Larry Mongo
With gentrification comes some pain and higher prices and displacement.
Alysa Offman of the Metro Times reports:
When Larry Mongo talked to The Detroit News shortly after he and his wife Dianne received court-ordered eviction notices from the historic Himelhoch building after operating businesses there for 30 years, he struck a note that many other black business owners echoed.
"It's not the bad times that killed us," Mongo told the paper in January. "It's the good times."
The turnaround in that area of Woodward Avenue has been swift, and with a boon of real estate deals, new businesses, and fresh faces has come the conversation every neighborhood has on the topics of gentrification, race, and wealth. It wasn't just fellow African-American business owners who sided with Mongo but folks of every color who have continued to live and work in their neighborhoods through the ups and, more often, downs.
The Metro Times mentions some store owners who have been displaced from their storefronts.
In some instances, there are different versions for the eviction.
Gerald Watson, owner of the Mo Better Blues soul food restaurant, says the landlord was racist and wanted to move a white tenant in his space. The landlord says it was all about Watson failing to pay rent for a year and not paying the utilities.
