DEARBORN — Many Dearborn residents refer to “Dix,” an area located just south of Michigan Avenue, between Miller Road and Wyoming Street, as if referencing an area that is detached from the City.  If you ask some of the estimated 7,500 people, who reside in this area, they too will admit that they feel like they’ve been on their own for decades now.

Wyoming Street, filled with graffiti and garbage, is a common trucking route.

Only two main routes exist to enter Dix through east Dearborn. One includes driving through an industrial area, via Wyoming Street, which also serves as a daily truck route.  Potholes along this route are large enough to cause damage to smaller vehicles, and graffiti is prevalent in various areas, notably under a train track bridge. In addition, the scent of sewage and burning rubber continues to pollute the air, due, mostly in part, to the numerous steel mill factories that surround the residential homes in this area.

Some residents in Dearborn admit that they wouldn’t dare cross over into the south-end of the City from the second main access point on Miller Road, simply because they fear the instability of a bridge that connects to Rotunda Drive and serves as the only route between the south-end and the City’s west side. The bridge in question has collapsed before, in the late 90s, resulting in several injuries. Since then, it appears that the bridge has been left mostly in disrepair, with the City only re-constructing certain areas that were affected by the initial collapse. 

Once a driver passes the bridge and the steel mill factories that follow, they enter an area that could be perceived as a completely different town, mostly populated by Yemeni-Americans, who reside in the area and work at the local factories, grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants and mosques. This area of Dearborn appears to be closed off from the rest of the City.

Last week, a south-end resident wrote an open letter to The Arab American News, describing his experience as a south-ender in the City of Dearborn.

“I feel like I am living in Dodge City, or Tombstone, Arizona. The noise from horns and the smell of burning rubber from tires fill our streets 24/7. These streets are striped with black tire marks.   People complain in some cities when police are called and they show up a day, or two late.  Unfortunately, in the south-end, they never show up at all, despite numerous calls from the citizens,” Mohamed Saleh stated in his open letter.

Above: Children ride their bicycles on Dix Ave.

Another resident who lives in the area tells TAAN that the pile-up of garbage in Dix has increasingly gotten worse in recent years; So much so, that all she has to do is look out her window to validate that statement.  Her house is located next to an empty field, which has become a dumping ground for both local children and adults. She says that it took the City of Dearborn months to send out a clean-up crew, even though they were contacted on numerous occasions. 

However, while some residents have pointed the finger at the City and its lack of attention to the area, other residents believe that it ought to be up to locals to turn around the area. William Ali, a lifelong resident of the Dix area, tells The Arab American News that local organizations have failed to come together to really drive an initiative that would implement some change in this area.

“There are so many Yemeni-American groups established here, yet there is a lack of participation from these organizations.  We shouldn’t be depending on the City of Dearborn, but instead, there should be more cooperation within these organizations. Parents need to take more responsibility, and the local organizations who claim to represent our community need to take responsibility as well,” Ali said.

Ali believes that many of the children growing up in the Dix area are detached from the rest of Dearborn. Fathers work 10-12-hour days, and mothers, many of whom don’t drive, are housewives, who stay at home to cook, clean and take care of their younger children. Many local teens and pre-teens roam the area’s neighborhoods unsupervised, which can be troubling. 

“The problem is that they aren’t sitting down together to try to help these kids, and it can be confusing for them. No one is telling them that it’s wrong to do graffiti.  No one is teaching them to clean up garbage. It should be our job to instill more pride into these kids. I just don’t see that happening with the local organizations, or even within the Dearborn Public School district,” Ali added. 

Ali, who works for the recreation department at Lapeer, which is the only neighborhood park in this area of the City, plans on taking some initiative himself.  He has established a Lapeer Park Association, which will focus on creating sports clubs for local children to get involved in.  He says most of these children barely ever leave the south-end in the first 13-14 years of their lives, during the time when they attend Salina’s Elementary and Middle Schools.  But when it comes time for high school, they are required to attend Edsel Ford, located on the west side of the City, and many of them begin high school unprepared. 

“The Dearborn Public Schools need to take initiative with kids in the south-end from a younger age. Such a big percentage of Yemeni Americans experience a culture shock when they leave this community. They are not leaving with the education and exposure to diversity that is needed to adapt with other kids at other schools,” Ali stated.

A steel mill factory is visible in the backdrop in one of the south-end’s neighborhoods.

The disconnection between Dix residents from the remainder of the City is only one of the main issues at hand. Air pollution continues to be a main issue of concern in the area, which includes three steel mills, an oil refinery and a wastewater treatment plant.  In 2012, Wayne State University’s Public Health Science’s Department began research in the south-end, attempting to correlate asthma rates with the area’s poor air quality. The study is ongoing and could take an additional year or two to be completed, as air samples and data on the health of local residents continues to be collected.

What is already known, however, is alarming. The study has already determined that the rate of asthma hospitalizations in the area is more than double the average throughout the State.

Unfortunately, even residents who have attempted to take action in the past against the poor air quality in the Dix area seem to no longer have a voice.  Some allege that residents who complained about their declining health to the City have been silenced, or paid off to keep quite. While no documentation of these allegations have come to light, many residents are aware of this matter, or at the very least, speculate that it has occurred. 

ACCESS (The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), which is headquartered in the south-end, is not aware of such allegations, although they have consistently conducted their own research and taken pro-active measures to maintain the health of local residents. The organization initially conducted research about ten years ago and found that 15.6% of children who reside in the Dix area had asthma problems. 

They are currently assisting Wayne State University in their ongoing study, and by the end of next year, they hope to have conducted research on at least 200 households in the area.

Salina school is located right near a factory.

“We need to continue monitoring this stuff. Ten years ago, we really made an impact with that study,” said Dr. Adnan Hammad, the Director of ACCESS’s Community Health and Research Center.  “Ford Motor Company was listening to us, and they were truly engaged in developing projects and technology that would be more efficient against disbursing particles into the air. When they improve the technology, there is potential for it to become more efficient and less dangerous.” 

Dr. Hammad says that while the quality of life in this area of the City is poor, the factories that surround it have made a long lasting economic impact, by providing jobs to thousands of local residents in and around the Detroit area. Having the factories go away would be a tricky situation, he explains.

“It’s unfortunate that the Dix area has to sacrifice environmental justice for economic justice, but we have to find a line in the middle somewhere, where we can intervene, educate and take preventive measures to try and stop these particles from reaching our children and families. Do you want a community without jobs, or do you want a community with jobs that include risks in environmental factors attached to it?  This is really the struggle that the south-end community faces.”