The Metro: Can Detroiters heal without waiting on the system?

On Detroit’s east side there’s a two-story brick house that sat empty for a long time. It took three years of fundraising and about $100,000 to fix it up. It’s called the Healing Hub and kids come there to do their laundry, use a computer, get tutored — and sit in a circle and talk about what’s happened to them.

There’s also a refrigerator in the front yard, another one out back, and a deep freezer inside. Those stay stocked around the clock, and people come overnight — some of them with nowhere else to sleep.

Earlier this year, the calls for that food got to be more than four people could handle. Whatever they put out was gone in a day. So they raised money, and about a week later they hosted a free grocery store pop-up.

The group is Detroit Heals Detroit. It started in 2018 as a writing project in a high school English class: some teenagers and their teacher. Now they want to scale their free grocery store popup across Detroit.

Sirrita Darby, co-founder and executive director of Detroit Heals Detroit, joined Robyn Vincent to ponder a big question: How much can be done to make change outside the system, and how much needs to happen within it?

This story originally aired on Sept. 2, 2026.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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