Last month, I proposed snatching up 60 or 70 houses in Detroit with the money we’re planning to spend on a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Guess what? A bunch of artists are buying up the town.
Buying that first house had a snowball effect. Almost immediately, Mitch and Gina bought two adjacent lots for even less and, with the help of friends and local youngsters, dug in a garden. Then they bought the house next door for $500, reselling it to a pair of local artists for a $50 profit. When they heard about the $100 place down the street, they called their friends Jon and Sarah.
Admittedly, the $100 home needed some work, a hole patched, some windows replaced. But Mitch plans to connect their home to his mini-green grid and a neighborhood is slowly coming together.
KEN WHEATON 
That’s a pretty fantastic idea. I wish family, friends, and work weren’t on the East Coast otherwise I would so do it.