The Metro: Kendall Werts shares lessons from growing up in Detroit’s Jeffries Projects
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The Woodbridge Estates apartment complex is located on the site of the former Jeffries Housing Projects near the Lodge Freeway in Midtown.
Today on The Metro, we continue our conversation about the untold experiences of living in public housing on the heels of the opening of the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago.
The Jeffries Projects in Detroit are gone now — bulldozed and redeveloped like many other public housing developments. But for Kendall Werts, they live on.
He grew up there, in a world shaped by closeness: grandmothers cooking for a crowd, kids packed into twin beds, neighbors passing ingredients through open doors. It was public housing, but it was also public joy, public survival, public love.
Today, Werts runs The Jeffries — a creative agency that’s named for the place that raised him. It’s more than a name. It’s a memory. A map. And a reminder that even in places society was quick to discard, beauty thrived.
He joined the show to talk about what it means to come from a place like that— and to carry it with you wherever you go.
Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.
More stories from The Metro on Thursday, May 15, 2025:
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