and region build the lit-
eral and social infrastructure to match
and compete with coastal megacities,
we need to consciously eradicate the
self-deprecation from our vocabulary.
World-class cities do not assume that
people will leave them.
This is not a promise that I will
never move. By the way, the answer
I give to the question of whether I’ll
stay is that I love it here, that I have
never been so compelled or fascinated
by a place, and that I plan to spend
many years working in and on Detroit,
though not necessarily contiguously.
The questions we ask and the
answers we give matter, and I hope
that my answer is enough for my com-
munities here to think investing in our
relationships is worthwhile, enough
to feel that I’ve chosen this place as
enthusiastically as I have. Detroit is a
place worth choosing — let’s treat it
and talk about it that way. ■
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jn
December 20 • 2018
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