How a blue-collar Ferndale became metro Detroit's gayborhood

Ferndale didn’t set out to become anybody’s gayborhood. It grew up early in the twentieth century as a tidy, working-class streetcar suburb, just over the Detroit line at Eight Mile. It was the kind of place full of small brick bungalows built for auto workers. The transformation came later. You can trace a lot of it to one building on West Nine Mile Road.

That’s Affirmations. Local activists began organizing in 1988, and the center was formally established in 1989. It started with meeting space and a toll-free helpline, then grew into a lasting community institution. In 2007, Affirmations opened a purpose-built, 17,000-square-foot home on Nine Mile in downtown Ferndale. Today it offers counseling, support groups, health services, and youth programs under one roof.

A center like that becomes a gathering point. Residents found services and one another there, while nearby businesses and events made the downtown more welcoming. Ferndale voters approved a human-rights ordinance in 2006. In November 2007, they elected Craig Covey, who took office in 2008 as Ferndale’s first openly gay mayor and one of the first in Michigan.

The old auto-worker bungalows are still there, many now with rainbow flags out front. Affirmations and the city’s public choices did not create Ferndale’s whole turnaround by themselves, but they became visible parts of a community that made belonging part of its civic identity.