By Simon Albaugh – YAN- Hamtramck
Down a side street of one of Hamtramck’s main roads, the neon lights for Trixie’s Bar adds vibrant color to the late nights. It’s one of many Hamtramck bars situated throughout the city’s neighborhoods. But in its own flair under a sort of dive-bar personality, Trixie’s prominently exhibits the dichotomy of longtime owner Ian Perrotta.
Back in March of 2009, Perrotta was sitting down to TV with his brother. He had just finished his degree from a branch campus of the University of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, where he was born. His childhood was spent traveling for his father’s work, military psychiatrist.
2009 was the time when fabled $500 houses in Detroit made headlines across the country. On that program, the reporter followed someone who bought a house, sold it to one of their friends, and then bought the house next door.
“I told my brother, ‘see that’s what I’m talking about,’” Perrotta said. “You can buy a house and live in a house on the same block as your friend. You just do what you please and you’re not tied to an expensive mortgage.”
Soon after, Perotta found a craigslist advertisement for 50 houses bundled under a price tag of just $75,000 – or just $1,500 per house. Perrotta bought five houses under the reduced price, thinking that he could give four of them away.
“At first I was planning on doing a kind of nonprofit thing where I ended up buying five houses and then fixed them up,” Perrotta said. “Four I would give away, and then the people who got the houses would be semi-professional people.”
Almost ten years after first buying the houses, Ian calls it a pretty crazy idea. “The kind of idea you get when you don’t really have an idea about how things work as you might later on in life,” he said.
But unlike the headlines around the country, Perrotta had what could’ve been the worst of luck. Three of the houses didn’t last, with two burning down and one being demolished. The others he either leased until ownership or gave the title to someone in the area who taught him trade skills.
But was it a failure? In the strictest sense of the word, Ian says yes. But in a way, he says it wasn’t.
“I feel like we had a positive impact on the neighborhood in the sense that we helped stave off the decline and actually brought people into the community that weren’t in it,” Perrotta said.
Around this time, Ian started his political career. But when his name first appeared on the Hamtramck City Council ballet, Ian says he didn’t do anything to campaign. Because his mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and needed care.
“[My brother and I] were back indefinitely at the time because we didn’t know how long it was going to last,” Perrotta said.
It wasn’t until 2013 that his first campaign posters showed the documentation of the work he did on those houses. Maybe people recognized him from making homeowners or saving one person’s house from a foreclosure auction and then giving it back to them.
Perrotta didn’t win the seat. But he did get the next highest votes in the election. And when the winner of the election passed away in 2015, Perrotta took his spot under the rules for replacing a deceased Council Member.
But in Ian Perrotta’s time as a Council Member, he’s been the subject of a controversy. Many in the Bangladeshi and Yemeni communities saw one comment about sanitation in the city as insulting to migrant populations in the city.
In an article for the Detroit Free Press, Perrotta apologized for the comments, being quoted saying that he “didn’t mean to disparage any group.”
Throughout the difficult process, he’s been under threat of censure – a formal statement of disapproval – from the other Council Members. But throughout that difficult time, Perrotta said he still held support from many in the diverse Hamtramck population.
“Even at the height of that controversy I feel that I had a cross-cultural coalition of support from the various groups in Hamtramck,” Perrotta said.
A quick search of Facebook comments from this time about Ian Perrotta and sanitation in Hamtramck show that his statement was accurate. Still, it was a comment that seemed to divide the city.
But since taking office in 2015, he’s done a lot for Hamtramck. Representing the city in International Delegations, condemning President Donald Trump’s policies as racist and bigoted, and strengthening the relationship between the city and the Public Schools are just a few initiatives he’s worked on.
Now, Councilman Perrotta is working on a resolution that condemns DTE for mismanagement in the City of Hamtramck. And now that he’s passed the Bar Exam for becoming a Lawyer, there’s an entire career ahead of Perrotta.
